8 ms·
Perhaps the only thing other than a certain leviathan that I loathe in Linux, is the touchpad. I have butchered laptops as a result of touchpad induced madness.
by eth0up 6y ago
Perhaps the only thing other than a certain leviathan that I loathe in Linux, is the touchpad. I have butchered laptops as a result of touchpad induced madness. I've tried synclient and other tweaks to no sufferable avail. My present laptop has the touchpad removed by pliers. I used the term "madness" sincerely. I think the present situation might be eligible for a place in the wiki for Unethical Human Experimentation. Of course, Linux is not entirely to blame; the physical quality has declined immensely for most touch/clickpads.
Perhaps someday I'll experience playing go without a mouse and risk of hypertension.
I'm typically not one to use the term - but godspeed, in this case!
- edjrage 6y agoIf a touchpad does this much to you I'm sorry to inform you may have a more serious problem than the touchpad. Sleep, diet, exercise, and meditation.
- sitkack 6y agoSays the guy using a Mac, the best touchpad within 5 parsecs.
- edjrage 6y agoActually such an aggressive response (from the GP, not you) is precisely the kind of thing I'd expect from someone who has an easy life. I live in pretty crappy conditions, including a crappy computer with crappy touchpad drivers. I just refuse to let such mundane things give me hypertension.
- sitkack 6y agoI have an old X1 Carbon that I use at the grunge travel laptop, like throw it in the backpack in a paper bag and go for a hike level of grunge. Its trackpad is junk, phantom movements, zero palm rejection. I coded up some lock scripts so that it locks out the buttons if the cursor is moved. I fantasize about DeepTrack, the AGI that will finally give me trackpad bliss on a Linux desktop.
- davidandgoliath 6y agoYou might want to give the latest fedora a try, we've got the same model and it's flawless for me.
- eth0up 6y agoThanks for the psychoanalysis. Two of what you mentioned are inevitable. The exercise part is taken care of by the default settings which require multiple laps to impel the indolent pointer across the screen, and finally, I meditated deeply during the excision. See; you're a pretty astute therapist after all.
- Gaelan 6y agoThanks for the chuckle.
- Answerawake 6y agoFor people that are highly invested in their work, the computer is more than just a tool, it is an extension of themselves as it is their link to their deep-seated passion. I feel for the author as I have had to deal with terrible technology hampering me at bad moments as well. I wonder what is preventing them from trying something like a Mac. I have three computers under my desk (Windows, Mac, and Linux) and I always find Mac to be the least bad experience(although all three are regressing in my opinion).
- ghostpepper 6y agoI also spend many hours per day on the computer, both for work and leisure, and for this reason I have invested money and time finding high quality: chair, desk, monitors, headphones, mouse and keyboard. I understand that not everyone has the luxury of space for a full WFH setup but I can't imagine doing 8-10 hours per day with only a 14" laptop at the kitchen table. This is why, for me, a Mac quality trackpad experience on Linux is closer than a nice-to-have than a necessity.
- edjrage 6y agoInterestingly I've been using a 12" laptop as my daily driver with a crappy chair, desk and earbuds and no monitor for over two years and I've had no cardiovascular problems so far. Stressed people are quick to blame their environment (tools and whatnot) but fail to take a hard look at themselves.
- NikolaNovak 6y agoAge? :->
- edjrage 6y agoOld enough to be mindful about the health consequences of worrying about the wrong things and not worrying about the right things.
- the8472 6y ago> My present laptop has the touchpad removed by pliers. Under which circumstances is disabling it on a software level insufficient?
- eth0up 6y agoAn emotional one.
- the_af 6y agoI like your honest answer. I can't stand laptop touchpads on any OS (except Apple trackpads, which I admit are usable, but I don't own a macbook so this point is moot). I can't stand most laptop keyboards either. I use an external keyboard and mouse in every laptop, making them effectively "portable computers".
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoNow there's something you don't see every day.
- holyDictionary 6y agoI've set easy keyboard shortcuts to enable/disable the touchpad, and that has been working for me. But I understand how you feel, the palm rejection is especially terrible, no matter how I try to tweak it.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- LeifCarrotson 6y agoMy ThinkPad has two sets of buttons - one with a middle mouse button below the spacebar, and one with just left and right click below the trackpad that practically hangs off the bezel. Fortunately, the trackpad flex cable only connects to the bottom pair of buttons, so unplugging the flex cable is a completely non-destructive process that leaves the trackpoint and mouse buttons completely functional and makes my laptop somewhat secure against other people trying to use it! I will admit that this non-destructive method lacks the catharsis that pliers could provide.
- mroche 6y agoHave you considered (if you’re in a position to) purchasing a tablet to use as an oversized trackpad? My Wacom has come in a handy a few times I didn’t want to use the pen and I forgot my mouse somewhere (my laptop trackpad is not great).
- agapon 6y agoBy the way, modern touchpads support HID feature reports to disable surface and buttons. Usages 0x57 / 0x58 in the Digitizer page. The Linux driver is aware of those but uses them only to ensure that everything is turned on. I think that it really should expose an interface for a user to control those bits.
- the_af 6y agoI love this and your subsequent responses. I want to share one of my own. A few years back -- so I cannot blame the pandemic -- I was fed up with my old Dell XPS. It was originally a pretty awesome laptop, but it was reaching the end of its useful life and it had many quirks. One was a key that was acting weird. In a fit of rage -- and I trust you'll understand me -- I decided to remove the key to see what was the deal, and proceeded to disassemble the whole laptop to do so, tugging at cables, forcing the case, twisting things out of the way. Because YouTube tutorials weren't clear enough, I ended up destroying the laptop. I didn't even find the reason the key was acting up. With the laptop re-assembled but clearly beat up, parts of it destroyed, my wife arrived, took a look and said: "You know you could have removed the key without dismantling the laptop, right?" and proceeded to show me how. In my rage I hadn't even considered this. I wanted to buy a new laptop, anyway!