8 ms·

For my last couple of laptops I've used libinput first because everyone says it's the best option, but it always feels incredibly hard to perform small, precise

For my last couple of laptops I've used libinput first because everyone says it's the best option, but it always feels incredibly hard to perform small, precise movements. For example: try moving the mouse in a small circle (perhaps the size of the "Y" logo above). So both times I ended up switching to the old synaptics driver which seems to work better. I hope this project helps fix that so I'm sponsoring it

codethief 6y ago
> For example: try moving the mouse in a small circle (perhaps the size of the "Y" logo above) Holy shit, you're right! I never noticed! There goes my plan to play old FPS games (like Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory) on Linux without any major hassle…
- tsm 6y ago
  For me it's just a touchpad issue; my USB optical mouse is completely fine
  - codethief 6y ago
    Mine apparently isn't :\
acabal 6y ago
Agreed. I'd love to use Wayland for everyday use but the libinput touchpad drivers are impossible. Like you stated, the big problem is very fine movements just don't work in libinput. On X11/synaptics I can make movements as fine as rolling my fingertip in place on the touchpad, or drawing a minuscule circle, and it will pick it up. Libinput on the same touchpad does nothing, it's like it's stuck in molasses. And libinput has almost no configuration options so there's nothing I can even tweak. I really hope they address this soon, or I'll be stuck on X11 forever! Edit: I'm using a Thinkpad P1 Gen2, a top-tier recent-gen workstation laptop, and this is a big enough problem where it's forcing me to use X11 on Ubuntu 20.04.
- kelnos 6y ago
  Odd, I'm using libinput (Dell XPS 9380), and don't see the problems you describe. With my index finger on the touchpad, I can "roll" my finger a little in any direction (without actually sliding the finger), and the mouse moves a few pixels immediately. It's hard to get single-pixel accuracy, but 2-pixel accuracy is doable. I also have no trouble tracing the Y Combinator logo.
  - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
    I also have a dell xps but I'm on X11 right now due to teams screen sharing. I also have no problems doing exactly the same thing while my sisters MSI laptop on windows makes it almost impossible to move the pointer less than an cm on screen. I suspect this is more a hardware issue than software.
    - mlyle 6y ago
      Nah, it's software that has a broken logic for when to enable hysteresis for a touchpad and make it mushy, when most touchpads that it does this for will do much better without it.
- arghwhat 6y ago
  > In X11/synaptics I can make movements as fine as rolling my fingertip in place on the touchpad, or drawing a minuscule circle, and it will pick it up. Libinput on the same touchpad does nothing Just tried that on my Dell XPS on sway (wayland, thus libinput), and rolling the tip of my finger on the touchpad allows me to move the cursor in single-pixel increments on an unscaled 4k display. :/ Maybe this is a libinput issue specific to your touchpad type?
  - tonyhb 6y ago
    Agreed. Libinput on an XPS, having no issues over here. I actually prefer it to my past MBP's from 10 years. Tested on the 2015, 2017, and 2019 models and libinput/XPS is much nicer to use.
lathiat 6y ago
I think this is an intentional driver setting to avoid false touches/moves on crappy hardware. You can likely tweak it but I think that’s entirely the sort of thing the post author was trying to work on. I believe there is also a tweaks dB to set better values for known hardware.
- abrowne 6y ago
  It's called hysteresis.
young_unixer 6y ago
And setting the flat acceleration profile on a touchpad doesn't really disable pointer acceleration †, even though it does if you use a mouse. † N=1, but it worked fine before libinput (using 'xset m 1 0').
- Barrin92 6y ago
  if you're using gnome, gnome tweaks has an option to turn acceleration off (just search for 'acceleration') and it seems to work for me.
  - young_unixer 6y ago
    That works for me if I use a mouse (in fact I'm currently using it), but not when I use a touchpad.
- robocat 6y ago
  https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/issues/283 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/issues/28...
  - young_unixer 6y ago
    Thanks. Summary for those interested: - flat profile didn't actually work on touchpads. - a fix was merged into master on 2020-05-27. [0] - judging by the merge date and tag dates, the fix is included in libinput 1.15.6 (released 2020-06-18) [1] - Ubuntu 20.04 reports libinput 1.15.5. I hope they upgrade it so I can use Ubuntu on my laptop. - My Arch install reports libinput 1.16.2 [0] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/commit/034226d9049fb96b2f741e7d9062f35cf1cff680 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/commit/03... [1] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/tags/1.15.6 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/tags/1.15...

codethief 6y ago

> For example: try moving the mouse in a small circle (perhaps the size of the "Y" logo above) Holy shit, you're right! I never noticed! There goes my plan to play old FPS games (like Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory) on Linux without any major hassle…

tsm 6y ago
For me it's just a touchpad issue; my USB optical mouse is completely fine
- codethief 6y ago
  Mine apparently isn't :\

acabal 6y ago

Agreed. I'd love to use Wayland for everyday use but the libinput touchpad drivers are impossible. Like you stated, the big problem is very fine movements just don't work in libinput. On X11/synaptics I can make movements as fine as rolling my fingertip in place on the touchpad, or drawing a minuscule circle, and it will pick it up. Libinput on the same touchpad does nothing, it's like it's stuck in molasses. And libinput has almost no configuration options so there's nothing I can even tweak. I really hope they address this soon, or I'll be stuck on X11 forever! Edit: I'm using a Thinkpad P1 Gen2, a top-tier recent-gen workstation laptop, and this is a big enough problem where it's forcing me to use X11 on Ubuntu 20.04.

kelnos 6y ago
Odd, I'm using libinput (Dell XPS 9380), and don't see the problems you describe. With my index finger on the touchpad, I can "roll" my finger a little in any direction (without actually sliding the finger), and the mouse moves a few pixels immediately. It's hard to get single-pixel accuracy, but 2-pixel accuracy is doable. I also have no trouble tracing the Y Combinator logo.
- Polylactic_acid 6y ago
  I also have a dell xps but I'm on X11 right now due to teams screen sharing. I also have no problems doing exactly the same thing while my sisters MSI laptop on windows makes it almost impossible to move the pointer less than an cm on screen. I suspect this is more a hardware issue than software.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    Nah, it's software that has a broken logic for when to enable hysteresis for a touchpad and make it mushy, when most touchpads that it does this for will do much better without it.
arghwhat 6y ago
> In X11/synaptics I can make movements as fine as rolling my fingertip in place on the touchpad, or drawing a minuscule circle, and it will pick it up. Libinput on the same touchpad does nothing Just tried that on my Dell XPS on sway (wayland, thus libinput), and rolling the tip of my finger on the touchpad allows me to move the cursor in single-pixel increments on an unscaled 4k display. :/ Maybe this is a libinput issue specific to your touchpad type?
- tonyhb 6y ago
  Agreed. Libinput on an XPS, having no issues over here. I actually prefer it to my past MBP's from 10 years. Tested on the 2015, 2017, and 2019 models and libinput/XPS is much nicer to use.

lathiat 6y ago

I think this is an intentional driver setting to avoid false touches/moves on crappy hardware. You can likely tweak it but I think that’s entirely the sort of thing the post author was trying to work on. I believe there is also a tweaks dB to set better values for known hardware.

abrowne 6y ago
It's called hysteresis.

young_unixer 6y ago

And setting the flat acceleration profile on a touchpad doesn't really disable pointer acceleration †, even though it does if you use a mouse. † N=1, but it worked fine before libinput (using 'xset m 1 0').

Barrin92 6y ago
if you're using gnome, gnome tweaks has an option to turn acceleration off (just search for 'acceleration') and it seems to work for me.
- young_unixer 6y ago
  That works for me if I use a mouse (in fact I'm currently using it), but not when I use a touchpad.
robocat 6y ago
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/issues/283 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/issues/28...
- young_unixer 6y ago
  Thanks. Summary for those interested: - flat profile didn't actually work on touchpads. - a fix was merged into master on 2020-05-27. [0] - judging by the merge date and tag dates, the fix is included in libinput 1.15.6 (released 2020-06-18) [1] - Ubuntu 20.04 reports libinput 1.15.5. I hope they upgrade it so I can use Ubuntu on my laptop. - My Arch install reports libinput 1.16.2 [0] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/commit/034226d9049fb96b2f741e7d9062f35cf1cff680 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/commit/03... [1] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/tags/1.15.6 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/tags/1.15...