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Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?

williambharding.com

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

#331

Post by jamroom »

balladeer wrote: post #254
nerdponx wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Apple makes the best consumer mobile computer hardware by far, repairability issues aside. The touchpad is originally what sold me on my first MacBook (2013 13" Retina) and it is still the feature I miss the most on other laptops.

I had kept repairability issue aside until I had to go for flash drive replacement of my 2012 13" MacBook Air recently. Apple support (which is a 3rd party in my country) said ~$400 and local repair guys quotes like $350 or so. The new MBA (last year's) is available for ~800 here. Apparently I can't get any other brand's flash drive fit in there. That laptop worked just fine (battery, screen all). I wish I can find a…

Here's what you want:

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ssd/owc/macbook-air/2012

Just replaced the internal SSD on a 2012 MBA myself - works great now :)

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

#332

Post by sjwright »

staffordrj wrote: post #88
sjwright wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both were right. The original direction made some sense when transitioning from mice with scroll wheels. (Though it is debatable whether the mouse wheel's direction was ever right.) The current "reversed" direction makes more sense in an era of iPads, smartphones and touch screens.

Both are right. The original makes sense when using a mouse. The reversed makes sense on touch screens. I use both.

The "reversed" (more accurately the natural direction) makes just as much sense with a trackpad as a touchscreen... And I would argue that the original mouse wheel got it wrong too.

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

#333

Post by jcrben »

wbharding wrote: post #277

Original blog poster here (hi!). I'm pleased to find this motherlode of detail-oriented perfectionists here on HN and in my blog comments. This affirms my original question of whether it's a goal worth pursuing. Step one complete. Step two will be for me to sift through the offers and figure out how they can be pieced together into a plan of action. It seems unrealistic to expect that we could raise more than... $20k…

I hope you look into updating libinput first. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput

Let's not add more not invented here without at least doing some solid good faith effort to join the existing efforts.

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

#334

Post by eecc »

Tepix wrote: post #66
reacharavindh wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see how selling a used MacBook(purchased in the USA from a state without state taxes) could just be sold off as a used item in say Europe, before returning back to the US. The difference in cost could actually be a net positive. Now, if all your files live in the cloud, and you have your setup automated completely, why not?

The keyboard layout is an issue.

For dev work an US keyboard is actually preferable.

While we’re here, let me just add another little form of “geographic advantage” (?) to the mix: you all know cmd-‘ pages through windows of the same application. On a US layout ‘ is right up next to tab, which makes it extremely convenient to remember the mnemonics of cmd-‘ and cmd-tab. In US intl ‘ is shoved down next to lshift, and the premium key top of tab is the useless §.

Why? Apple, why?!

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

#335

Post by gurkendoktor »

greenhatman wrote: post #233
peterburkimsher wrote: post #140

I'll volunteer 2 months full-time development for free, with a few conditions. - I'm looking for a job in New Zealand, Australia, or Canada. Not Seattle (sorry Bill). I'd stop job hunting to work on this, so someone else will have to find me a job. - I'd develop for the MacBook Pro 2014, because that's my hardware. Only one Linux distro (probably Ubuntu). - Weekly check-in emails (maybe twice a week). A plan set out…

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but do we need new Linux drivers for MacBook touch pads? Mine is working fine on my 2015 MackBook with Linux Mint. Am I missing something obvious?

Maybe not new drivers, but the existing ones drive me nuts. For example, I often rest my thumb on the bottom left corner of the trackpad (where I press to click). That interferes with my cursor movement on Linux, but not on macOS, which ignores my resting thumb with 100% accuracy.

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

#336

Post by gurkendoktor »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #199
tzahola wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>AppleScript because it has so many APIs. You mean the commands you can use on apps like iTunes, Finder, Photos, etc.? Those are not AppleScript-specific per se (AFAIK there used to be an option to write Automator scripts in JS). You'd need the Linux/Gnome/KDE equivalent of the Open Scripting Architecture ( https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Ap... ) with active participation from app developers…

Yes, it would be a huge undertaking. I've already rewritten my own apps for offline maps, calendar, notes, and I plan to write contacts and iTunes too. When there's a standard API comparable to Apple Events/OSA within those core apps, I'd hope to have enough leverage to persuade other app developers to accept pull requests.

Out of curiosity, what GUI toolkit have you written these apps in/for? Something Mac-like (GNUStep)?

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

#337

Post by gurkendoktor »

trash_panda wrote: post #270
ninkendo wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No touchpad is as good as a decent external mouse (decent != expensive, mine is $30). Funny, on both my work and home mac desktops, I use the Magic Touchpad as my primary input device even while sitting at a desk. So I suppose I disagree with this statement.

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…

> heavily influenced by marketing.

Whose marketing? Apple doesn't push the Magic Trackpad over the Magic Mouse. If you buy an iMac online, the mouse is their pre-selected input accessory.

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

#338

Post by OJFord »

jcelerier wrote: post #145
OJFord wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried for a while, and running it natively really hammered the battery, got nowhere close to the same uptime as when running macOS. Running it in a VM was OK on battery, but of course there's CPU/RAM overhead, and the trackpad _feels_ nice, but it still doesn't quite move in the right way.

when using powertop on my MBP 2014 I can get 7-8 hours of battery.

Oh that'd be enough for me, I'll give it a go.

What about the trackpad though? Of course the hardware feel is the same and great, but it doesn't move quite right, like it does with macOS, or you would with a mouse.

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

#339

Post by ProZsolt »

batteryhorse wrote: post #35

I've wanted to do this as well. I came to the conclusion that you'll need to bypass the X windows input system and read the device directly, none of the current solutions (like libinput, mtrack, or synaptics) would work satisfactorily. And integrating it with Gtk or Qt will never work well because of the structure imposed by those frameworks (Cocoa/ObjC is a much more flexible framework) I was able to write a prototy…

Can you show your solution?

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

#340

Post by jandrese »

abrowne wrote: post #330
jandrese wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One baffling design decision Canonical made for 18 is defaulting some touchpads (ones without separate buttons) to "two finger click for right click", even though so many touchpads have a clicky area and even lines printed on the touchpad for right click. That's not the baffling part though, the baffling part is that they didn't put an option in the control panel to return the old behavior. You have to spin up dconf…

It's a GNOME change, not a Canonical one: http://who-t.blogspot.com/2018/04/gnome-328-uses-clickfinger...

Canonical had the final word on it. They could have reverted the default to the old behavior if they wanted.
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