Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing? • Hacker News Board

Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?

#281

Post by trash_panda » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 5:07 PM UTC

auggierose wrote: post #280

trash_panda wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think using one of those instead of an external mouse is a good idea. In my case I find a regular mouse more comfortable than ANY touchpad. What about precision? do you think that the touchpad is more precise than a good mouse on a good mousepad? I'm not asking you if YOU are more "productive" using a touchpad, I'm asking you if you think that if we compare a proficient regular mouse user vs a proficient Mac t…

The touch pad just has more dimensions, 1 finger touch, 2 finger touch, dragging with some fingers touched, pinching, etc. Precision is better than with a mouse, because you don't have to move the mouse, just your finger. I would never want to use a mouse again! Yes, for me an Apple touchpad is way superior to a mouse. If you don't get that, that's fine. We all have our blindspots.

Good point, the multi-dimension thing is something that I haven't even consider when thinking about this. I'm sure there are some benefits to the workflow if you take advantange of the multi-touch gestures. In that aspect, a regular mouse can't compete (don't care about super sophisticated gamer mouses).

Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?

#282

Post by s73v3r_ » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 5:10 PM UTC

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #160

mkirklions wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is on this website? I thought these were mostly programmers, but I cannot picture a programmer using a touchpad instead of a mouse.

The downvotes are really telling... For most use cases pointing devices makes you less productive than using a keyboard. Going forth and back between keyboard and a pointing device is even worse. Spend the time to optimize your workflow to be pointer-free as much as you can and you'll never go back.

I think it's that attitude that people are downvoting. There is more than one way to be a developer; there are many different workflows that are possible. The fraction of a second that I might lose by using a pointing device is made up for by not having to set up and memorize arcane and sometimes rarely documented key combinations that might not be the same from program to program and system to system.

Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?

#283

Post by na85 » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 5:14 PM UTC

trash_panda wrote: post #252

na85 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you work that you have room to use a mouse? Coffee shops, planes, trains, passenger seat in a car, literally on my lap in waiting rooms or transit terminals, etc. This is where I use my laptop, and I don't have room for a mouse in these places.

Most of the time in a desk, I do travel a lot though. And when I'm using my laptop on my lap, I use the clitoris-like trackpoint, which I think it's terrible but I can work just fine with it. I also have a Dell XPS and the touchpad is decent, I can work fine with it. As I said, I'm not questioning the fact that Macs touchpads are superior, but I'm curious as to what are your use cases that make you think that you rea…

I need tracking of some sort, and my workflows tend to be mouse-heavy. I don't personally have a hard requirement for the Macbook touchpad, but the pad is a huge part of my interaction with a laptop and I hate using the clitmouse. I will never ever voluntarily run windows so my options are Linux, BSD, or Mac.

BSD is horribly performant on any laptop hardware I've tried, so that's a no-go.

Linux touchpad support is a dumpster fire of bad drivers and missing config options.

Mac is therefore the only real choice.

At some point you just get sick of dist-upgrade breaking palm rejection and no fix being available for months.

Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?

#284

Post by s73v3r_ » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 5:21 PM UTC

ahartmetz wrote: post #49

A cheap mouse allows finer and faster control than the best touchpad that currently exists, so... I plug in a mouse. (Don't believe me? Play an FPS game with touchpad against a mouse user.) That said, Synaptics touchpad support on Linux is bad. In my case, it's the touchpad on a Thinkpad T440s. It can run in a legacy/standard protocol mode or a "modern" protocol mode. Linux supposedly supports the latter (where palm…

There are very few applications which require the speed and precision of FPS games. Mostly, just FPS games. And I don't want to have to carry around another thing that could possibly get lost and take up space in my bag.

Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?

#285

Post by ChuckMcM » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 5:32 PM UTC

I agree that the trackpad on the macbook pro is the gold standard, but the author needs to effectively define the requirements in terms of something testable. Otherwise they will be stuck in a bikeshedding world where everyone is arguing.

This doesn't require any coding expertise, but it does require the ability to write requirements in a way that more than one person can interpret them correctly.

Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?

#286

Post by jolmg » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 5:33 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #274

nneonneo wrote: post #235

It would be great to know why the Linux drivers aren’t as good as the Mac touchpad drivers. I have little experience with Linux input drivers, but significant experience with the Android touch input stack (including a fair bit of experience hacking the Synaptics touchscreen drivers). Is it a matter of (1) the drivers themselves failing to provide good raw data (finger positions, update rate, positional accuracy, etc.…

I've customized Linux for touchpads on a couple laptops now (note: Macbooks are terrible choices for using linux on, using Thinkpad/Dell XPS is 100x easier driver wise). The current drivers support about 90% of what Macbook's can do in my experience. As the OP said in the article, it's "good enough", just not perfect. The last 10% of any implementation is where the most difficulty lies. I'm happy to see the author no…

As someone who's never used a Mac, what's that remaining 10%? What am I missing out on?

OP says he needs to "to click in the bottom right corner to effect a right click" when using synaptics, but I've always just tapped 3 fingers to do right clicks.

Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?

#287

Post by MrLeftHand » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 5:38 PM UTC

trash_panda wrote: post #181

MrLeftHand wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel your pain. Ubuntu Desktop was my preferred go to distro not too long ago. Using 16.10 was nice and I managed to get the touchpad working in a reasonable way with xinput. Then 18 came along and everything went to hell. All the properties changed and some even disappeared. And of course the ones missing were the ones I actually needed to make my touchpad work in a way that it was comfortable to use. After that I…

Reading this thread makes me wonder if I live in the same universe as HN. I'm amazed at the level of exquisiteness of the requirements of the HN crowd. I mean, I've been using computers all my life and used almost every Linux, Windows and OS X systems. I do get that Macbook touchpads are god-tier and unrivaled so far by other hardware manufacturers. That being said, I rather have my old Lenovo x220 with an external m…

First of all, when there is a manufacturer who can create something decent as a macbook touchpad, then others can do the same. Especially when you are at a price point that is identical to a Macbook's. There is no excuse to cut corners on such a simple thing like a stupid touchpad.

Second, nobody here is a Macbook fanboy just because their touchpads, but there is a reason why we praise them. From my part I am not a fanboy. I absolutely hate Apple and what it has become. But credit is due for the small things they get right. And the touchpad is one of them. The last good series of their pro line was the 2015 one, which I use at work. That is the best and you can see that as other manufacturers tried to copy it in every way. Not so much with the new models.

Third, most of the touchpads on Linux are bad not because the hardware itself is bad, but because bad support and drivers that apparently nobody wants to fix. My current laptop has a fantastic touchpad under Windows, but under Linux is absolute shit and there is not much you can do about it.

Can the touchpad be still used? Yes, of course, but I hate it. It makes me work slower and makes me annoyed, just the simple fact that under Windows that touchpad is awesome and I can't use it the same way under Linux. That simple fact kills it.

So to sum it up. It's not about Apple, it's not about what OS you like to use. It's not about peoples choice. It's about Linux being shit with touchpads on laptops whether it's old or new, or from another dimension.

So you are completely missing the point here.

Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?

#288

Post by jolmg » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 5:40 PM UTC

MrLeftHand wrote: post #81

One of the main reasons I stopped using Linux is the touchpad! It is horrible out of the box experience and the insult to injury is the lack of no good user interface to even set anything. You have to screw around with libinput or xinput with zero documentation on both parts and hope you will hit a sweet spot eventually and hope that any future updates won't break it. I am way past of the tinkerer phase where I would…

I've never had to touch libinput or xinput to control the touchpad. I just use synclient, and never had much trouble. Scroll vertically or horizontally with 2 fingers, middle click with 2 finger taps, right click with 3 finger taps. Middle-button drag by tapping with 2 fingers and then dragging with 1 finger. What was so horrible? Maybe things have improved since you tried it last.

Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?

#289

Post by gknoy » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 5:41 PM UTC

optimuspaul wrote: post #223

walrus01 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people are really confusing TSA with border control. TSA cares about people bringing knives and bombs on planes. US CBP/ICE or similar is a very different thing from TSA. I've never heard of TSA asking for any more detailed inspection of a laptop than swabbing it for chemical residue, and asking that it be powered on to confirm it's a real working laptop. CBP/ICE on the other hand are a totally different stor…

people definitely conflate the two, especially since the TSA has in the past taken great interest in peoples laptops. I don't think they currently have the authority to do any sort of accessing of the data on peoples computing devices.

I would be disinclined to try to tell TSA what their authority is, just as I am disinclined to tell them in person that it's flipping stupid to require me to remove my belt.

Telling the hands of the government that they don't have the authority seems like a very fast ticket to a very inconvenient travel delay. There's almost certainly some rule or administrative thing where they Can Get Away With pretty much what they say you can, and then you're stuck finding a lawyer.

Re: Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?

#290

Post by NeedMoreTea » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 5:42 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #253

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were the one expressing in absolutes.

> You were the one expressing in absolutes. No, I was not. Go back and actually read my comment, I very specifically talked about myself and my precision using a trackpoint. In support of lokedhs professing to the same. And as an expression of the uselessness and irrelevance of isostatic's comment answering a question nobody'd asked. But as usual the trackpoint zealots can't even take an expression of personal issues…

> That's completely immaterial to the precision of it, which is why I'm unable to use it

To me that reads as though you are unable to use it because the device itself is imprecise. That some indeed do find it more precise would seem to exonerate the device. Personal preference, is a different can of worms. :)

No zealotry present at all, here at least.