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I've found that this article was really illuminating with respect to some of the issues around `libinput`: https://lwn.net/Articles/801767/ https://lwn.net/Arti

I've found that this article was really illuminating with respect to some of the issues around `libinput`: https://lwn.net/Articles/801767/ https://lwn.net/Articles/801767/

asveikau 6y ago
When I read about this stuff a part of me says "why does this stuff keep getting rewritten?" I was using Xorg years and years ago and never had any kind of input issues. Example from the lwn article: > The xf86-input-evdev driver is in maintenance mode at this point. The last commit was in May 2018 and, since the 2.10.0 release four years ago, there have been a total of 19 commits. Maybe that's actually a sign that it's good enough and doesn't need major adjustments? But here it is presented as if it is a problem.
- kelnos 6y ago
  It's probably fine for keyboards and regular mice, but touchpads are... well... touchy. I've never had reliable palm rejection on a touchpad under Linux. The situation with kinetic scrolling is ridiculous (to be fair, Hutterer has decided that sort of thing doesn't go in libinput, because it doesn't have enough context to implement it properly, which I agree with). Drag-and-drop on a touchpad has poor UX, and god forbid you need to drag with multiple fingers. Even two-finger and three-finger click (right and middle click, respectively) are unreliable at times. I say this not to criticize, but only to point out that the driver is not "done". I am incredibly impressed with Peter Hutterer's skills that things work as well as they do, given that he's essentially the only person working on it. It could use more eyes and hands.
  - sanxiyn 6y ago
    You seem to be in agreement that keyboards and mice driver is, indeed, done.
    - kelnos 6y ago
      Yes, that's... what I said. But xf86-input-evdev also handles touchpads. xf86-input-synaptics, the other driver mentioned by TFA that is either unmaintained, or done, depending on your point of view, is definitely for touchpads. They're certainly not "done" when it comes to touchpads.
      - badsectoracula 6y ago
        Perhaps the solution should have been to split the touchpad specific bits and focus on that and leave the keyboard and input code alone instead of wasting time to rewrite code that works? It sounds like they made their life harder for no reason.
  - bscphil 6y ago
    > I've never had reliable palm rejection on a touchpad under Linux. I'm curious what hardware and drivers you've tried. I'm using a fairly large Synaptics touchpad on a Dell laptop with the xf86-input-synaptics driver. It's so good that I literally had to test it just now to see if it was possible to fool it at all. Even very light touches with the edge of my palm are unable to convince the driver to click. I can't move the cursor at all. At least in my case, it works perfectly... maybe I'm just lucky. (Or maybe the new libinput driver is still not up to snuff.)
  - dsego 6y ago
    For drag-and-drop I usually press down with my index and hold, than drag with the middle finger. This has been working flawlessly on Macs since forever. It also works on a T480s with Ubuntu right now. But I remember being frustrated with my touchpad before, so it probably didn't work on Ubuntu at one point.
  - Izkata 6y ago
    > The situation with kinetic scrolling is ridiculous (to be fair, Hutterer has decided that sort of thing doesn't go in libinput, because it doesn't have enough context to implement it properly, which I agree with). Unless he's planning some way to get that context and implement it later, that pretty much makes libinput unusable for me. Relying on every individual program to implement their own kinetic scrolling guarantees it'll act differently across all of them - or just be nonexistent, as is the case now. IIRC, the one bug introduced by the synaptics way of handling it is if the mouse is moved from one window to another during the period while it's still scrolling, it then scrolls the newly-focused window instead. This annoyance is so extremely minor I simply do not care.
- kchr 6y ago
  A lot has happened since "years and years ago", for example smartphones (touchscreens), and more advanced functionality for laptop touchpads being introduced by vendors.
- Ballas 6y ago
  It is probably because Hutterer was also one of the maintainer of xf86-input-evdev, xf86-input-synaptics and now libinput. (AFAIK)

I've found that this article was really illuminating with respect to some of the issues around `libinput`: https://lwn.net/Articles/801767/ https://lwn.net/Articles/801767/

asveikau 6y ago

When I read about this stuff a part of me says "why does this stuff keep getting rewritten?" I was using Xorg years and years ago and never had any kind of input issues. Example from the lwn article: > The xf86-input-evdev driver is in maintenance mode at this point. The last commit was in May 2018 and, since the 2.10.0 release four years ago, there have been a total of 19 commits. Maybe that's actually a sign that it's good enough and doesn't need major adjustments? But here it is presented as if it is a problem.

kelnos 6y ago
It's probably fine for keyboards and regular mice, but touchpads are... well... touchy. I've never had reliable palm rejection on a touchpad under Linux. The situation with kinetic scrolling is ridiculous (to be fair, Hutterer has decided that sort of thing doesn't go in libinput, because it doesn't have enough context to implement it properly, which I agree with). Drag-and-drop on a touchpad has poor UX, and god forbid you need to drag with multiple fingers. Even two-finger and three-finger click (right and middle click, respectively) are unreliable at times. I say this not to criticize, but only to point out that the driver is not "done". I am incredibly impressed with Peter Hutterer's skills that things work as well as they do, given that he's essentially the only person working on it. It could use more eyes and hands.
- sanxiyn 6y ago
  You seem to be in agreement that keyboards and mice driver is, indeed, done.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    Yes, that's... what I said. But xf86-input-evdev also handles touchpads. xf86-input-synaptics, the other driver mentioned by TFA that is either unmaintained, or done, depending on your point of view, is definitely for touchpads. They're certainly not "done" when it comes to touchpads.
    - badsectoracula 6y ago
      Perhaps the solution should have been to split the touchpad specific bits and focus on that and leave the keyboard and input code alone instead of wasting time to rewrite code that works? It sounds like they made their life harder for no reason.
- bscphil 6y ago
  > I've never had reliable palm rejection on a touchpad under Linux. I'm curious what hardware and drivers you've tried. I'm using a fairly large Synaptics touchpad on a Dell laptop with the xf86-input-synaptics driver. It's so good that I literally had to test it just now to see if it was possible to fool it at all. Even very light touches with the edge of my palm are unable to convince the driver to click. I can't move the cursor at all. At least in my case, it works perfectly... maybe I'm just lucky. (Or maybe the new libinput driver is still not up to snuff.)
- dsego 6y ago
  For drag-and-drop I usually press down with my index and hold, than drag with the middle finger. This has been working flawlessly on Macs since forever. It also works on a T480s with Ubuntu right now. But I remember being frustrated with my touchpad before, so it probably didn't work on Ubuntu at one point.
- Izkata 6y ago
  > The situation with kinetic scrolling is ridiculous (to be fair, Hutterer has decided that sort of thing doesn't go in libinput, because it doesn't have enough context to implement it properly, which I agree with). Unless he's planning some way to get that context and implement it later, that pretty much makes libinput unusable for me. Relying on every individual program to implement their own kinetic scrolling guarantees it'll act differently across all of them - or just be nonexistent, as is the case now. IIRC, the one bug introduced by the synaptics way of handling it is if the mouse is moved from one window to another during the period while it's still scrolling, it then scrolls the newly-focused window instead. This annoyance is so extremely minor I simply do not care.
kchr 6y ago
A lot has happened since "years and years ago", for example smartphones (touchscreens), and more advanced functionality for laptop touchpads being introduced by vendors.
Ballas 6y ago
It is probably because Hutterer was also one of the maintainer of xf86-input-evdev, xf86-input-synaptics and now libinput. (AFAIK)