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Linux 4.20 released
- adamheath 8y agoThis release will finally add support for the Apple Magic Trackpad 2
- eponeponepon 8y agoNeat news. I've been thinking about trying one of those out for a while now - I really want to find a pointing/clicking device other than a traditional mouse as my hands age, but nothing's properly worked yet.
- q3k 8y agoHave you tried a trackball? (like the Logitech MX Ergo)
- eponeponepon 8y agoOh yes - definitely not for me generally! I find them okay for some gaming purposes though, oddly enough.
- dpwm 8y agoI've actually played quite a few FPS games with a Kensington trackball. It takes some getting used to, but if you set the ball up so that a 180° rotation corresponds to the cursor travelling the width of the screen it seems to work well. Disable acceleration on a trackball – whatever your use.
- joshschreuder 8y agoI tried this recently and got fairly bad pain in my thumb (bottom towards the palm area). I’ve since switched back to just using my old vertical mouse and the pain is gone. It’s a shame because I did get used to it and quite like using the ball.
- mkl 8y agoMaybe try a Kensington Expert Mouse [1]. I use these a lot. I'd suggest the wired version - the wireless one seemed to interfere with my Bluetooth keyboard (probably the keyboard's fault though). [1] https://www.kensington.com/p/products/control/trackballs/expert-mouse-wired-trackball/ https://www.kensington.com/p/products/control/trackballs/exp...
- eikenberry 8y agoI've used the Kensington SlimBlade for years and really love it. The only difference from the Expert Mouse is that instead of a scroll ring you just spin the ball in place. Completely eliminated the RSI I was getting in my mouse hand and is my favorite hardware for mouse-like functionality. https://www.kensington.com/p/products/control/trackballs/SlimBlade-Trackball/ https://www.kensington.com/p/products/control/trackballs/Sli...
- zapzupnz 8y agoI still wonder how well it'd work without Apple's software to drive the thing. Apple's trackpads are always less magic when using Windows, for instance.
- teekert 8y agoYes, isn't it crazy how this seems to be something that is soooo hard to duplicate? I never feel the need for a mouse on my macbook, switch to Windows or Linux: I immediatly set out out to find my mouse (in contrast, external mice are just a pain in MacOS I feel that the acceleration is way off, like I'm mousing through sticky mud, and methods to adjust it were removed 5-6 versions of osX ago.)
- zapzupnz 8y agoOn the topic of the mouse, I suspect you (along with nearly everybody else I know) is used to Windows-style tracking. Me, I'm used to macOS-style acceleration, so using mouses on other machines always feels inaccurate to me. But back to the topic, it is rather interesting how hard trackpads are to replicate on other systems with the same level of quality as Apple's own trackpads under macOS. I suspect that's why one of the recent Windows 10 updates brought in consistent APIs for trackpads and multi-touch gestures. If Microsoft are only just getting around to it now, I've my doubts there'd be any consistency on the matter over in Linux land. Not so much for lack of trying, but in a land of multiple desktop environments each with their own ways of doing things, the uncertainty of whether we keep improving X or focus everything on Wayland … well, I doubt the using the Magic Trackpad 2 under Linux would be all too pleasant.
- pantalaimon 8y agoWell both X11 and Wayland based desktops are switching to libinput now, so there is consistency for once.
- zapzupnz 8y agoThat's grand. Good news, even if I'm late hearing it.
- danieldk 8y agoOn macOS, they are absolutely awesome. The Magic Trackpad 2 has a motor for haptic feedback. Applications like OmniGraffle use this to give a subtle vibration when you are dragging an object and it aligns with another object. So you can feel the alignments when you’re dragging. Very useful undersold feature.
- wtallis 8y agoI've been a fan of Apple's trackpads for a long time, but I was still surprised at how much the addition of haptic feedback improved them. Just getting away from the hinged click mechanism was nice, but being able to adjust in software the force required to click is a really great feature, and it doesn't require support at the application level.
- saagarjha 8y agoNote that supporting Force Touch does require applications to play along.
- titanomachy 8y agoHe's talking about something different, you can actually change the force required for a basic click.
- saagarjha 8y agoYes, I’m aware. I’m just clarifying that Force Touch, which is separate but easily confused feature, requires support from applications. “Basic clicks” are handled by the OS, and the amount of force necessary for one isn’t particularly important to apps.
- mrweasel 8y agoI use the external Apple trackpad exclusively, it is in my opinion the only viable pointing device right now. Why Apple is the only company making these is beyond me.
- eponeponepon 8y ago> Why Apple is the only company making these is beyond me. Loosely defined patents and a litigious corporate nature, at a guess.
- avian 8y agoI find a classical clicky-button mouse to be superior to trackpads (or Apple’s weird no-button mice) and I am extemely happy that not all industry is blindly copying Apple at this point.
- rrdharan 8y agoDo you mean superior to trackpads generally or have you specifically tried and rejected the Magic Trackpad 2? I ask because like the parent poster I love the Trackpad 2 on macOS but I hate most other trackpads when using them with Windows/Linux. Meanwhile I also hate using most mice I've tried on macOS including the Apple ones but am fine with mice on Windows/Linux. I imagine there are probably tracking speed and acceleration settings that would make the unpleasant combinations work better but I usually give up after making a few simple tweaks. I wasted a lot of time tweaking low level Synaptics parameters in the config flies when trying to make the Magic Trackpad work well for me on Linux and I think I've exhausted my lifetime supply of patience for excessive pointer setting adjustments.
- Lio 8y agoThat’s fine if bring a mouse with you when you’re on the move. I don’t care for mice. I don’t see why Dell, Lenovo, etc. can’t provide a laptop with a trackpad that works well under Linux. Maybe it’s better on Windows I don’t know but the XPS 13 trackpad is, if I’m being genenerous, not great.
- aasasd 8y agoTouchpads are great for clicking and scrolling, especially if you set it up to 'click' with just a tap. Alas, it's much worse for dragging, so e.g. graphic design is problematic. Even with dragging via double-tap-and-drag, supported by MacOS, it's a big nuisance, especially dragging outside the touchpad area (which you can do by changing fingers mid-drag). I've heard good things about vertical mouses: they're supposed to keep the lower arm from being rotated unnaturally, and the hand position seems to be more relaxed. But I still have doubts about pressing the thing, as that seems to be the root of RSI. In my experience, staying away from computers altogether works much better for the hands than any devices I've tried, which is not good news for a computer geek.
- wtallis 8y ago> Alas, it's much worse for dragging, so e.g. graphic design is problematic. What kind of dragging operations are you talking about? Drag and drop operations and box selection are no more difficult on a Mac trackpad than with a mouse, and running out of trackpad area was pretty rare even on the pre-Touchbar generation before they almost doubled the size of their trackpads. Drawing might be harder, but neither device is at all good at that task; that's what Wacom is for.
- Illniyar 8y agoShouldn't that be a driver? Why would pointing device support require a kernel update?
- Nullabillity 8y agoLinux drivers tend to be developed and maintained as part of the kernel rather than external plugins. That said, there are still a few bad actors who refuse to do this, notably Nvidia.
- rombert 8y agoDrivers are usually part of the kernel source tree.
- frutiger 8y agoFor the most part, Linux ships with drivers in the kernel source tree. This ensures it will remain maintained, and allows the developers to evolve subsystems in an incompatible way and update drivers accordingly. The syscall interface is always maintained however. As Linus would say, “never break userspace”.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- nqi 8y agoSome clever brain thought drivers should be part of the kernel. I personally think that's what's prevented Linux from conquering the desktop because of GPU vendors having no stable API to build upon. That is also the reason Android phones get no updates. It was a horrible decision.
- gronne 8y agoOh THATS why android gets so few updates.. (pardon the sarcasm). Its all because of those damn linux renegates - ruining software for the rest of us. Somebody ought to stop the linux bullies preventing those poor corporations from updating their products.
- wodenokoto 8y agoWhat I don't understand is why you need a whole new version of Linux for support for an specific brand of touch pad. Why aren't these things a driver?
- auscompgeek 8y agoThey are drivers. It's just that the drivers are now in-tree, so they will work out of the box.
- elsjaako 8y agoLinux had a different model than windows. It doesn't really have separate drivers. This has a number of upsides and downsides, let me mention just one. Windows used to have a really bad reputation for stability. I'm sure a lot of this was windows's fault, but a lot of this was bad third-party drivers that crashed. You might remember that nvidea does have a driver for Linux. The approach they took isn't really supported, which is one of the reasons why graphics drivers are always such a nightmare under Linux.
- ivanfon 8y agoOne upside is simply the fact that you don’t need to hunt down drivers and install them. I’ve had to install wifi drivers for a Windows machine before. Hunting for the right driver, downloading it and transferring it from my phone was quite a pain, as opposed to the wifi just working on Linux.
- sbr464 8y agoThese posts show we really need to decentralize everything even if not seemingly bad, but for the fact that any one person can effect their will. If you build software, push forward.
- Valmar 8y agoLinus hasn't lost his touch, if this is any indication: https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/12/22/221 https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/12/22/221
- gdsimoes 8y agoHe seemed more polite than usual.
- kungtotte 8y agoYet he still makes exactly the same point as when he's screaming profanity at Mauro for the same reasons. Maybe a CoC and some time off for Linus wasn't all that bad after all...
- jsjohnst 8y agoIf I’m understanding you correctly, you are saying the time off allowed him to realize he could get the same point across without being as caustic as he was previously with Mauro. If so, I’m not sure why you are being downvoted.
- kungtotte 8y agoThat's precisely what I mean. I assume the downvotes are coming from those who disagree with the CoC.
- gus_massa 8y agoMost of Linus post are polite, but the one that are shared are the other ones. If you want to trigger him, just break the kernel ABI and then defend your decision, this never fails. Anyway, it looks too polite, like he is filtering the email using a "polite" version of the "simple" English writer by xkcd https://xkcd.com/simplewriter/ https://xkcd.com/simplewriter/
- fattire 8y agoKernel secured.
- robertAngst 8y agoHopefully this is 'on topic', but I wanted to shout out Ubuntu Server. Ubuntu Server is the greatest thing ever, listing why- 1. I have never had a problem with Ubuntu Server 2. It is free It hit all the quality metrics and it is free? That is division by 0, infinity quality per dollar. Updates to Ubuntu never broke my server either. In contrast, Ubuntu Desktop is not good IMO. Instead of ending on a bad note, I dream of a world where things can be like Ubuntu Server. Where the lowest income people have the same opportunity as the wealthy in access. Maybe its bad capitalism, but Ubuntu Server and Wikipedia are my role models.
- h1d 8y agoUsed it since 10.04 against over 100 servers and I agree it worked really well. 95% of the time it had packages I need and the rest of 5% only meant stuff I wanted to use was too new to go into packages of the LTS at that time. Unless you need 10 years level of stability at the cost of losing package count and freshness to go with RHEL/CentOS, I don't think there isn't much of a reason not to use Ubuntu Server edition.
- zozbot123 8y agoUbuntu Server is nice due to the commercial support that's available from Ubuntu, but Debian is also very widely used on the server. And with the newer releases (Debian Stretch and later) it's gaining potential as a desktop OS too.
- 7of9ismywifi 8y agono point in delaying 420. blazeitfaggot
- lucb1e 8y agoLooks like I've missed something, didn't Linus take a break from being maintainer due to the often harsh language? That break is over, it seems?
- vectorEQ 8y agohttps://www.pcmag.com/news/364543/linus-torvalds-returns-to-linux-after-time-off-for-being-a-j https://www.pcmag.com/news/364543/linus-torvalds-returns-to-... :D
- black-tea 8y agoIt took Linus two weeks to write the first version of git. He took 36 "days off" which is a long time for him.
- FBISurveillance 8y agoI have to say that in e.g. https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/12/22/221 https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/12/22/221 he is extremely polite compared to 1 year ago. Of course it may sound harsh to some but I can see him trying.
- preommr 8y agoAnd it's a really positive change. It reflects better on the community Keeps standards about communicating well Makes it harder to dismiss his arguments than if he were being an asshole from an emotional standpoint Creates less resentment Prevents getting distracted by the way Linus said something from what he's actually trying to say
- sokoloff 8y agoI think that mail is entirely positive for the Linux kernel users. Clear unequivocal language expressing the policy and stance of the project. I can’t see any reasonable way to temper the harshness without removing a key element of the message.
- 8y ago
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cranjice 8y agoWake and make dudes
- camdenlock 8y agoIncredibly underrated comment.
- craftyguy 8y agoAnd now HN has completed it's full transformation into the great shitposting forum of r/technology.
- Asking4AFriend 8y agoYeah!!! Totally awesome!!!
- chkaloon 8y agoLinus is amazing. Is anyone else a bit unnerved that the entire tech world seems to hinge on the good instincts of this one guy? I hope there is another benevolent dictator to take over once he's gone.
- akskos 8y ago420 blaze it 8)
- amself 8y ago420 legalize it 8)
- jeanlucas 8y agoCan we all admit this is on hot just because of the version number?
- _eht 8y agoYes, yes we can. ...but also track pads apparently?
- Retr0spectrum 8y agoTo be fair, it's pretty common for new Linux releases to make it to the front page.
- sigmaprimus 8y agoJust curious, is the default desktop wall paper going to have a pot leaf on it?