Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Linux Touchpad Like MacBook Update: 2023 Progress on Smooth Scrolling

gitclear.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 284 posts

Re: Linux Touchpad Like MacBook Update: 2023 Progress on Smooth Scrolling

#41

Post by mrweasel »

dhosek wrote: post #13
redundantly wrote: post #3

I welcome any and all improvements to touchpads on Linux and Windows systems. Switching from my personal MacBook to my work ThinkPad is like traveling back in time in terms of usability.

I always thought it was strange that people went through the inconveniences of plugging a mouse into their laptop when there was a trackpad right there until I had to use a Windows system and saw just how bad it was.

I have an Apple Magic Trackpad, which I use with my laptop and external monitor. There is no way I'm going to suffer the ergonomic hell that is a laptop for a second longer than I absolutely have to. It's great to be able to take your laptop with you, but it's not a device suited for hours of use.

It's also illegal to work on a laptop, without external peripherals and monitor, so you need a pointing device anyway.

Re: Linux Touchpad Like MacBook Update: 2023 Progress on Smooth Scrolling

#42

Post by heleninboodler »

deeg wrote: post #8
jxdxbx wrote: post #4

Apple has been perfecting its trackpad software since 1994, and it’s been getting better ever since. By contrast Apple keyboards have gotten worse since 1995 when it discontinued the Apple Extended Keyboard II. We don’t talk about Apple’s mice.

It's not just the software. I have Ubuntu on a 2017 MBP and the touch pad experience is so much better than linux on anything else.

I've connected an Apple Magic Trackpad (external bluetooth trackpad that sits on your desk) to an ubuntu machine and it's wonderful. There are still some software things to solve to get the acceleration perfect and things like scrolling working, but having trackpad hardware that isn't trash goes a really long way.

Re: Linux Touchpad Like MacBook Update: 2023 Progress on Smooth Scrolling

#43

Post by brazzledazzle »

jxdxbx wrote: post #21
RIMR wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, the multitouch magic mouse is pretty intuitive when you get used to it. Depending on what you do, it could be an excellent daily driver, but it does tend to have some limitations that can make it a non-starter...

I can’t right click on them. I guess you have to raise up your fingers from the left side? I just found that to be a dealbreaker. I’ve had to use them for work and I turn them into one-button mice with scrolling. The scrolling is excellent, I like low-profile mice, and I don’t mind the charger port location. But I need to right click!

I wonder if that's the old magic mouse. I don't think I do that with the newer one but I remember something like that with the original.

Re: Linux Touchpad Like MacBook Update: 2023 Progress on Smooth Scrolling

#44

Post by zozbot234 »

jeffbee wrote: post #35
al_borland wrote: post #6

Why does this seem like such a hard problem to solve for everyone that isn’t Apple, when Apple seemingly solved the Trackpad over a decade ago? Is this it? An unknown ROI? >the highly uncertain ROI for trying to align touchpad acceleration has prevented us from proposing a system change to the default Linux settings. I can only speak for myself, but I gave up using trackpads on anything that isn’t a MacBook many year…

It's not a problem for Linux distributions that jettison all the GNU beliefs. ChromeOS has had perfect multitouch input with gestures for years. They ship opaque binaries from Synaptics or whomever and forget about the politics.

Synaptics touchpads on Linux used to support these features with a FLOSS driver, but this was abandoned when Linux distributions adopted libinput instead. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Touchpad_Synaptics Note the amount of config options available.

Re: Linux Touchpad Like MacBook Update: 2023 Progress on Smooth Scrolling

#45

Post by jxdxbx »

dhosek wrote: post #17
jxdxbx wrote: post #4

Apple has been perfecting its trackpad software since 1994, and it’s been getting better ever since. By contrast Apple keyboards have gotten worse since 1995 when it discontinued the Apple Extended Keyboard II. We don’t talk about Apple’s mice.

The first-gen butterfly keyboards were pretty atrocious (although still kind of usable). I actually like the chiclet-key keyboards that Apple sells nowadays.

Yeah I don’t actually want Apple to put Alps switches into a Macbook.

I’d buy one if they did though.

Re: Linux Touchpad Like MacBook Update: 2023 Progress on Smooth Scrolling

#46

Post by recursive »

jxdxbx wrote: post #32
recursive wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I'm not in the target audience. Fine. I would still like to know what it is.

Scrolling that exactly matches your fingers and has “realistic” momentum. On a Mac I might scroll through an article by just sort of pushing it the right direction, removing my hand from the trackpad and then tapping to stop it at the right place. It’s very hard to describe these things because so much is muscle memory.

I just tried it on this Windows laptop, and it worked exactly as you described, at least in firefox. I pretty much never use a touchpad though, so I don't think I ever saw that before. If I did though, I can imagine coming to rely on it pretty quickly.

Re: Linux Touchpad Like MacBook Update: 2023 Progress on Smooth Scrolling

#47

Post by hawski »

recursive wrote: post #9

What exactly is smooth scrolling? Like you press the down arrow, and the scroll is animated instead of instantly snapping down by 50 pixels?

AFAIK: two fingers on the touchpad, move your fingers and observe how things scroll. When it is good you don't feel any lag and the content moves as fast or as slow (even by a single pixel) as your fingers are. Some inertial scrolling on top and that's it.

Privately I am using a lot of Chromebooks and it is good in my opinion, but I was never wowed by Apple implementation so maybe I am not a good person to ask.

Re: Linux Touchpad Like MacBook Update: 2023 Progress on Smooth Scrolling

#48

Post by advisedwang »

al_borland wrote: post #6

Why does this seem like such a hard problem to solve for everyone that isn’t Apple, when Apple seemingly solved the Trackpad over a decade ago? Is this it? An unknown ROI? >the highly uncertain ROI for trying to align touchpad acceleration has prevented us from proposing a system change to the default Linux settings. I can only speak for myself, but I gave up using trackpads on anything that isn’t a MacBook many year…

Generally Apple is only expected to make their own touchpads work well. So it's fewer devices to develop/test, the OS folks can talk to the hardware devs, see their designs and firware and even get to influence hardware decisions. Perhaps Apple puts in work for a handful of the top touchpad brands, but they also are incentivised to work with Apple.

Compare to linux, where they have zero influence over any of the hardware involved, and are expected to support every single hardware combo possible.

Re: Linux Touchpad Like MacBook Update: 2023 Progress on Smooth Scrolling

#49

Post by smoldesu »

LegibleCrimson wrote: post #23
seszett wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been reading this kind of opinion for years, but I have always found the touchpad to be annoyingly slow under macOS. On the other hand, MacBooks are basically the only laptops with a large enough touchpad to be comfortable, I don't know if there's some other secret sauce Apple algorithm in the firmware that contributes to the experience, but to me the perfect combination is with a MacBook running Linux, which is…

Likewise. There's something about MacOS's touchpad handling that makes it impossible to get it to feel good for me. The default Gnome settings on a Mac touchpad feel perfect.

KDE's defaults feel great on Magic Trackpad 2 as well, I prefer it with acceleration disabled. That said I'm using GNOME right now and it handles great on a multitouch trackpad.

Re: Linux Touchpad Like MacBook Update: 2023 Progress on Smooth Scrolling

#50

Post by alerighi »

al_borland wrote: post #6

Why does this seem like such a hard problem to solve for everyone that isn’t Apple, when Apple seemingly solved the Trackpad over a decade ago? Is this it? An unknown ROI? >the highly uncertain ROI for trying to align touchpad acceleration has prevented us from proposing a system change to the default Linux settings. I can only speak for myself, but I gave up using trackpads on anything that isn’t a MacBook many year…

I think the reason is that "a good trackpad" as well as "a good keyboard" is not something that can be measured. Let's say that the cost of a good trackpad is equivalent to the cost of, let's say, 16 more Gb of RAM. Does the user given the same price choose to by the laptop with written on the box "32Gb of RAM" or the one that says 16? The first, because 32 is better than 16!

Apple is different because they have a product that is not comparable to other PCs, or they want you to believe that, thus they can put the price tag they want on it. Want they spend 100$ on a trackpad, they can, but a PC manufacturer can't.

Beside that, I think also the reason why PC manufacturer didn't invest on them is that most PC have Windows on them, and native multitouch trackpad gestures on Windows is rather a new thing (even on Linux, by the way, it started being supported as smoothly as macOS only with Wayland). Thus why have an hardware that supports something than in the end the OS that most people is using doesn't support?

Post reply on HN