40 ms·

Linux touchpad like a MacBook Pro, May 2020 update

314 points by wbharding 6y ago

nbrempel 6y ago
It’s funny that people want this so badly that the site has been down for me the whole time it’s been on the front page yet it’s still getting upvoted to the top.
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  Same here. Linux trackpad as good as Mac is tech porn.
  - ntry 6y ago
    Hahaha, that's so true. I've heard of multiple people placing bounties on making this a reality
    - thecureforzits 6y ago
      It seems to me, at least as someone on the outside of this debate looking in, that people are having some trouble defining what "better" actually means. I think if the difference could be quantified, it could be addressed.
      - nbrempel 6y ago
        Ken Kocienda talks about this in his book Creative Selection. While working at Apple, they identified processes that needed to optimized with heuristics as opposed to algorithms. Some things need to be tweaked by a person and cannot be solved by applying an algorithm. He posits that this is the reason Apple has traditionally had such a great user experience with the products.
      - nickthemagicman 6y ago
        We have what we like and we have what we don't like. Have to make what we don't like match what we like.
- digikata 6y ago
  System76 and Purism know something to work on improving now...
  - nbrempel 6y ago
    I was just thinking about that! System76 would be wise to put some resources towards this.
danso 6y ago
Someone made an archive.is snapshot that's accessible while the live site is down: http://archive.is/FGHTT http://archive.is/FGHTT
i_am_proteus 6y ago
Am I the only one who doesn't get this? Trackpads on Linux with various Thinkpads have always seemed fine. I've used trackpads on various Mac laptops (Pro and Air) and those have seemed fine also. To round things out, my experience with trackpads on Windows (Thinkpads and XPS) has been that they are fine. Admittedly I have Linux set up for keyboard use with a TWM, but the trackpads, when I used them, have been fine.
- ysr23 6y ago
  > Thinkpads There is a much better option than the trackpad mac or otherwise built in ;-)
- danso 6y ago
  In a previous post, the author mentions a few benchmarks comparing Mac vs Linux trackpad performance: https://archive.is/s7SZM https://archive.is/s7SZM 1. Linux touchpad scores on par with Macbook touchpad per mouseaccuracy.com testing. As of today, I can consistently score twice as high on macOS (average score 250 with “Hard” + “Small” options) vs Linux (average score ~100). 2. Visual or terminal-based means to configure rudimentary touchpad settings. The fewest options I could imagine supporting for v1 would be: scroll speed/acceleration, scroll speed, natural scrolling toggle, hopefully support for gestures. 3. First-class palm and thumb detection/ignoring
  - cycloptic 6y ago
    Number 1 seems wildly subjective based on the person's level of dexterity and the hardware used. The only way I could see that being meaningful if you did it on the exact same laptop side by side with Mac and Linux and tweaked the acceleration profile, but it doesn't actually sound like the author is talking about installing Linux on a macbook. Numbers 2 and 3 are already in libinput. I am still struggling to understand what it is the author feels they need to fork the project for; there is some additional software that needs to be provided to really get the mac-like desktop experience with gestures, but that is covered by the libinput-gestures project. https://github.com/bulletmark/libinput-gestures https://github.com/bulletmark/libinput-gestures
naringas 6y ago
I have a pretty decent trackpad experience on linux. grated it has been a little glitchy but not as much anymore.. in any case I blame propietary vendors for preventing better open source support.
3jckd 6y ago
Could someone ELI5, why it is so difficult to make it right? And I do not mean exclusively to Linux, because Windows has been horrible for years now too. If the issue is hardware, then we'd blame OEMs. If it's software, then we'd blame, say, Microsoft. If it was a combination of these two, then we could say that Apple is the only one that controls both... if it wasn't for the Surface series which still has atrocious touchpad experience.
- bzb3 6y ago
  It is mostly software, but it's not Microsoft's fault, because they do not make the hardware and are not expected to write the drivers for it.
  - whywhywhywhy 6y ago
    Surface trackpads feel very close to Apple ones these days so it's down to OEMs. Although at this point I'd argue Microsoft should be forcing a minimum level of experience on all Windows devices and providing the software tools and hardware guidance needed to get there.
    - the_hoser 6y ago
      The only way that works is for Microsoft to refuse to license Windows to manufacturers that don't meet those standards, and you're not going to catch them refusing to make a sale.
  - wlesieutre 6y ago
    Windows is providing more of the touchpad software now, but you still have to depend on manufacturers to be compatible with it: https://www.howtogeek.com/286905/what-is-a-precision-touchpad-on-windows-pcs/ https://www.howtogeek.com/286905/what-is-a-precision-touchpa...
  - rconti 6y ago
    I guess that's our answer. They'd rather say "not our fault" than even try to solve it?
Dunedan 6y ago
Duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23039515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23039515, although the author apparently changed the title of the blog post.
- Brakenshire 6y ago
  It was posted there while it was a draft on his blog, before it was actually finished. The links which were the purpose of the post hadn’t been setup yet. > I presume nobody is randomly visiting pages on bill.harding.blog, so you aren't seeing this.
Kamshak 6y ago
For those only reading comments, the author plans to hire a developer to address touchpad issues. You can help: - Take the Linux Touchpad Experience Poll: https://www.gitclear.com/polls/linux_touchpad_experience https://www.gitclear.com/polls/linux_touchpad_experience - Become a sponsor on GitHub: https://github.com/gitclear/libinput https://github.com/gitclear/libinput (GitHub matches every donation up to $5k, so your $5 can become $10) - Get paid $50/hr to work on libinput: http://archive.is/FGHTT http://archive.is/FGHTT (link to archive of the original article ty danso)
- ah- 6y ago
  It took me a while to find how to sponsor, the button is right next to Star/Watch. Or go straight here: https://github.com/sponsors/gitclear https://github.com/sponsors/gitclear
- 91edec 6y ago
  Never sponsored a project before. I keep getting a 500 error on Github when trying to pay.
- jamil7 6y ago
  I wanted to read the article too but it looks like the site is having issues, thanks for the links!
- dmayle 6y ago
  Touch on linux has always been a pet peeve of mine (I was the first to publish two-finger right click patches[1] for the synaptics driver http://wikigentoo.ksiezyc.pl/Synaptics_Touchpad.htm http://wikigentoo.ksiezyc.pl/Synaptics_Touchpad.htm ). I've long thought about fixing the current drivers, but I can't prioritize the time myself. I'll donate some cash. Luckily, this should be relatively simple. Anyone who wants to make this should be looking at the Chromium touchpad code (runs linux, and my Pixelbook touchpad is as good as a macbook touchpad. For example, the touch input filter: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/touch_noise_filter/+/refs/heads/master https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/touch_... ) I think you'd get most of the quality with a kalman filter (A really cool filter that takes unstable input, and corrects it based on probabilities to give very high quality output). [1] http://douglas.mayle.org/files/synaptics-two-finger-click.diff http://douglas.mayle.org/files/synaptics-two-finger-click.di...
bananicorn 6y ago
I have these settings in my .xinitrc on my ThinkPad T420, but never had to do anything terribly arcane to get it to work as I expect it to. exec xinput set-prop 'SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad' 'Synaptics Tap Action' 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 & exec xinput set-prop 'SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad' 'Synaptics Two-Finger Scrolling' 1 1 & exec xinput set-prop 'TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint' 'libinput Accel Speed' -.3 & exec xinput set-prop 'SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad' 'Synaptics Coasting Speed' 0 0 & Sure, it could be more fine-tuned, but it works just fine that way. On other laptops I've had to reduce the "finger size" (I can't remember the name of the setting), so I could use it even with a light touch, but that's the biggest problem I've had with it so far.
- BenjiWiebe 6y ago
  Are you actually using exec before each xinput command? If so, only your first xinput command actually gets run. exec replaces the currently running process, effectively making it run-this-and-exit.
  - madars 6y ago
    Looks like & saves the day by invoking the command in a subshell and then in that subshell exec replaces the subshell with the xinput command. E.g. you can test it by $ cat ./a.sh #!/bin/sh exec /bin/echo foo & exec /bin/echo bar & which outputs foo and bar. Seems like a special case, just like exec without a command for file descriptor redirection.
  - bananicorn 6y ago
    That's rather interesting - it does work, I can tell you that much, but maybe there's a more standard way of doing this :)
ghostpepper 6y ago
Count me among those who agree there is a vast gulf. Another thing I've noticed recently is that on my X1 carbon (7th gen) there is a small but noticeably distance when I first start dragging a finger before the cursor moves that does not exist on a Mac trackpad with MacOS. I also wonder what the experience is like using Linux on a Mac trackpad. Is it closer to the experience on MacOS or closer to the experience with Linux on commodity hardware? If the latter, maybe it makes sense to improve that first. Maybe not though, if the synergy between hardware and software is the "secret sauce" that's missing then maybe optimizing the mac trackpad for Linux would be wasted effort.
- dhruvkar 6y ago
  >> experience is like using Linux on a Mac trackpad I ran Lubuntu on a 2012 macbook pro for a couple years and it was much closer to an "Apple" experience compared to my current setup of Pop_OS on a P52S Thinkpad.
- the_hoser 6y ago
  To satisfy your curiosity about the performance of the MacBook Pro's touchpad in Linux... it's not great, especially if you just recently used it in OS X.
- gen220 6y ago
  I plug my magic trackpad 2 into my first-gen x1 carbon, and it works remarkably well for scrolling, clicking, getting around. I miss some of the multi-touch features (three-finger-swipe-up) but it's pretty much identical excepting those. When I close the lid and plug in to a monitor, you can't tell much of a difference.
  - davidandgoliath 6y ago
    Fwiw, the latest fedora manages to make the carbon's trackpad feel as good as a macbook: Might be worth trying it out.
    - ghostpepper 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
junker37 6y ago
Am I the only one who prefers the red nubs on on Thinkpads? I find it very hard to use any touchpads. When I used a mac, I would carry around a mouse. I wish thinkpads would get rid of the touchpad. I'm perfectly happy with just using the nub.
- basch 6y ago
  I'm also in trackpoint camp. One think I dont like about them though, is that I have to make the choice whether the middle button is native windows scroll, or thinkpad scroll. The native scroll allows me to middle click links, tabs, windows, but has a delay that makes it almost unusable for scroll. The thinkpad scroll is beautiful, but now the button doesnt function as middle click. If I choose to use native windows scroll, I end up using 2 finger scroll on the touchpad to counter the trackpoints inability to scroll correctly.
- macintux 6y ago
  That’s my idea of hell on earth. Gestures are so frictionless compared to a mouse or nub; 3-finger drag, tap to click, inertial scrolling...
- fooker 6y ago
  I would have used that if you could click by tapping on it.
- JuettnerDistrib 6y ago
  Are there any laptops with two nubs: one for the mouse, one for scrolling? Then one could also put the keyboard in a more comfortable position right where the touchpad is now.
  - lozf 6y ago
    With the Thinkpads there's just the one nub, but the middle mouse button is easily reachable for scrolling.
  - proto-n 6y ago
    Not sure if this is a universal feature but on my Thinkpad + Linux Mint setup holding the middle mouse button switches the nub from mouse to scrolling
fartcannon 6y ago
The comments on this post make me think of that scene in American Psycho with the business cards.
q92z8oeif 6y ago
with my work enforced MBP most of the time i want to right click i end up clicking and triggering an unintended consequence just because i have my two fingers too close. On linux i never had this happen even on the cheapest touchpads.
- nerdjon 6y ago
  That surprises me, I just tried very hard to smash my fingers together to make it think I was using one finger (I was using the Magic Trackpad, but I also tried on my 16" MBP) and it always registered a right click. I actually can't think of the last time I misclicked a right click on Mac.
  - q92z8oeif 6y ago
    2015 15" if that makes any difference, but last models (2012 i think) had the same problem. Maybe they optimize to the wrong finger size to the point you can't even if you try, and i trigger the bug too often.
slipheen 6y ago
Since the site is slow, here's a direct link to the Github page to Sponsor the project. They want to hire a developer to fix the issues identified by the survey. https://github.com/sponsors/gitclear https://github.com/sponsors/gitclear
mschuster91 6y ago
There are three things at play here that give Apple/OS X their unique advantage: 1) Size. I have huge hands. A 2015 MBP has a trackpad whose size I have yet to see on any Windows/Linux laptop. I'm too clumsy for IBM's trackpad and the tiny "touchpads" on usual laptops should rather be called "touchpadlets" because they are so small that most I have experienced have had my fingers awkwardly collide. I won't go back on non-Apple hardware until there is a decently wide offering of decently sized touchpads. 2) Drivers. Back with my last Windows laptop it was some Elantech touchpad with Elantech drivers. Installing some random drivers from some random other laptop on a forum hint somewhere in the 30th Google result area suddenly gave me a whole lot of gestures. Just... WTF? Why is this not a core OS component in Windows and has it been possible over the last five years (since I switched) to finally use gestures OOTB in Linux?! 3) OS primitives / integration. Windows and (IIRC, please correct me!) Linux operate on the concept of "steps" with absolute scroll delta values, while OS X (and iOS/Android) operates on ... I don't even know what, it simply feels utterly smooth instead of janky. But I also assume that this is the most difficult to fix :(
wbharding 6y ago
Ugh: my web host is weak. If the page won't load for you, you can see its native version at https://public.amplenote.com/LiTtaTWY3GfzzhF26Exu8tXx https://public.amplenote.com/LiTtaTWY3GfzzhF26Exu8tXx
- seltzered_ 6y ago
  Just wanted to apologize for prematurely sharing this last week. Was testing the waters of linux again and happened to get curious about it.
_prototype_ 6y ago
Given how much developer-contempt there is for the new touchpads, its amazing to me that the opposite of this has not been tried by hardware hackers already (as far as I know). That is, hacking in an old tactile (non-touchpad) keyboard into the top section of the latest Macbook Pros.
Keyframe 6y ago
Hardware-wise, I'm extremely satisfied with Blade Stealth late 2019 one. However, (on popOS) there's a slight issue with palm rejection. I occasionally activate it with my palm. Is there a way to make rejection more aggressive?
throwaway55554 6y ago
On a related note, what are some decent external touch pads? I would love to have one to give my mouse hand a break sometimes while at my desktop.
- nerdjon 6y ago
  Personally I use the Apple Magic Trackpad. It's just a giant slab on my desk and it's great (Don't even use a mouse). But I use that with a Mac, so it depends on what you are using.
  - throwaway55554 6y ago
    I have a Mac, but I also have a Linux machine. I go back and forth depending.
floatboth 6y ago
With https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/merge_requests/1117 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/merge_requests/1117 scrolling in GTK apps (including Firefox) is really smooth
- josteink 6y ago
  Is this something one needs to enable? And from what version of Gnome/GTK is this available?
  - floatboth 6y ago
    It's a patch that's not merged yet.
therealmarv 6y ago
Can we also talk about pinch and zoom (e.g. image viewer or browser)? It seems that gesture is totally artificial for desktop Linux (we have it on Android though) and there are not even API interfaces existing for that trackpad gesture. Hoping all Linux input libraries will get a lot more attention and funding in the future :)
tw04 6y ago
For whatever it's worth/if it helps with this journey - the trackpad on the surface book/surface laptops is the closest I've seen to the mac trackpads. I'm assuming it's some combination of hardware and software. From stricly a tracking/responsiveness perspective, I would say they're dead even. I like the multi-finger click options better on MacOS - I'm sure it would be trivial for Microsoft to implement if they wanted to.
guenthert 6y ago
This is a solved problem, isn't it? On my Dell M6800 with Ubuntu 16.04, the touchpad experience is very poor, I avoid using it. On my (Linux based after all) Chromebook Pixel (anno 2013) it's fine, never been tempted to connect a mouse. Perhaps I should clarify: the difference is also a difference in usage: on the Chromebook I use the trackpad almost exclusively to select the current window or scroll its content, rarely set the cursor or highlight some text to be copied (the latter is already more challenging than with a mouse, I'd say). I haven't attempted to use a CAD program using the touch pad yet. So the touchpad works mostly fine for what a Chromebook is useful for, it's no replacement for a mouse on a workstation.
brandon_edens 6y ago
Part of the Apple touch story is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks
draw_down 6y ago
This is a major deficit between Macs and every other kind of computer. It bugs me when people pretend others are about the same, or close, because they aren't. I don't think it will be an easy problem to solve at all; Apple has been designing such things since the iPod, I imagine with a ton of in-house expertise (and probably patents, but whatever). It's a tough situation, Apple has made this a table-stakes thing for many (such as myself), yet nobody else is doing it nearly as well. It barely registers as a feature when you have it, but when you don't, it's a real pain.
Mikeb85 6y ago
I'm just curious what exactly the deficiency is on touchpads with Linux? I have a fairly commodity Acer laptop (Swift 3 w/ Ryzen APU), and the touchpad is accurate, sensitive (no noticeable lag at all), two finger scrolling works, tap to click works with one, two and three fingers, etc... I haven't changed any settings except sensitivity and whatnot in the standard Ubuntu settings GUI.
- jamil7 6y ago
  Whatever you think of Apple, for some reason there is a huge gap in their trackpads and basically everything else I've tried. There is the way the physical trackpad feels and doesn't "stick" as well as the responsiveness and accuracy of the drivers.
  - Mikeb85 6y ago
    That's not a real answer though. What objective difference is there? From some replies it might be software in the OS that changes the acceleration of the cursor, so that'd be an answer if true. Personally, I hate the feel of MacOS. The cursor seems unnaturally slow and when you crank up the speed has some weird behaviour.
    - jamil7 6y ago
      Appologies the answer was a bit flakey and yes you have a point it might be that I'm just very used to it and to me it feels better, as to you it feels worse. I mentioned in another comment on here that I wasn't able to get anything close to the feeling of the MacOS trackpad from using the same hardware on linux. I suppose the person who wrote this article feels the same way that I do about it.
      - Mikeb85 6y ago
        Fair enough. I guess I don't get a lot of the complaints when people talk about 'feel' because I've never like the MacOS 'feel'. Linux touchpads are plenty accurate and precise IMO so I've never understood why people say they're 'bad'. There doesn't seem to be any actual deficiency, just a lack of features that Apple bakes into the OS.
jamil7 6y ago
A few years ago I was dual booting Arch on a 2013 Macbook Pro and couldn't for the life of me get the trackpad working nicely as it would on MacOS. Up until then I'd made the assumption that Apple trackpads felt the way they did mostly due to hardware. When writing code I'm using vim and am keyboard focused but I've become really used to browsing websites and docs using the trackpad on MacOS. Edit: some formatting
bodhibyte 6y ago
A few comments here have mentioned that MacBook touchpad development is tied to iPhone touchscreen R&D. This might be stating the obvious, but could a similar effort be made by leveraging Android touchscreen R&D and code for Linux? [1] [1] https://source.android.com/devices/input/touch-devices https://source.android.com/devices/input/touch-devices
nemoniac 6y ago
I disable my Touchpad, not because of any shortcomings it might have, but because one of the selling points of a ThinkPad for me is the Trackpoint. I can operate it fine without moving my hands from the home typing position with my thumb's on the mouse buttons.
- _emacsomancer_ 6y ago
  I just physically unplug the touchpad and fingerprint reader on mine.
jeffomatic 6y ago
I recently tried switching from an MBP to an X1 Carbon, in a yet another attempt to switch to Linux as my daily driver. I ended up being thwarted, to my surprise, by the touchpad support. The big problem I encountered was poor palm detection: I learned through this process that I have a tendency to use the touchpad with my right hand, while my left hand is still in typing position. This means that the edge of my left palm rests along the upper-left corner of the touchpad. This would result in the driver sometimes detecting two touchpoints instead of one, and I would end up scrolling when I meant to move the pointer. The result of this was pretty amazing to me: after a few hours of use I found that my wrists, shoulders, and neck hurt because I was subconsciously trying to adjust my hands to avoid this. After a couple of days trying different drivers and tweaking config files, I ended up conceding that it just wasn't there yet. It's too bad: I have lots of imposter syndrome about understanding my OS and using Linux seems like a great cure. But after literally decades of trying, what I've noticed is that hardware (or at least, my acclimating to new hardware) always advances enough past Linux's capabilities that the switch is difficult. In the past, it was about getting sound cards or WiFi working, and nowadays it's about things like touchpads and high-resolution displays.
- lliamander 6y ago
  I find that, with my Thinkpads that I don't use the touchpad at all. I find the trackpoint a much more convenient pointing device as it keeps my hands a home row.
  - jordanbeiber 6y ago
    And they never run out of space!
    - throwaway3neu94 6y ago
      But when you push it in one direction too long, then let it go neutral, it'll have a bias into the other direction and move there by itself for a few seconds.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tibiahurried 6y ago
A couple of years ago I bought a Lenovo X1 6th gen as my personal laptop. Although I am generally happy with the overall HW quality, I must also say that I really miss very much the mac book touchpad (that I use on the daily basis at work) and also the overall macOS stability and great UX experience (vs Ubuntu) I really force myself to want to like the X1 + Ubuntu combination. But as others already pointed out, it is hard / impossible to compete with a company like Apple that invests billions of dollars in r&d.
wbharding 6y ago
If anyone is curious to see what people think about Linux touchpads currently, here are some of the preliminary results with 9000 responses counted thus far: https://public.amplenote.com/HbcoZf/touchpad-results-prelim https://public.amplenote.com/HbcoZf/touchpad-results-prelim Average satisfaction looks to be around 2 of 5. People are excited about multi-touch, especially the double finger right click.
yewenjie 6y ago
Am I just the minority who finds touchpad on my GNU/Linux system reasonably functional and bug-free? With a tool like Fusumu (https://github.com/iberianpig/fusuma https://github.com/iberianpig/fusuma) I am using three finger and four finger gestures just fine!
- ghostpepper 6y ago
  The experience is not terrible, it's just that when compared side by side it's clearly inferior.
lonelappde 6y ago
No way this is just a matter of paying a freelancer $50K. If that was it then System76 would have done it and someone would be rich from selling a closed source driver already. And software doesn't even touch the problem that most of what's wrong with non-Mac touchpads is the universally lousy hardware.
WesolyKubeczek 6y ago
I have this to ask about this project: 1) how exactly are you planning to cooperate with upstream (meaning Peter Hutterer, meaning Red Hat)? Suppose someone does the work, then what? libinput has issues open for years, including issues that have patches, how are you going to make sure yours is not going to get buried? 2) if there existed a programmer both capable and willing to pull this off, wouldn’t it make sense for them to set up sponsorship themselves and cut the middleman out?
WesolyKubeczek 6y ago
Some research done on the subject: https://pavelfatin.com/scrolling-with-pleasure/ https://pavelfatin.com/scrolling-with-pleasure/
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

314 points by wbharding 6y ago

It’s funny that people want this so badly that the site has been down for me the whole time it’s been on the front page yet it’s still getting upvoted to the top.

nickthemagicman 6y ago
Same here. Linux trackpad as good as Mac is tech porn.
- ntry 6y ago
  Hahaha, that's so true. I've heard of multiple people placing bounties on making this a reality
  - thecureforzits 6y ago
    It seems to me, at least as someone on the outside of this debate looking in, that people are having some trouble defining what "better" actually means. I think if the difference could be quantified, it could be addressed.
    - nbrempel 6y ago
      Ken Kocienda talks about this in his book Creative Selection. While working at Apple, they identified processes that needed to optimized with heuristics as opposed to algorithms. Some things need to be tweaked by a person and cannot be solved by applying an algorithm. He posits that this is the reason Apple has traditionally had such a great user experience with the products.
    - nickthemagicman 6y ago
      We have what we like and we have what we don't like. Have to make what we don't like match what we like.
digikata 6y ago
System76 and Purism know something to work on improving now...
- nbrempel 6y ago
  I was just thinking about that! System76 would be wise to put some resources towards this.

danso 6y ago

Someone made an archive.is snapshot that's accessible while the live site is down: http://archive.is/FGHTT http://archive.is/FGHTT

i_am_proteus 6y ago

Am I the only one who doesn't get this? Trackpads on Linux with various Thinkpads have always seemed fine. I've used trackpads on various Mac laptops (Pro and Air) and those have seemed fine also. To round things out, my experience with trackpads on Windows (Thinkpads and XPS) has been that they are fine. Admittedly I have Linux set up for keyboard use with a TWM, but the trackpads, when I used them, have been fine.

ysr23 6y ago
> Thinkpads There is a much better option than the trackpad mac or otherwise built in ;-)
danso 6y ago
In a previous post, the author mentions a few benchmarks comparing Mac vs Linux trackpad performance: https://archive.is/s7SZM https://archive.is/s7SZM 1. Linux touchpad scores on par with Macbook touchpad per mouseaccuracy.com testing. As of today, I can consistently score twice as high on macOS (average score 250 with “Hard” + “Small” options) vs Linux (average score ~100). 2. Visual or terminal-based means to configure rudimentary touchpad settings. The fewest options I could imagine supporting for v1 would be: scroll speed/acceleration, scroll speed, natural scrolling toggle, hopefully support for gestures. 3. First-class palm and thumb detection/ignoring
- cycloptic 6y ago
  Number 1 seems wildly subjective based on the person's level of dexterity and the hardware used. The only way I could see that being meaningful if you did it on the exact same laptop side by side with Mac and Linux and tweaked the acceleration profile, but it doesn't actually sound like the author is talking about installing Linux on a macbook. Numbers 2 and 3 are already in libinput. I am still struggling to understand what it is the author feels they need to fork the project for; there is some additional software that needs to be provided to really get the mac-like desktop experience with gestures, but that is covered by the libinput-gestures project. https://github.com/bulletmark/libinput-gestures https://github.com/bulletmark/libinput-gestures

naringas 6y ago

I have a pretty decent trackpad experience on linux. grated it has been a little glitchy but not as much anymore.. in any case I blame propietary vendors for preventing better open source support.

3jckd 6y ago

Could someone ELI5, why it is so difficult to make it right? And I do not mean exclusively to Linux, because Windows has been horrible for years now too. If the issue is hardware, then we'd blame OEMs. If it's software, then we'd blame, say, Microsoft. If it was a combination of these two, then we could say that Apple is the only one that controls both... if it wasn't for the Surface series which still has atrocious touchpad experience.

bzb3 6y ago
It is mostly software, but it's not Microsoft's fault, because they do not make the hardware and are not expected to write the drivers for it.
- whywhywhywhy 6y ago
  Surface trackpads feel very close to Apple ones these days so it's down to OEMs. Although at this point I'd argue Microsoft should be forcing a minimum level of experience on all Windows devices and providing the software tools and hardware guidance needed to get there.
  - the_hoser 6y ago
    The only way that works is for Microsoft to refuse to license Windows to manufacturers that don't meet those standards, and you're not going to catch them refusing to make a sale.
- wlesieutre 6y ago
  Windows is providing more of the touchpad software now, but you still have to depend on manufacturers to be compatible with it: https://www.howtogeek.com/286905/what-is-a-precision-touchpad-on-windows-pcs/ https://www.howtogeek.com/286905/what-is-a-precision-touchpa...
- rconti 6y ago
  I guess that's our answer. They'd rather say "not our fault" than even try to solve it?

Dunedan 6y ago

Duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23039515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23039515, although the author apparently changed the title of the blog post.

Brakenshire 6y ago
It was posted there while it was a draft on his blog, before it was actually finished. The links which were the purpose of the post hadn’t been setup yet. > I presume nobody is randomly visiting pages on bill.harding.blog, so you aren't seeing this.

Kamshak 6y ago

For those only reading comments, the author plans to hire a developer to address touchpad issues. You can help: - Take the Linux Touchpad Experience Poll: https://www.gitclear.com/polls/linux_touchpad_experience https://www.gitclear.com/polls/linux_touchpad_experience - Become a sponsor on GitHub: https://github.com/gitclear/libinput https://github.com/gitclear/libinput (GitHub matches every donation up to $5k, so your $5 can become $10) - Get paid $50/hr to work on libinput: http://archive.is/FGHTT http://archive.is/FGHTT (link to archive of the original article ty danso)

ah- 6y ago
It took me a while to find how to sponsor, the button is right next to Star/Watch. Or go straight here: https://github.com/sponsors/gitclear https://github.com/sponsors/gitclear
91edec 6y ago
Never sponsored a project before. I keep getting a 500 error on Github when trying to pay.
jamil7 6y ago
I wanted to read the article too but it looks like the site is having issues, thanks for the links!
dmayle 6y ago
Touch on linux has always been a pet peeve of mine (I was the first to publish two-finger right click patches[1] for the synaptics driver http://wikigentoo.ksiezyc.pl/Synaptics_Touchpad.htm http://wikigentoo.ksiezyc.pl/Synaptics_Touchpad.htm ). I've long thought about fixing the current drivers, but I can't prioritize the time myself. I'll donate some cash. Luckily, this should be relatively simple. Anyone who wants to make this should be looking at the Chromium touchpad code (runs linux, and my Pixelbook touchpad is as good as a macbook touchpad. For example, the touch input filter: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/touch_noise_filter/+/refs/heads/master https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/touch_... ) I think you'd get most of the quality with a kalman filter (A really cool filter that takes unstable input, and corrects it based on probabilities to give very high quality output). [1] http://douglas.mayle.org/files/synaptics-two-finger-click.diff http://douglas.mayle.org/files/synaptics-two-finger-click.di...

bananicorn 6y ago

I have these settings in my .xinitrc on my ThinkPad T420, but never had to do anything terribly arcane to get it to work as I expect it to. exec xinput set-prop 'SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad' 'Synaptics Tap Action' 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 & exec xinput set-prop 'SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad' 'Synaptics Two-Finger Scrolling' 1 1 & exec xinput set-prop 'TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint' 'libinput Accel Speed' -.3 & exec xinput set-prop 'SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad' 'Synaptics Coasting Speed' 0 0 & Sure, it could be more fine-tuned, but it works just fine that way. On other laptops I've had to reduce the "finger size" (I can't remember the name of the setting), so I could use it even with a light touch, but that's the biggest problem I've had with it so far.

BenjiWiebe 6y ago
Are you actually using exec before each xinput command? If so, only your first xinput command actually gets run. exec replaces the currently running process, effectively making it run-this-and-exit.
- madars 6y ago
  Looks like & saves the day by invoking the command in a subshell and then in that subshell exec replaces the subshell with the xinput command. E.g. you can test it by $ cat ./a.sh #!/bin/sh exec /bin/echo foo & exec /bin/echo bar & which outputs foo and bar. Seems like a special case, just like exec without a command for file descriptor redirection.
- bananicorn 6y ago
  That's rather interesting - it does work, I can tell you that much, but maybe there's a more standard way of doing this :)

ghostpepper 6y ago

Count me among those who agree there is a vast gulf. Another thing I've noticed recently is that on my X1 carbon (7th gen) there is a small but noticeably distance when I first start dragging a finger before the cursor moves that does not exist on a Mac trackpad with MacOS. I also wonder what the experience is like using Linux on a Mac trackpad. Is it closer to the experience on MacOS or closer to the experience with Linux on commodity hardware? If the latter, maybe it makes sense to improve that first. Maybe not though, if the synergy between hardware and software is the "secret sauce" that's missing then maybe optimizing the mac trackpad for Linux would be wasted effort.

dhruvkar 6y ago
>> experience is like using Linux on a Mac trackpad I ran Lubuntu on a 2012 macbook pro for a couple years and it was much closer to an "Apple" experience compared to my current setup of Pop_OS on a P52S Thinkpad.
the_hoser 6y ago
To satisfy your curiosity about the performance of the MacBook Pro's touchpad in Linux... it's not great, especially if you just recently used it in OS X.
gen220 6y ago
I plug my magic trackpad 2 into my first-gen x1 carbon, and it works remarkably well for scrolling, clicking, getting around. I miss some of the multi-touch features (three-finger-swipe-up) but it's pretty much identical excepting those. When I close the lid and plug in to a monitor, you can't tell much of a difference.
- davidandgoliath 6y ago
  Fwiw, the latest fedora manages to make the carbon's trackpad feel as good as a macbook: Might be worth trying it out.
  - ghostpepper 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

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junker37 6y ago

Am I the only one who prefers the red nubs on on Thinkpads? I find it very hard to use any touchpads. When I used a mac, I would carry around a mouse. I wish thinkpads would get rid of the touchpad. I'm perfectly happy with just using the nub.

basch 6y ago
I'm also in trackpoint camp. One think I dont like about them though, is that I have to make the choice whether the middle button is native windows scroll, or thinkpad scroll. The native scroll allows me to middle click links, tabs, windows, but has a delay that makes it almost unusable for scroll. The thinkpad scroll is beautiful, but now the button doesnt function as middle click. If I choose to use native windows scroll, I end up using 2 finger scroll on the touchpad to counter the trackpoints inability to scroll correctly.
macintux 6y ago
That’s my idea of hell on earth. Gestures are so frictionless compared to a mouse or nub; 3-finger drag, tap to click, inertial scrolling...
fooker 6y ago
I would have used that if you could click by tapping on it.
JuettnerDistrib 6y ago
Are there any laptops with two nubs: one for the mouse, one for scrolling? Then one could also put the keyboard in a more comfortable position right where the touchpad is now.
- lozf 6y ago
  With the Thinkpads there's just the one nub, but the middle mouse button is easily reachable for scrolling.
- proto-n 6y ago
  Not sure if this is a universal feature but on my Thinkpad + Linux Mint setup holding the middle mouse button switches the nub from mouse to scrolling

fartcannon 6y ago

The comments on this post make me think of that scene in American Psycho with the business cards.

q92z8oeif 6y ago

with my work enforced MBP most of the time i want to right click i end up clicking and triggering an unintended consequence just because i have my two fingers too close. On linux i never had this happen even on the cheapest touchpads.

nerdjon 6y ago
That surprises me, I just tried very hard to smash my fingers together to make it think I was using one finger (I was using the Magic Trackpad, but I also tried on my 16" MBP) and it always registered a right click. I actually can't think of the last time I misclicked a right click on Mac.
- q92z8oeif 6y ago
  2015 15" if that makes any difference, but last models (2012 i think) had the same problem. Maybe they optimize to the wrong finger size to the point you can't even if you try, and i trigger the bug too often.

slipheen 6y ago

Since the site is slow, here's a direct link to the Github page to Sponsor the project. They want to hire a developer to fix the issues identified by the survey. https://github.com/sponsors/gitclear https://github.com/sponsors/gitclear

mschuster91 6y ago

There are three things at play here that give Apple/OS X their unique advantage: 1) Size. I have huge hands. A 2015 MBP has a trackpad whose size I have yet to see on any Windows/Linux laptop. I'm too clumsy for IBM's trackpad and the tiny "touchpads" on usual laptops should rather be called "touchpadlets" because they are so small that most I have experienced have had my fingers awkwardly collide. I won't go back on non-Apple hardware until there is a decently wide offering of decently sized touchpads. 2) Drivers. Back with my last Windows laptop it was some Elantech touchpad with Elantech drivers. Installing some random drivers from some random other laptop on a forum hint somewhere in the 30th Google result area suddenly gave me a whole lot of gestures. Just... WTF? Why is this not a core OS component in Windows and has it been possible over the last five years (since I switched) to finally use gestures OOTB in Linux?! 3) OS primitives / integration. Windows and (IIRC, please correct me!) Linux operate on the concept of "steps" with absolute scroll delta values, while OS X (and iOS/Android) operates on ... I don't even know what, it simply feels utterly smooth instead of janky. But I also assume that this is the most difficult to fix :(

wbharding 6y ago

Ugh: my web host is weak. If the page won't load for you, you can see its native version at https://public.amplenote.com/LiTtaTWY3GfzzhF26Exu8tXx https://public.amplenote.com/LiTtaTWY3GfzzhF26Exu8tXx

seltzered_ 6y ago
Just wanted to apologize for prematurely sharing this last week. Was testing the waters of linux again and happened to get curious about it.

_prototype_ 6y ago

Given how much developer-contempt there is for the new touchpads, its amazing to me that the opposite of this has not been tried by hardware hackers already (as far as I know). That is, hacking in an old tactile (non-touchpad) keyboard into the top section of the latest Macbook Pros.

Keyframe 6y ago

Hardware-wise, I'm extremely satisfied with Blade Stealth late 2019 one. However, (on popOS) there's a slight issue with palm rejection. I occasionally activate it with my palm. Is there a way to make rejection more aggressive?

throwaway55554 6y ago

On a related note, what are some decent external touch pads? I would love to have one to give my mouse hand a break sometimes while at my desktop.

nerdjon 6y ago
Personally I use the Apple Magic Trackpad. It's just a giant slab on my desk and it's great (Don't even use a mouse). But I use that with a Mac, so it depends on what you are using.
- throwaway55554 6y ago
  I have a Mac, but I also have a Linux machine. I go back and forth depending.

floatboth 6y ago

With https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/merge_requests/1117 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/merge_requests/1117 scrolling in GTK apps (including Firefox) is really smooth

josteink 6y ago
Is this something one needs to enable? And from what version of Gnome/GTK is this available?
- floatboth 6y ago
  It's a patch that's not merged yet.

therealmarv 6y ago

Can we also talk about pinch and zoom (e.g. image viewer or browser)? It seems that gesture is totally artificial for desktop Linux (we have it on Android though) and there are not even API interfaces existing for that trackpad gesture. Hoping all Linux input libraries will get a lot more attention and funding in the future :)

tw04 6y ago

For whatever it's worth/if it helps with this journey - the trackpad on the surface book/surface laptops is the closest I've seen to the mac trackpads. I'm assuming it's some combination of hardware and software. From stricly a tracking/responsiveness perspective, I would say they're dead even. I like the multi-finger click options better on MacOS - I'm sure it would be trivial for Microsoft to implement if they wanted to.

guenthert 6y ago

This is a solved problem, isn't it? On my Dell M6800 with Ubuntu 16.04, the touchpad experience is very poor, I avoid using it. On my (Linux based after all) Chromebook Pixel (anno 2013) it's fine, never been tempted to connect a mouse. Perhaps I should clarify: the difference is also a difference in usage: on the Chromebook I use the trackpad almost exclusively to select the current window or scroll its content, rarely set the cursor or highlight some text to be copied (the latter is already more challenging than with a mouse, I'd say). I haven't attempted to use a CAD program using the touch pad yet. So the touchpad works mostly fine for what a Chromebook is useful for, it's no replacement for a mouse on a workstation.

brandon_edens 6y ago

Part of the Apple touch story is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks

draw_down 6y ago

This is a major deficit between Macs and every other kind of computer. It bugs me when people pretend others are about the same, or close, because they aren't. I don't think it will be an easy problem to solve at all; Apple has been designing such things since the iPod, I imagine with a ton of in-house expertise (and probably patents, but whatever). It's a tough situation, Apple has made this a table-stakes thing for many (such as myself), yet nobody else is doing it nearly as well. It barely registers as a feature when you have it, but when you don't, it's a real pain.

Mikeb85 6y ago

I'm just curious what exactly the deficiency is on touchpads with Linux? I have a fairly commodity Acer laptop (Swift 3 w/ Ryzen APU), and the touchpad is accurate, sensitive (no noticeable lag at all), two finger scrolling works, tap to click works with one, two and three fingers, etc... I haven't changed any settings except sensitivity and whatnot in the standard Ubuntu settings GUI.

jamil7 6y ago
Whatever you think of Apple, for some reason there is a huge gap in their trackpads and basically everything else I've tried. There is the way the physical trackpad feels and doesn't "stick" as well as the responsiveness and accuracy of the drivers.
- Mikeb85 6y ago
  That's not a real answer though. What objective difference is there? From some replies it might be software in the OS that changes the acceleration of the cursor, so that'd be an answer if true. Personally, I hate the feel of MacOS. The cursor seems unnaturally slow and when you crank up the speed has some weird behaviour.
  - jamil7 6y ago
    Appologies the answer was a bit flakey and yes you have a point it might be that I'm just very used to it and to me it feels better, as to you it feels worse. I mentioned in another comment on here that I wasn't able to get anything close to the feeling of the MacOS trackpad from using the same hardware on linux. I suppose the person who wrote this article feels the same way that I do about it.
    - Mikeb85 6y ago
      Fair enough. I guess I don't get a lot of the complaints when people talk about 'feel' because I've never like the MacOS 'feel'. Linux touchpads are plenty accurate and precise IMO so I've never understood why people say they're 'bad'. There doesn't seem to be any actual deficiency, just a lack of features that Apple bakes into the OS.

jamil7 6y ago

A few years ago I was dual booting Arch on a 2013 Macbook Pro and couldn't for the life of me get the trackpad working nicely as it would on MacOS. Up until then I'd made the assumption that Apple trackpads felt the way they did mostly due to hardware. When writing code I'm using vim and am keyboard focused but I've become really used to browsing websites and docs using the trackpad on MacOS. Edit: some formatting

bodhibyte 6y ago

A few comments here have mentioned that MacBook touchpad development is tied to iPhone touchscreen R&D. This might be stating the obvious, but could a similar effort be made by leveraging Android touchscreen R&D and code for Linux? [1] [1] https://source.android.com/devices/input/touch-devices https://source.android.com/devices/input/touch-devices

nemoniac 6y ago

I disable my Touchpad, not because of any shortcomings it might have, but because one of the selling points of a ThinkPad for me is the Trackpoint. I can operate it fine without moving my hands from the home typing position with my thumb's on the mouse buttons.

_emacsomancer_ 6y ago
I just physically unplug the touchpad and fingerprint reader on mine.

jeffomatic 6y ago

I recently tried switching from an MBP to an X1 Carbon, in a yet another attempt to switch to Linux as my daily driver. I ended up being thwarted, to my surprise, by the touchpad support. The big problem I encountered was poor palm detection: I learned through this process that I have a tendency to use the touchpad with my right hand, while my left hand is still in typing position. This means that the edge of my left palm rests along the upper-left corner of the touchpad. This would result in the driver sometimes detecting two touchpoints instead of one, and I would end up scrolling when I meant to move the pointer. The result of this was pretty amazing to me: after a few hours of use I found that my wrists, shoulders, and neck hurt because I was subconsciously trying to adjust my hands to avoid this. After a couple of days trying different drivers and tweaking config files, I ended up conceding that it just wasn't there yet. It's too bad: I have lots of imposter syndrome about understanding my OS and using Linux seems like a great cure. But after literally decades of trying, what I've noticed is that hardware (or at least, my acclimating to new hardware) always advances enough past Linux's capabilities that the switch is difficult. In the past, it was about getting sound cards or WiFi working, and nowadays it's about things like touchpads and high-resolution displays.

lliamander 6y ago
I find that, with my Thinkpads that I don't use the touchpad at all. I find the trackpoint a much more convenient pointing device as it keeps my hands a home row.
- jordanbeiber 6y ago
  And they never run out of space!
  - throwaway3neu94 6y ago
    But when you push it in one direction too long, then let it go neutral, it'll have a bias into the other direction and move there by itself for a few seconds.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

tibiahurried 6y ago

A couple of years ago I bought a Lenovo X1 6th gen as my personal laptop. Although I am generally happy with the overall HW quality, I must also say that I really miss very much the mac book touchpad (that I use on the daily basis at work) and also the overall macOS stability and great UX experience (vs Ubuntu) I really force myself to want to like the X1 + Ubuntu combination. But as others already pointed out, it is hard / impossible to compete with a company like Apple that invests billions of dollars in r&d.

wbharding 6y ago

If anyone is curious to see what people think about Linux touchpads currently, here are some of the preliminary results with 9000 responses counted thus far: https://public.amplenote.com/HbcoZf/touchpad-results-prelim https://public.amplenote.com/HbcoZf/touchpad-results-prelim Average satisfaction looks to be around 2 of 5. People are excited about multi-touch, especially the double finger right click.

yewenjie 6y ago

Am I just the minority who finds touchpad on my GNU/Linux system reasonably functional and bug-free? With a tool like Fusumu (https://github.com/iberianpig/fusuma https://github.com/iberianpig/fusuma) I am using three finger and four finger gestures just fine!

ghostpepper 6y ago
The experience is not terrible, it's just that when compared side by side it's clearly inferior.

lonelappde 6y ago

No way this is just a matter of paying a freelancer $50K. If that was it then System76 would have done it and someone would be rich from selling a closed source driver already. And software doesn't even touch the problem that most of what's wrong with non-Mac touchpads is the universally lousy hardware.

WesolyKubeczek 6y ago

I have this to ask about this project: 1) how exactly are you planning to cooperate with upstream (meaning Peter Hutterer, meaning Red Hat)? Suppose someone does the work, then what? libinput has issues open for years, including issues that have patches, how are you going to make sure yours is not going to get buried? 2) if there existed a programmer both capable and willing to pull this off, wouldn’t it make sense for them to set up sponsorship themselves and cut the middleman out?

WesolyKubeczek 6y ago

Some research done on the subject: https://pavelfatin.com/scrolling-with-pleasure/ https://pavelfatin.com/scrolling-with-pleasure/

deleted 6y ago

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