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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 e

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.)? (2) A matter of the drivers/userspace stack not decoding motions into useful gestures accurately? (3) Or a lack of support from normal applications or the window server for touch gestures and touch inputs? In kernel space there’s definitely a lot we could crib from Android to get started quickly - since that’s the low-hanging fruit I wonder if anyone’s already done it. The userspace stuff is a totally different affair...

dmix 8y ago
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 not just accepting good enough, as Desktop Linux has really been evolving past that point in recent years to be a legitimate contender for daily/progressional use. Gnome and other desktop software has come a long way.
- jolmg 8y ago
  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.
s73v3r_ 8y ago
"It would be great to know why the Linux drivers aren’t as good as the Mac touchpad drivers." Apple has people who's full time job is doing that. Linux doesn't. The maintainer of one of the drivers basically comes out and says, "You'd need someone working full time on this."

dmix 8y ago

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 not just accepting good enough, as Desktop Linux has really been evolving past that point in recent years to be a legitimate contender for daily/progressional use. Gnome and other desktop software has come a long way.

jolmg 8y ago
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.

s73v3r_ 8y ago

"It would be great to know why the Linux drivers aren’t as good as the Mac touchpad drivers." Apple has people who's full time job is doing that. Linux doesn't. The maintainer of one of the drivers basically comes out and says, "You'd need someone working full time on this."