31 ms·

Linux Touchpad Like MacBook Update: Touchpad Gestures Now Shipping

604 points by wbharding 5y ago

alpanka 5y ago
Maybe a dumb question, but why does this need to be supported at UI-library level?
- canadaduane 5y ago
  Multiple finger gestures can sometimes mean more than just "trigger a key". For example, if you're drawing on a canvas and you expect pinch-to-zoom to zoom in and out as you're bringing your fingers together or pulling them apart, that could mean the app needs to integrate with new events at the UI library level. Or two-finger rotation of the canvas, as another example.
fsflover 5y ago
I can't wait until all proprietary software becomes obsolete due to FLOSS becoming good enough for everyone. From what I see the proprietary operating systems are in decline now, whereas Linux is getting better and better all the time.
- radicaldreamer 5y ago
  People have been saying this for the last 20 years and I've yet to build a linux workstation that isn't at least 20-30% more time consuming to configure, maintain and tweak than a Mac and sometimes a lot more time than that.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    You can’t really configure a Mac at all.
    - matthewfcarlson 5y ago
      For some that’s a feature, not a bug. I really wish there was at least a CLI you could use to tweak certain behaviors instead of a mix on nvram and system preference
      - GhettoComputers 5y ago
        Agree but they’re complaining like I bought food at a restaurant and I can’t cook it. Seems like an invalid complaint.
    - duped 5y ago
      You don't need to nearly as much, by comparison.
      - GhettoComputers 5y ago
        If you can’t, you can’t call it need to. I’d compare it to GNOME.
        kitsunesoba 5y ago
        From someone who’s used both macOS and GNOME a good deal, GNOME to me feels a lot more like iPadOS if it had been mildly adjusted to run on desktops than it does macOS. There’s several aspects of GNOME and its app suite that are more inflexible than macOS and its apps.
        GhettoComputers 5y ago
        I completely agree. If someone uses GNOME and says OSX isn't configuration friendly, the critique is very hypocritical, enough to be dismissed. If you say that and use almost any other DE (I love KDE) sure. Someone saying the overcooked steak is disgusting while eating a burnt piece of toast is hard to take serious, they are constantly breaking addons and plugins, its like they don't want any 3rd party support, not unlike the often critiqued apple desktop.
  - hanklazard 5y ago
    Try pop!_os. Really easy to install and use. It’s my daily driver on a carbon X1 and I’m not a developer or anything.
    - leetrout 5y ago
      Tossing out a second +1 for pop! I've not used it in about a year now and I do miss it. They were adding support for a tiling WM mode and it wasn't bad (needed some work). I was using it on System76 hardware and had zero issues with the OS and S76 replaced my keyboard when it went bad.
    - WJW 5y ago
      pop! is indeed really nice, with the possible exception that for some reasons I have to manually recompile the nvidia drivers (and sometimes wifi drivers) with some arcane `dkms` commands every time the OS updates include a kernel update. After the second time this happened I just pasted all the commands in a text file for later reference but it sure is annoying. Apparently not everyone has this problem though, so maybe my computer is just weird.
  - hasel 5y ago
    Bootup archlinux image, type in archinstall, make sure to select gnome... It's that easy.
    - thatguy0900 5y ago
      Arch is not a good goto if you don't want to spend a lot of configuration time
    - edgyquant 5y ago
      To get an OS? Sure. To get one setup to run my dev environment, games and media? I have to pull in a GitHub repo and run a script that installs and configures everything for me (before the usual tasks of logging in to a hundred websites.) I swore Linux was super easy to setup for years, and as someone whose daily driver is MacOS now I still agree it’s the easiest to setup to my needs, but all 3 main OSs can get you a system in a couple clicks/keystrokes. Windows is probably the most difficult to setup for me (MacOS is at least unix so my scripts for Linux mostly work on the Mac as well) and I only use it for my gaming pc (which was for years Ubuntu, I just decided to install windows on it since I only use it to game anymore.) I love Linux, it’s been my OS since Vista came out and I switched to SUSE Community Edition, but we get so used to our OSs we forget part of the ease of use is being familiar. When I problem pops up on Ubuntu I can solve it within a minute. When one pops up on Mac it takes me some googling (and I give up on windows.) None if these systems are all the easy (or difficult) to use, it’s just a few basic concepts and then a ton of time figuring stuff out.
  - outworlder 5y ago
    > People have been saying this for the last 20 years and I've yet to build a linux workstation that isn't at least 20-30% more time consuming to configure, maintain and tweak than a Mac and sometimes a lot more time than that. That's a high bar to clear. One thing that Apple does that makes a lot of sense is that they own the hardware and the software. Hackintoshes are a good indication of how things would look like if they had to support more hardware than they do. This is one of the reasons why I have recommended Macs for the less tech savvy members of my family. Just works, great manufacturer support (noone really comes close), has things like Time Machine to keep backups running. My "support calls" dropped drastically. My mother had a Linux netbook(remember those?) for banking purposes but a Mac for general usage. She would be able to browse on Linux, but things would get messy the moment she would want to, say, use her cricut machine. Let's compare with Windows? That truly takes a whole lot of time, specially because the OS seems to "rot" over time. It's become less of an issue (possibly also because our hardware is so powerful). My Windows desktop has taken way more work to maintain than my Linux machines(plural) + Macs. I have to keep that for VR, Fusion360 (going to ditch that as soon as I can) and the odd game that doesn't work properly (Sea of Thieves in-game chat?). Can't wait to get rid of it and use only Linux - which takes hardly any "maintenance" at all (other than installing updates and even that is just a click).
    - 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
      >That's a high bar to clear. One thing that Apple does that makes a lot of sense is that they own the hardware and the software. It’s an ideological bar though. Pick a line or models of laptops and officially support that specific line. Keep the list smallish and from popular manufacturers. Everything else deals with it they way we do now. Linux on supported hardware is pretty low maintenance. But it’s still not quite as nice as MacOS. And god forbid you get the latest hardware.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - 2-718-281-828 5y ago
    maybe you're just a passionate tweaker. the basic stuff I need for my workstation has to be configured on any OS - be it Windows, Linux or Mac. the more advanced stuff is mostly optional and I usually do it additionally on linux just because I can. so, I'd say this is a bit of an apple-pear-comparison.
  - pkulak 5y ago
    This seems off to me. I remember when I was using Mac, if I got a new machine, I had at least a day of downtime. Everything is minor, but it totally adds up. You've got to run around to dozens of websites, download, and click through menus to install Docker/Homebrew/IntelliJ/etc. Then there are all the nanny systems you have to turn off every time you hit them the first time. Oh, gotta give the console access to the filesystem. Half the binaries you download aren't signed to Apple's liking, so you gotta work around each one of those, and how you work around it changes with every major version of MacOS. Hell, just dragging, holding and releasing the 2-dozen useless default apps the hell out of the Dock takes a solid minute. Did you sign in to iCloud yet, btw? Siri would love to be enabled to, if you have a moment. Your home folder isn't in the finder, just a bunch of iCloud stuff and the Desktop. Do you remember how to option-click in the magic spot to find it and make a shortcut? It's death by a million cuts. That said, I'm not gonna pretend that Linux is some utopia and everything works immediately. But there's no way it's worse. I have a script that takes any machine from a formatted drive to a working OS exactly how I need it, unattended, in about 20 minutes. That's extreme, but everyone at least has a list of the packages they need that they can copy paste install into the terminal as soon as the installer is done.
    - brarsanmol 5y ago
      I mean I've had 2 mac's so far and I've reset the first one a handful of times it never took me more than about 1 - 2 hours to get up and running with Homebrew (a package manager for Mac). Although I will agree the Mac installer is highly unintuitive.
      - GhettoComputers 5y ago
        I never felt that way, its pretty easy, early version installs breaks stuff, and I have to deal with any UI and features they added in. You partition your computer to just try the new version as well? Pretty handy.
    - stnikolauswagne 5y ago
      I am on my 4th macbook in 7 years, I have not had to install any program twice and all my settings so far have carried over between devices, with the sole exception of security settings. Maybe I got absurdly lucky but I have never had this little issues with switching devices thanks to migration assistant.
  - __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
    I guess it depends on what you're configuring. I'm using microk8s at work and the part of my team that has to deal with the VM-encapsulated version that runs on Mac or Windows is always mired in configuration woes. Same goes for docker. Granted, that's a far cry from touchpad configs--but if you keep your dotfiles in git then touchpad config is something you only have to once (per touchpad that you own).
- kevinherron 5y ago
  Oh sweet summer child.
  - AlexanderDhoore 5y ago
    Year of the Linux Desktop!! /s
    - hvgk 5y ago
      If that happens I’m going to eat my mac mini for lunch.
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      Does it matter? Most servers and phones run Linux. My damn Sony DSLR runs android. Desktops are dying Linux won.
      - faho 5y ago
        Does that matter? Android could switch to Fuchsia and there would barely be a way to tell. Any server you contact can run whatever it pleases and you'll be none the wiser (unless you get a web server error or go spelunking). The kernel is a very unimportant part of it. So while Linux with a capital-L has "won", the free/open ethos surrounding it certainly hasn't - to my chagrin.
        GhettoComputers 5y ago
        These are hypotheticals that are fantasies, will it matter if a meteor hits the earth? >So while Linux with a capital-L has "won", the free/open ethos surrounding it certainly hasn't - to my chagrin. Who do you think develops and sponsor Linux? I am excited for android using a mainline kernel, I have been using it as a mobile linux computer for years. Its easy to open, I would prefer boneless chicken but chicken is fine too.
      - BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
        > Linux won. But does it matter, when most of it is tivoized? What did we, the users, actually gain from all these linux kernels being inside locked down devices?
- snemvalts 5y ago
  Just wait until your wifi or suspend breaks on a distro change on your 5 yr old laptop.
  - fsflover 5y ago
    Never happened in 10 years. I recommend to try hardware designed for Linux and not "Windows certified". Ideally, with preinstalled Linux.
    - snemvalts 5y ago
      Happened to my x220
  - wilsonjholmes 5y ago
    I have had terrible luck with suspend/hibernation on all of the laptops I have used Linux on, so I just resort to shutting down and starting up... I have SSDs so it is not that big of a deal, but still. I cannot wait for the day I can simply close my laptop lid and have the battery not drain ~12% an hour.
    - pmontra 5y ago
      Which laptop do you have? I'd like to keep clear of it and its manufacturer when I'll have to buy a new one. My nearly 8 years old ZBook from HP loses maybe 3% per hour with 32 GB RAM to keep powered. It was much less with 16 GB. Don't you have a 128 GB laptop, right? More seriously, did you check if people have the same problem with that laptop and Windows? Or some firmware update from the manufacturer to fix the battery.
  - WJW 5y ago
    Wifi is the worst. I had a wifi driver fail on me the other day after the updates included a newer kernel version that didn't work with the current wifi driver. Newer ones were available on github, but downloading requires wifi. Eventually I managed to make a hotspot out of my phone and connect to github via bluetooth. Otherwise, no complaints.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rvz 5y ago
  Hardly a dent has been made on the desktop. I still see users running either Windows or macOS. ChromeOS is possibly the 'closest' to this (and that is proprietary), but Google is going to replace it with Fuchsia anyway; meaning that we will soon be back to square -1 on the Linux desktop. Oh dear.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    ChromeOS is technically the closest yes, but also the furthest from the ideals behind Linux and the FLOSS movement.
- Aaargh20318 5y ago
  > I can't wait until all proprietary software becomes obsolete due to FLOSS becoming good enough for everyone. The problem is ‘good enough’ is a moving target and FOSS isn’t exactly closing the gap.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - 29083011397778 5y ago
    I would absolutely disagree! 20 years ago, Linux required some arcane incantations, but was sold in stores, and was somewhat useful. 10 years ago, Linux required patiently going through lots of forums to find out why sound didn't work, and tweaking some config files - though fewer than before. This year, Linux was featured on LTT as "Can we viably switch / use Linux for home use as regular geeks?" You're right that "Good Enough" takes many forms, and it is a moving target. But whether it's closing the gap might just be a difference in which timescale one uses.
    - Aaargh20318 5y ago
      Sure, you may be able to download an ISO or USB image and relatively easily install Linux today without worrying about what sound or graphics driver you need like you could with other OSes 20 years ago. But that doesn't mean the competition didn't move forward as well. Today I can wipe the entire drive on my MacBook and re-install everything from scratch over the internet, without install media, directly from the firmware. When can I buy an off-the-shelf computer that can do this with Linux ? After installing macOS I set up my account, enter my iCloud details and all my photo's just appear, I can send and receive text messages, phone and video calls. My clipboard syncs to my phone, and I use my phone to take a photo or scan a document and insert it directly into whatever document I was typing. I can start typing an e-mail on my phone, decide it's too long to type on the little on-screen keyboard and seamlessly move the task to my desktop. I can take a photo of some text on my phone, copy it as plain text, and then paste the text into anything on my desktop. All of this with no setup required. How much time will it take Linux to be able to do all of this ? And what else will it have to catch up to by then ?
- ximeng 5y ago
  My Ubuntu laptop is just fine apart from every now and then randomly pausing and not accepting user input for a minute or so at max CPU. Seems to be maybe Chrome related, so that's maybe the next thing for me to try to migrate off after Windows.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    Is it an extension doing it or low ram? Never happeneds to me on skylake thinkpad even with 8GB ram, just slow to open.
    - ximeng 5y ago
      Quite difficult to debug as system is unresponsive when it happens, so would have to delve into logs. Maybe a Chrome memory management or graphics acceleration issue, I don't use many extensions but it's possible I guess. 12GB of RAM, but that can get eaten up by Chrome pretty easily.
      - GhettoComputers 5y ago
        I use ungoogled chromium, try the flatpak, new binary doesn’t work in Ubuntu, works great for me. Try with them all off and turn them on one by one.
  - pmontra 5y ago
    It reminds me of an issue with the gsconnect GNOME extension. They apparently fixed it. I reinstalled it today and it seems OK.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- outworlder 5y ago
  > From what I see the proprietary operating systems are in decline now It is a very slow decline, but it's being largely going on unnoticed. Rewind the clock 20 years, there were all sorts of paid software offerings everywhere on the desktop. You couldn't uncompress a zip without paying (or stealing from) someone. Unless you were a Linux rebel running slackware or whatever. We can do a lot on Linux now. We have thousands of Steam games running on the Proton+Wine+Vulkan combination (often with similar performance, in some cases even better). Most of the missing apps are available in the browser - which is a blessing and a curse. Everything is moving to open source software. The issue now is different: we have commercial offerings on top of open source, closing their gardens. Take Android. Ridiculous amount of open source software, arguably the most deployed software worldwide. Controlled by a corporation. Lots of apps have moved to the web, where we have a similar problem. Their foundations are most often based on open-source. But they are behind some corporation or another. Heck, the big cloud providers all have in their core a whole plethora of open source software. The operating system concept, as we know it, is in decline. This may be a global maxima for FOSS OS. I hope it isn't.
  - gonehome 5y ago
    For the vast majority of users the OS is just a way to get to the web. The web (browser) is the OS, but the apps are centralized, incompatible, and primarily SaaS subscriptions (or worse, ad based). Desktop operating systems are primarily thin clients to these services. Native apps on the existing stack are dead outside of a few niche applications. It's why I think Urbit is cool, if you built an OS from first principles to take into account the web what would it look like? It's basically moving the API layer up the stack to include auth and application distribution.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    Is android or iOS proprietary? The desktop is declining, it’s market share is so bad that windows literally build an android emulator and Linux subsystem. I’d say it’s less on desktop but all the computing is mobile. It would be better to move away from all OS and just have ISA software.
  - jodrellblank 5y ago
- mirekrusin 5y ago
  You mean FOSS, not flossing, right? There are many people who love open source and yet applaud when proprietary solutions move things forward – good for them. There is place for everyone with good intentions, we can all make life interesting, no need for war tinted atmosphere.
  - fsflover 5y ago
    https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.en.html
    - mirekrusin 5y ago
      Thanks
- duped 5y ago
  Android, iOS, Windows, and OS-X together account for 97% of consumer computing devices if this is to be believed https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all/worldwide/2020 https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all/worldwide/202.... Android is the only "open source" out of the bunch, but most devices running it have plenty of closed source internals the devices' are useless without. There's still no viable FOSS OS for mobile/tablets. Not that they don't exist, just that they don't have the featureset and development velocity of Android and iOS.
  - fsflover 5y ago
    > There's still no viable FOSS OS for mobile/tablets. I am using my Pinephone with Mobian/Phosh as a daily driver now. It's a bit rough but getting good enough quickly.
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    I don’t think there will ever be a FOSS OS for consumers that is the préfèred option. There is too many moving targets to ever be “done” and chasing those customers is profitable and requires money. That’s the perfect domain of a business. I’m ok with this too. As another comment mentioned, once upon a time you couldn’t unzip a file with outpaying. Now it’s standardized and free (as in freedom and beer). Let apple and google and Microsoft fight and spend money tweaking the gui just right and bundling in whatever crap they want. FOSS community will lag behind and pick up the tail freeing everyone not on the bleeding edge. Imagine if things like unzipping wasn’t free in 2021? How much shittier phones and services would be. Hell even Niche projects like the oculus quest would be a mess without basic tools being ubiquitous. Unlike some FOSS supporters, I’m ok with commercial interests in software. 2021 might not be free, but it’s still in the making - if 2020 is free, everyone can help build the best 2021 from a more level playing field when we can stand on the free shoulders of giants. Ps: companies should donate more to open source software development and protection and maintenance.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    At least the OSX kernel is open source and easy to port to, Saurik and the early jailbreakers got apt and all the CLI tools on the first gen iPhone. >There's still no viable FOSS OS for mobile/tablets. Not that they don't exist, just that they don't have the featureset and development velocity of Android and iOS. Tell me what I can't do with Android that linux can do, I can do the reverse of what I can do on Android that linux on mobile can't. Its there if you want it. All the new Android phones are getting mainline. Check out my thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29373106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29373106 Sailfish has good Android emulation as well.
- marcodiego 5y ago
  As part of the FLOSS rooting crowd, I'd really like that to happen. But we have to face reality: on the desktop, after decades we're still fighting for 2% of the marketshare. Not that progress hasn't happened. Quite on the contrary. Linux on the desktop experience nowadays is VASTLY superior to even 5 years ago. Of course, users from other camps will complain of features that have been lacking for many years (thumbnails in the file picker!) but alternatives aren't without their problems either: get a seasoned linux to try MacOS or Windows and you'll recognize weaknesses on the other approaches too. For me, linux on the desktop has been ready for a long time. I don't care if the market share is still in the single digits if it is good enough for me. Since I like the freedom, privacy, security and (yes) ease of use of desktop linux and do not depend on non-multiplatform software and services, there's just no better OS for me. Not everybody has this choice though. So, linux on the desktop not being popular is not a problem. If it continues popular enough not to be ignored by hardware vendors and service providers, everything else will continue to improve over time.
  - fsflover 5y ago
    > there's just no better OS for me Try Qubes OS.
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      What benefit will he have?
      - fsflover 5y ago
        https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/how-to-pitch-qubes-os/4499/15 https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/how-to-pitch-qubes-os/4499/15
        GhettoComputers 5y ago
        If you can't pitch it yourself, I don't see the point, the first link is just about paranoia. Were you ever curious but afraid: – to click on that link in the email, – to open that email attachment, – to go to that shady-looking website, – to install and run that suspicious program or even a virus, – to insert that USB stick from someone untrusted? Wth Qubes you do it all securely in a disposable VM and your personal files are safe. The worst thing which might happen is that the disposable VM breaks. If the pitch is to make people paranoid to run a new OS they need to learn isolation on, there are way easier ways like running a normal VM, which most people are still not going to understand very well or do.
- vlunkr 5y ago
  I think that for it to really take off someone needs to release a laptop where linux is truly supported over windows, and they maintain, or help maintain, a distro to runs perfectly on that hardware. That's the only way you're going to avoid the driver issues that will ruin the experience for typical users. I know there are some, like System76 but looking at their site quickly, they start at around $1,000. For the average user that's waaay too high, especially if they can get what they need out of a chromebook.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    Chromebooks existed for years, even has coreboot. They have them for Dell, and Lenovo Thinkpads. The main issue is there is no benefit for the end user. Why would they want to switch to linux as an end user?
    - deadbunny 5y ago
      Knock $50 off the price and people will care.
      - GhettoComputers 5y ago
        They just installed Windows on their netbooks last time it was even cheaper. The people who think steam deck will make linux mainstream are going to just see the next deck come with windows and everyone who gets a deck installing windows on it to play games.
      - GekkePrutser 5y ago
        They might, but they'll be getting Linux for the wrong reasons. And will end up dissatisfied because they'll be expecting Windows only free. Which will hurt adoption more. FLOSS was never about free as in beer.
    - vlunkr 5y ago
      That's a great point. Unless there's some software you want to use that can't run on Chromebooks, there's probably not a compelling reason to switch.
- aaronbrethorst 5y ago
  2022 will be the year of Linux on the desktop.
- handrous 5y ago
  I think it's more likely Google's new Fuchsia OS will displace Linux for most desktop use (and maybe more than just that) than that Linux will get its shit together and ship a GUI layer good and cohesive enough to compete. And I write that as someone who used Linux desktops heavily (and, for long stretches, exclusively) for about a decade. It's, what, BSD licensed? Open source, but not GPL-alike Free Software. Still, that's pretty decent. I reckon the only way that doesn't happen is if they pull the plug (quite possible) or they shift to keeping the GUI layer proprietary (also quite possible).
  - trasz 5y ago
    BSD is Free Software, FSF-certified.
    - fsflover 5y ago
      Not, it's not: https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html. FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD all include instructions for obtaining nonfree programs in their ports system. In addition, their kernels include nonfree firmware blobs.
      - trasz 5y ago
        It is. We are talking about software licenses, not FSF opinion on software distributions.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - handrous 5y ago
      Ah, even after all these years I get tripped up on which terms only apply to viral-license open source.
      - trasz 5y ago
- vwoolf 5y ago
  From what I see the proprietary operating systems are in decline now [Citation needed] If anything, one of the world's most-used OSes, which could have gone more open, did the opposite: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on... Yes, I approve of e.g. https://puri.sm https://puri.sm, but they're so far behind.
- criddell 5y ago
  Linux, macOS, and Windows have all been good enough for a long, long time now. If you need to run some application that only runs or (or runs best on) some particular operating system, then that's probably what you buy.
disabled 5y ago
I have my Ubuntu 18.04 looking like MacOS. The only thing limiting it from really feeling like a Mac is the touchpad. You can see it here: https://ibb.co/H7khM7h https://ibb.co/H7khM7h A good guide for starting out is here: https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-macos-theme-on-ubuntu-20-04-focal-fossa-linux https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-macos-theme-on-ubuntu...
- codezero 5y ago
  Does Ubuntu sleep/wake easily with a lid close (maintaining runtime state), and avoid weird battery drain issues? To me, that's the killer feature of macOS. I am usually connected w/ a mouse and keyboard, the touchpad is great on the go, but nothing really substitutes the ability to turn it off and on again without thinking twice.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    Laptop kernel driver issue. Newest 5.17 doesn't 5.16 does on my laptop, but most laptops I have had that flawlessly function.
- marcodiego 5y ago
  My girlfriend uses a MacBook and likes it. She bought a cheap windows all-in-one desktop and simply couldn't use windows. I made the effort during one weekend to make it look and behave like MacOS as much as I could. Appearance-wise it is very very close. I got some gnome extensions to mimic the behavior quite closely too. In terms of software, it is still missing MSO and some magic apple integration to their other products. Otherwise, she is now a happy linux user on the desktop.
- andrewmackrodt 5y ago
  There's more to macOS than look of the desktop, notably the universal menu and full screen mode opens to a new workspace. I find the latter a big productivity boost when working on an undocked laptop as the gestures to switch workspace or windows between an application are so well integrated.
GhettoComputers 5y ago
How do I install it?
- mdoms 5y ago
  There are some extremely confusing instructions here (these are the only installation instructions linked anywhere from the main website): https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Libinput#Installation https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Libinput#Installation Linux will NEVER be a mainstream desktop platform as long as end users have to answer questions like "am I 'under Wayland'?" or "what does 'under Wayland' mean?" or "why does the alternative to 'under Wayland' seem to be 'for Xorg' (whatever that is)?" or "how do I 'install the xf86-input-libinput package' and why does it have such a weird name?"
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    On a normal distro it's just part of the default install, not something you have to even know exists. Arch just doesn't have a "default install", it's "build your own" distro focused on power users that like to control things at that level.
    - mdoms 5y ago
      Literally just read this exchange in this very thread. I wish you "linux is easy" folks could agree on something for once. > > People have been saying this for the last 20 years and I've yet to build a linux workstation that isn't at least 20-30% more time consuming to configure, maintain and tweak than a Mac and sometimes a lot more time than that. > Bootup archlinux image, type in archinstall, make sure to select gnome... It's that easy.
      - zamadatix 5y ago
        Eh, I don't even consider myself in the "Linux is easy" group but I wouldn't pull up the word of a negative karma fresh single comment account that was created after the conversation started as gospel for the validation an entire group of people on HN are inconsistent. It just happens you don't need to do anything special to install this on any traditional distro that ships with a default GUI install option. Regardless of your views on the viability of Linux overall these changes to libinput are really as zero effort as it can get on any OS, just wait for the update to push.
iknowstuff 5y ago
It would be lovely if Firefox supported the two-finger back/forward swipe.
ComputerGuru 5y ago
I wrote a (userland) general purpose and driver/hardware-agnostic multitouch daemon w/ gesture support for Linux that works with the existing input stack (i.e. doesn’t require switching to libinputy but also supports it), if anyone is interested: https://neosmart.net/blog/2020/multi-touch-gestures-on-linux/ https://neosmart.net/blog/2020/multi-touch-gestures-on-linux... https://github.com/mqudsi/syngesture https://github.com/mqudsi/syngesture The biggest benefit is that you can use drivers with actually correct acceleration curves like xf86-input-synaptics (if you’re on X11) instead of the offensively bad, NIH reimplementation that ships with libinput. Oh wait, I’m on HN so I shouldn’t neglect to mention my project is written in rust!
- toomim 5y ago
  Woah, this solves the acceleration problem? I want to try it!! Thank you!
  - ComputerGuru 5y ago
    You’re most welcome. Please read the article before downloading or cloning from GitHub: this “solves” the acceleration issue by not breaking it in the first place; imho what libinput should have done by developing gesture support on top of the existing, working driver/hardware stack instead of throwing away the userland/kernel separation and all layers of abstraction. The linked project is only the userland daemon that uses the raw Linux Multitouch Protocol events to interpret gestures; to get the acceleration curves working again I recommend using this in conjunction with xf86-input-synaptics as your actual input driver (which provides the correct acceleration curves for compatible hardware - basically all touchpads since they all cloned synaptics’ hardware once upon a time - but doesn’t by itself have gesture support). Side note: Syngesture (this project) isn’t dependent on X11 or Wayland, but I don’t know if anyone has ported or will port xf86-input-synaptics to Wayland, which is/was pretty much developed along the same lines as libinput: rewrite everything from scratch without taking into account that some things you’re throwing out actually work really well (regardless of the fact that they are built for X11 or not), get rid of all abstractions that made it possible to plug in better components/replacements at various points in the stack, and without a concern for actual feature parity for what they are purportedly replacing.
nickysielicki 5y ago
Until haptic touchpads become available outside of MacBooks, touchpads are always going to suck under Windows and Linux. Gestures aren’t the main thing preventing me from enjoying the touchpad on my Dell — it’s plenty big and it supports four finger gestures under Windows. The problem is that the entire thing shifts down a couple millimeters when I click and my finger ends up dragging slightly, which moves my click off what I’m clicking on. I don’t understand how Apple has had a monopoly on this for half a decade. Lenovo had a thinkpad come out last year with a haptic touchpad but I haven’t seen anything further. Is it patents?
- leetrout 5y ago
  They all have poor palm detection, too, IME
- radicaldreamer 5y ago
  I had a coworker who worked on the haptic trackpad for 4 years before he left Apple and they shipped it a year after that (so at least 6 years or so of R&D), I'm sure there are dozens of patents around the technology and probably a high barrier for entry for other companies. He griped that they didn't even send him the 12" MacBook it initially shipped in and that the R&D for it was ring fenced from the Mac hardware teams so both were working in isolation until the product was developed with the tech.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  You’re holding it wrong, just use the thinkpoint.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  This was a really surprising thing to read. For me the Apple's haptic touchpads were a slight downgrade from their excellent non-haptic touchpads in <=2012 MacBook Pros. I liked the stiff clicky feel of the "real" touchpads over the haptic simulated click. Though the haptic touchpads do seem to be more reliable and are better at registering clicks near the top of the pad.
  - 5y ago
cxr 5y ago
I'll make the same point I make every time this topic comes up: there are Chromebooks with great touchpad experiences, and that's been the case for a long, long time. This is not a "Linux" or "open source" problem; this is a problem of ignorance and/or insufficient interest on the part traditional (i.e. non-ChromeOS) distros and their users. It's nuts that this was and continues to be a high-profile, multi-year effort spawning discussions that end up framing the whole thing as elusive—rather than, you know, a solved problem that is pretty much not even worth mentioning but for the long tradition of poor execution.
- jeppesen-io 5y ago
  I can't really tell the diffeence between Gnome 40 and Chromebooks touchpad experiences. What makes Chromebooks so much better?
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    I think the main difference is Chromebook users did not have to wait a decade to get working touchpad gestures.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - tentacleuno 5y ago
    When I use my trackpad on GNOME 40, the jitter is downright embarrassing. On a bad day, you can leave your two fingers in place and it'll jump around 25% of the page in a web browser, or the cursor starts to get drunk shakes. It's so much better on Windows. This is a software problem, and right now the Linux ecosystem is doing a pretty poor job.
- lpasselin 5y ago
  Which Chromebooks?
  - kelvie 5y ago
    I'm not sure if it's global to chromebooks, but my pixelbook touchpad so far has been the only non-apple one I've ever tried that was tolerable. Though I haven't tried many others in the past 5 years.
leetrout 5y ago
Here's what I'm looking for: Solid linux laptop with a macbook style centered keyboard and touch pad. (system76 has offset touchpad / keyboard and it drives me insane) Near perfect palm detection on the track pad like a macbook. Does anyone have a recommendation? I've not tried any newer lenovo lappies nor have I tried linux on a Razer laptop which looks very similar to a macbook. Maybe just wait for linux to run on M1?
- cultofmetatron 5y ago
  have you looked at the https://frame.work/ https://frame.work/ laptop? dunno about palm detection but its centered like the macbook
  - leetrout 5y ago
    Thanks! That looks really cool
  - randomluck040 5y ago
    This is so great but unfortunately not available in Germany yet. Looking forward to it.
    - cultofmetatron 5y ago
      this might be more your cup of tea then https://eu.starlabs.systems https://eu.starlabs.systems
      - randomluck040 5y ago
        Thank you, I’ll take a look. I wonder how I never stumbled on this one. Thanks!
- kesslern 5y ago
  I haven't had any issues with palm detection on my Thinkpad X1 Extreme. It's just worked since day 1. I have both Gen 1 and 2.
tuldia 5y ago
Nice! Thanks for the hard work everyone involved! I have nothing to complain, things just works for me so far, but great to see improvements in the pipe! :D
josteink 5y ago
121 sponsors is pitiful. Consider me in, and I hope everyone in here who honestly wants this to happen considers sponsoring too.
- gowld 5y ago
  $60/yr for an unfinished touchpad driver is high.
  - canadaduane 5y ago
    $60/yr for a touchpad driver for every Linux user in the world is quite reasonable. Plus, you get to stop paying after it's done, and no one can take it away from you :)
- reginold 5y ago
  I sponsor this project for $5/month. Started a few months ago. I'm happy to support! For Linux desktop to succeed with consumers like me, it has to move beyond being for mechanics only, which means we have to do our part and pay money for it.
- notthathardbro 5y ago
  1. The "developer" in this thread, isn't doing any dev work. Hint, there's not a single link to a PR or commit in the blog post as far as I can tell. 2. The same "lead" on this project is mostly just filing issues on other projects and writing PM-esque summary blog posts about the efforts. 3. Virtually all of the work has been on "back-porting" features from Wayland to X11. 4. A number of the things that are claimed in this post have been in progress for years and were done by "upstream" devs anyway. They're literally just included for fluff. 5. Man, this is just mind-boggling. Most (no, actually all) of these bullet points are "already done", "going to be done by upstream anyway" or "under investigation". HOW ARE PEOPLE CONTINUALLY FALLING FOR THIS? Even the Sway PR is from Jan2020. So, yeah, I'm not interested in sponsoring and continue to be surprised at how people fawn over this. But then again, I pay deep attention to who/where the work is being done in Wayland these days. The people that deserve funding are the ones going and actually doing the implementation work, cutting cross toolkits, etc.
MayeulC 5y ago
I'm left wondering -- isn't this a toolkit/library issue? I am a bit afraid of seeing gestures handled differently in multiple programs, like inertial scrolling, or pinch-to-zoom speed. At least gestures are always detected by libinput AFAIK, so there's that. But instead of implementing this in every application, wouldn't it be nicer to implement the common part in a library and link that library to all app that require/want touch handling? This would provide homogeneous behavior, and would allow sharing configuration files.
- p12tic 5y ago
  Most applications will use either Gtk or Qt widget libraries, so a lot of similarity of how applications behave already exists. I don't think it's possible to make Gtk and Qt themselves behave identically at this point. For example Qt is a commercial project and an effort that would break backwards compatibility is not worth it. Gtk on the other hand has strong opinions about how things should work, so it would be hard to change that too.
  - jhasse 5y ago
    There was a Gtk backend for Qt which would have solved this: https://github.com/CrimsonAS/gtkplatform https://github.com/CrimsonAS/gtkplatform
  - MayeulC 5y ago
    > Qt is a commercial project and an effort that would break backwards compatibility Not sure how that would break backwards compatibility. Moreover, Qt has always tried to plug into native libraries and integrate as well as possible with the host platform. You have a fair point about GTK. Any implementation should at least cater exactly to their need or they will make their own.
p12tic 5y ago
Hi, I'm the developer behind this effort. I can answer any questions you have.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  Is there binaries I can install or do I need to compile something? I have no idea where the code is.
  - p12tic 5y ago
    In short - there are no binaries and it's relatively hard to compile these manually, so I recommend to wait until the Linux distributions picks these projects up. This usually takes around 6 to 12 months.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      Holy cow, that was a LOL from hell. Are you serious? 6-12 months is the biggest tease. "Here's this really cool thing, but maybe, if you're lucky, you'll be able to use it in a year or so." That's the quarter super glued to the floor kind of frustrating.
      - jwatt 5y ago
        It's not super glued to the floor. It's on a train, on its way to your station. How far away your station is from the train entirely depends on the length of the release cycle of your Linux distribution, and is completely outwith the control of this developer. That's how Linux distros work. If you want it sooner you can always use a rolling release, such as Manjaro.
      - pantalaimon 5y ago
        The new X server is already in Debian experimental [0], with a bit of luck it trickles down to unstable just in time for Ubuntu to pick it up for the 22.04 release. If you are running Arch you already have it [1]. [0] https://packages.debian.org/experimental/xorg-server-source https://packages.debian.org/experimental/xorg-server-source [1] https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/xorg-server/ https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/xorg-server/
null4bl3 5y ago
That sounds awesome. I remember trying to create a setup using touchegg some years ago, with very little luck
izoow 5y ago
I always found touchpads on Linux to be quite okay, mice on the other hand… For example, I find scrolling with mice in most browsers on Linux unbearably slow compared to other systems, and there’s no option to speed it up, and overall a lack of customization options when it comes to mice. I’m starting to wonder whether Linux developers don’t use mice, or if there’s something wrong with me or my setup, because I rarely hear about it. And as stupid as it sounds, being able to scroll properly is probably the #1 thing keeping me off Linux desktop right now.
- proxycon 5y ago
  personally i've got a logitech mx master mouse, it has the logitech hyperscroll technology. Quite wonderfull to use on linux.
  - aetherspawn 5y ago
    A lot of apps don't interact well with Hyperscroll at all, and when it sends the "1 pixel" scroll event continuously every 10ms, they'll either keep scrolling for days after the wheel stops spinning or scroll like 1000 lines when you only moved it half a rotation.
- depressedpanda 5y ago
  I've never thought about this, but you're actually correct - normal scrolling really is quite slow. There are two reasons this has never bothered me though: 1. I always install Vimium in order to avoid using the mouse when browsing the web. (So in that regard your statement above is correct :-) ) 2. For fast scrolling with the mouse, you could try enabling autoscroll in Firefox; once enabled middle click will activate it, then the page will scroll based on the direction and distance you move the mouse from the scroll anchor.
jillesvangurp 5y ago
Nice, I recently replaced my mac book pro with a cheap Samsung laptop (emergency replacement, the mac died and the new ones are unobtainable currently). I installed Manjaro on it and it was a relatively OK experience getting that going. I had some issues with the sound that took some "maybe this will work" style copy paste of all sorts of magical cli incantations to get working. But I kind of knew what I was getting into so I'm not disappointed by that. The important thing is that I have a functioning laptop with all my developer toys running. However, the touchpad support is so awful that I ordered a mouse. I never needed one of those with any macbook I've ever owned. It seems it's impossible to configure the touchpad in a sane way without ending up with piles of custom scripts. E.g. the scrolling speed is way off and I constantly have my single clicks interpreted as middle clicks, which does such fun things as close the browser tab instead of opening it. Simple tasks such as selecting text are made hard because the mechanical pressure needed for the clicks actually tends to move the cursor by enough that you basically mis-click. I briefly used the touchpad under windows before I wiped the disk. So, I know the same touch pad can behave a lot more reasonable given better software. So, any improvements in this area are very welcome!
- zekica 5y ago
  Cheap laptops have generally crappy touchpads. I have one (on a Lenovo ThinkBook) that has 5 finger multi-touch and it works completely fine with Gnome 40+ gestures. The only thing bothering me is a lack of consistent inertial two-finger scrolling. Never had left clicks misinterpreted as middle clicks.
  - jillesvangurp 5y ago
    Two click scrolling kind of works though it's set to some ridiculous speed. If click it slightly sideways with my finger it's interpreted as a two finger click.
- depressedpanda 5y ago
  It may be that single click in the bottom center of your touch pad is interpreted as middle click. I have a touch pad that does this, but it's a feature to me, so I never looked into how to disable it. If the mechanical pressure necessary to click is too much, that's a hardware issue, so not much you can do there. I worked around it by enabling tap-to-click, which works fine for me, but I tend to keep my palms away from the track pad while typing.
mgaunard 5y ago
Why do touchpads exist? First thing I do is disable them. Do power users (which tend to use Linux) really use those things?
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  They're not that bad if they have decent wrist detection. I'd rather use a proper keyboard and mouse of course, but my laptop is quite comfortable to use with a touch pad (on Linux). Although I don't buy into the whole gesture stuff. I just want the basics.
- stjo 5y ago
  Let me explain my downvote: 1) Obviously such efforts will help non-power users as well. A lot of people use touchpads. 2) Yes, power users also use touchpad. Duh.
  - mgaunard 5y ago
    Touchpads get in the way of using the keyboard reliably, which is your primary source of input. They also provide inputs that are themselves unreliable and inaccurate. You're better off controlling the cursor with a trackpoint which also means you don't need to move your hands off the keyboard.
    - HatchedLake721 5y ago
      Ehm, I assume you never used a MacBook for work? (giving it a go or I tried my friends MacBook doesn’t count) No they don’t get in the way of using keyboard and no they’re not unreliable or inaccurate. I use MacBook keyboard + touchpad for almost a decade without external mouse and keyboard on purpose and I do 120 wpm on a on 2017 MacBook Pro with a 1st generation butterfly keyboard without touchpad getting into my way.
      - mgaunard 5y ago
        I do have a Macbook Pro from circa 2010. I understand that by Apple fanboy standards, another older than a year is ancient, but to me that's pretty recent hardware. Only way I found to make this useable is to treat it as a SSH server I connect to remotely. Its touchpad certainly wasn't anything special, it's probably worse than the non-Mac average, only ever clicked correctly in some parts, before quickly getting stuck forever.
k1rcher 5y ago
Very interesting. I’m running PopOS on my framework, running Wayland— the touchpad gestures is very good. But still not up to par with MacBook. I’m extremely curious as to how this compares. I think it’s both PopOS’s gestures as well as the hardware (the framework touchpad is quite good!) that has resulted in such a fantastic experience, at least compared to other laptop touchpads I’ve used. Definitely the closest to MacBook gestures I’ve experienced. I’m working on getting an eGPU setup going so I can properly run X instead of Wayland, and am very excited to try this out. (Please correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is Wayland if you’re running integrated graphics, X if you have a GPU)
- canadaduane 5y ago
  Wow, we are very similar! Running PopOS on a new framework laptop and loving it. Agree it is good but not up to par with MacBook. I set up linuxtouchpad.org if you're interested in dropping by the forum or chat channel.
- wildrhythms 5y ago
  It seems incredible to me that Linux, and even Windows, is still trying to figure out how to make a trackpad experience on par with what Apple offered 15+ years ago.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Well, they've had to support about 100x more devices than Apple does. Conversely, it's incredible that Apple still hasn't figured out how to get Vulkan running on their handful of supported hardware.
    - jeroenhd 5y ago
      The difference here is that Apple doesn't want Vulkan rendering, because they have their own special graphics stack that they want everyone else to use instead. The Linux and Windows folks want good touchpad support and work is being done to improve it. I must say that the touchpad support on Windows is pretty great if the vendor bothered to implement the right type of driver (the recent driver model, I think it's called "high precision" or something?) but many touchpad vendors don't do that and instead ship simple drivers based on their old code base and call it a day. On the Linux side it's just a capacity problem that won't go away any time soon. This project seems to be the only group of people in the Linux community that cares enough to take the huge amount of time to re-write and re-design the software stack to accept better gestures, and even with their dedication it's been taking them a while (understandably so!).
sandreas 5y ago
I wonder, why nobody is mentioning two-finger scrolling (also inertial scrolling or kinetic scrolling). Interesting fact: Ubuntu and Fedora have a fully working implementation for this - although scrolling is way too fast, while other distros don't have this. KDE distros also don't have this, even if KDE Wayland is used. Can anyone tell my, why on Ubuntu and Fedora this works for EVERY app, whereas in other distros using GNOME 40 or 41 (e.g. Arch) it is only working on SOME or NONE of the apps...? Is there a patch for libinput or MUTTER, that is not in the official GNOME repos?
reginold 5y ago
I've been a sponsor of this project on Github for $5/month. That said, I'm more of a consumer rather than a developer. I know my trackpad on Linux seems to sux, and I can't see how anything gets better for consumers on Linux without us paying for work like this. I'm curious for feedback -- is this team making good progress, did you install the code, etc? Should I double my sponsorship of this project?
- wbharding 5y ago
  Yes please? :)
eyelidlessness 5y ago
I mean this in as kind a way as possible: I’m surprised this wasn’t already a solved problem, but I’m glad my Linux using peers will benefit from it.
tambourine_man 5y ago
Gestures are nice but what I love most about Apple trackpads is everything else. Accidental input avoidance, precision along with speed, registering a click anywhere on the surface… The gesture I care the most is smooth scrolling, which is a combination of OS graphic and input. Again, nothing smooth scrolls like the Mac or iOS
- wbharding 5y ago
  Yes! It’s the sum of all these little details that makes the Mac implementation amazing. When I started using macOS I took for granted how much work had gone into making its touchpad experience possible, because it Just Worked. Now that I’ve been nudging this Linux project forward for a couple years, I can appreciate how much long-term coordinated effort is truly required to make the touchpad experience become so smooth it’s forgettable. :)
mkl 5y ago
Does anyone know a good external touchpad that would work with this?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Shadonototra 5y ago
why do they prioritize firefox over chrome? it's a way to not get popular, if you don't support what everyone is using..
kevincox 5y ago
What I really want to see is support for the `browser.gesture.swipe.*` options in Firefox. Being able to do a multi-finger swipe up to close the tab, left and right to go forward and back made browsing with just a trackpad very pleasant. The only real thing that I miss from macOS on a work laptop.
wqz 5y ago
When running X on a previous Debian version, it was possible to edit the synaptic settings to prevent accidental touchpad touches when typing (along with a lot of other settings to make the user experience excellent). Now running Wayland on Debian 11/Bullseye (with Gnome), there are only a few possible simple settings (that I can find), and so I have continual issues with window de-focussing due to accidentally touching the touchpad. Is there anything that I can do now to fix this issue? (I took a look at the blog post and also the https://neosmart.net/blog/2020/multi-touch-gestures-on-linux/ https://neosmart.net/blog/2020/multi-touch-gestures-on-linux... link, but still don't understand the state of things and if my problem is solved by installing any of these new packages.) edit> The libinput webpage says this: "How do I configure my device on Wayland? See Where is the configuration stored? Use the configuration tool provided by your desktop environment (e.g. gnome-control-center) or direct access to your desktop environment’s configuration storage (e.g. gsettings)." https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/faqs.html#how-do-i-configure-my-device-on-wayland https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/faqs.htm... Does this mean that it is not possible to set anything that isn't included in Gnome's minimal settings of libinput?
jacobmischka 5y ago
Looks like a great effort, but there's two things I don't understand: 1. Is this for X only? That's all I see mentioned on the page. If so, that seems like a pretty big waste, Wayland is definitely the way forward and efforts like this will only delay that even further. 2. That said, I use Wayland on my XPS13 in Gnome, and touchpad gestures feel pretty great already, comparable to a MacBook in my opinion.

604 points by wbharding 5y ago

alpanka 5y ago

Maybe a dumb question, but why does this need to be supported at UI-library level?

canadaduane 5y ago
Multiple finger gestures can sometimes mean more than just "trigger a key". For example, if you're drawing on a canvas and you expect pinch-to-zoom to zoom in and out as you're bringing your fingers together or pulling them apart, that could mean the app needs to integrate with new events at the UI library level. Or two-finger rotation of the canvas, as another example.

fsflover 5y ago

I can't wait until all proprietary software becomes obsolete due to FLOSS becoming good enough for everyone. From what I see the proprietary operating systems are in decline now, whereas Linux is getting better and better all the time.

radicaldreamer 5y ago
People have been saying this for the last 20 years and I've yet to build a linux workstation that isn't at least 20-30% more time consuming to configure, maintain and tweak than a Mac and sometimes a lot more time than that.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  You can’t really configure a Mac at all.
  - matthewfcarlson 5y ago
    For some that’s a feature, not a bug. I really wish there was at least a CLI you could use to tweak certain behaviors instead of a mix on nvram and system preference
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      Agree but they’re complaining like I bought food at a restaurant and I can’t cook it. Seems like an invalid complaint.
  - duped 5y ago
    You don't need to nearly as much, by comparison.
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      If you can’t, you can’t call it need to. I’d compare it to GNOME.
      - kitsunesoba 5y ago
        From someone who’s used both macOS and GNOME a good deal, GNOME to me feels a lot more like iPadOS if it had been mildly adjusted to run on desktops than it does macOS. There’s several aspects of GNOME and its app suite that are more inflexible than macOS and its apps.
        GhettoComputers 5y ago
        I completely agree. If someone uses GNOME and says OSX isn't configuration friendly, the critique is very hypocritical, enough to be dismissed. If you say that and use almost any other DE (I love KDE) sure. Someone saying the overcooked steak is disgusting while eating a burnt piece of toast is hard to take serious, they are constantly breaking addons and plugins, its like they don't want any 3rd party support, not unlike the often critiqued apple desktop.
- hanklazard 5y ago
  Try pop!_os. Really easy to install and use. It’s my daily driver on a carbon X1 and I’m not a developer or anything.
  - leetrout 5y ago
    Tossing out a second +1 for pop! I've not used it in about a year now and I do miss it. They were adding support for a tiling WM mode and it wasn't bad (needed some work). I was using it on System76 hardware and had zero issues with the OS and S76 replaced my keyboard when it went bad.
  - WJW 5y ago
    pop! is indeed really nice, with the possible exception that for some reasons I have to manually recompile the nvidia drivers (and sometimes wifi drivers) with some arcane `dkms` commands every time the OS updates include a kernel update. After the second time this happened I just pasted all the commands in a text file for later reference but it sure is annoying. Apparently not everyone has this problem though, so maybe my computer is just weird.
- hasel 5y ago
  Bootup archlinux image, type in archinstall, make sure to select gnome... It's that easy.
  - thatguy0900 5y ago
    Arch is not a good goto if you don't want to spend a lot of configuration time
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    To get an OS? Sure. To get one setup to run my dev environment, games and media? I have to pull in a GitHub repo and run a script that installs and configures everything for me (before the usual tasks of logging in to a hundred websites.) I swore Linux was super easy to setup for years, and as someone whose daily driver is MacOS now I still agree it’s the easiest to setup to my needs, but all 3 main OSs can get you a system in a couple clicks/keystrokes. Windows is probably the most difficult to setup for me (MacOS is at least unix so my scripts for Linux mostly work on the Mac as well) and I only use it for my gaming pc (which was for years Ubuntu, I just decided to install windows on it since I only use it to game anymore.) I love Linux, it’s been my OS since Vista came out and I switched to SUSE Community Edition, but we get so used to our OSs we forget part of the ease of use is being familiar. When I problem pops up on Ubuntu I can solve it within a minute. When one pops up on Mac it takes me some googling (and I give up on windows.) None if these systems are all the easy (or difficult) to use, it’s just a few basic concepts and then a ton of time figuring stuff out.
- outworlder 5y ago
  > People have been saying this for the last 20 years and I've yet to build a linux workstation that isn't at least 20-30% more time consuming to configure, maintain and tweak than a Mac and sometimes a lot more time than that. That's a high bar to clear. One thing that Apple does that makes a lot of sense is that they own the hardware and the software. Hackintoshes are a good indication of how things would look like if they had to support more hardware than they do. This is one of the reasons why I have recommended Macs for the less tech savvy members of my family. Just works, great manufacturer support (noone really comes close), has things like Time Machine to keep backups running. My "support calls" dropped drastically. My mother had a Linux netbook(remember those?) for banking purposes but a Mac for general usage. She would be able to browse on Linux, but things would get messy the moment she would want to, say, use her cricut machine. Let's compare with Windows? That truly takes a whole lot of time, specially because the OS seems to "rot" over time. It's become less of an issue (possibly also because our hardware is so powerful). My Windows desktop has taken way more work to maintain than my Linux machines(plural) + Macs. I have to keep that for VR, Fusion360 (going to ditch that as soon as I can) and the odd game that doesn't work properly (Sea of Thieves in-game chat?). Can't wait to get rid of it and use only Linux - which takes hardly any "maintenance" at all (other than installing updates and even that is just a click).
  - 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
    >That's a high bar to clear. One thing that Apple does that makes a lot of sense is that they own the hardware and the software. It’s an ideological bar though. Pick a line or models of laptops and officially support that specific line. Keep the list smallish and from popular manufacturers. Everything else deals with it they way we do now. Linux on supported hardware is pretty low maintenance. But it’s still not quite as nice as MacOS. And god forbid you get the latest hardware.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 2-718-281-828 5y ago
  maybe you're just a passionate tweaker. the basic stuff I need for my workstation has to be configured on any OS - be it Windows, Linux or Mac. the more advanced stuff is mostly optional and I usually do it additionally on linux just because I can. so, I'd say this is a bit of an apple-pear-comparison.
- pkulak 5y ago
  This seems off to me. I remember when I was using Mac, if I got a new machine, I had at least a day of downtime. Everything is minor, but it totally adds up. You've got to run around to dozens of websites, download, and click through menus to install Docker/Homebrew/IntelliJ/etc. Then there are all the nanny systems you have to turn off every time you hit them the first time. Oh, gotta give the console access to the filesystem. Half the binaries you download aren't signed to Apple's liking, so you gotta work around each one of those, and how you work around it changes with every major version of MacOS. Hell, just dragging, holding and releasing the 2-dozen useless default apps the hell out of the Dock takes a solid minute. Did you sign in to iCloud yet, btw? Siri would love to be enabled to, if you have a moment. Your home folder isn't in the finder, just a bunch of iCloud stuff and the Desktop. Do you remember how to option-click in the magic spot to find it and make a shortcut? It's death by a million cuts. That said, I'm not gonna pretend that Linux is some utopia and everything works immediately. But there's no way it's worse. I have a script that takes any machine from a formatted drive to a working OS exactly how I need it, unattended, in about 20 minutes. That's extreme, but everyone at least has a list of the packages they need that they can copy paste install into the terminal as soon as the installer is done.
  - brarsanmol 5y ago
    I mean I've had 2 mac's so far and I've reset the first one a handful of times it never took me more than about 1 - 2 hours to get up and running with Homebrew (a package manager for Mac). Although I will agree the Mac installer is highly unintuitive.
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      I never felt that way, its pretty easy, early version installs breaks stuff, and I have to deal with any UI and features they added in. You partition your computer to just try the new version as well? Pretty handy.
  - stnikolauswagne 5y ago
    I am on my 4th macbook in 7 years, I have not had to install any program twice and all my settings so far have carried over between devices, with the sole exception of security settings. Maybe I got absurdly lucky but I have never had this little issues with switching devices thanks to migration assistant.
- __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
  I guess it depends on what you're configuring. I'm using microk8s at work and the part of my team that has to deal with the VM-encapsulated version that runs on Mac or Windows is always mired in configuration woes. Same goes for docker. Granted, that's a far cry from touchpad configs--but if you keep your dotfiles in git then touchpad config is something you only have to once (per touchpad that you own).
kevinherron 5y ago
Oh sweet summer child.
- AlexanderDhoore 5y ago
  Year of the Linux Desktop!! /s
  - hvgk 5y ago
    If that happens I’m going to eat my mac mini for lunch.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    Does it matter? Most servers and phones run Linux. My damn Sony DSLR runs android. Desktops are dying Linux won.
    - faho 5y ago
      Does that matter? Android could switch to Fuchsia and there would barely be a way to tell. Any server you contact can run whatever it pleases and you'll be none the wiser (unless you get a web server error or go spelunking). The kernel is a very unimportant part of it. So while Linux with a capital-L has "won", the free/open ethos surrounding it certainly hasn't - to my chagrin.
      - GhettoComputers 5y ago
        These are hypotheticals that are fantasies, will it matter if a meteor hits the earth? >So while Linux with a capital-L has "won", the free/open ethos surrounding it certainly hasn't - to my chagrin. Who do you think develops and sponsor Linux? I am excited for android using a mainline kernel, I have been using it as a mobile linux computer for years. Its easy to open, I would prefer boneless chicken but chicken is fine too.
    - BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
      > Linux won. But does it matter, when most of it is tivoized? What did we, the users, actually gain from all these linux kernels being inside locked down devices?
snemvalts 5y ago
Just wait until your wifi or suspend breaks on a distro change on your 5 yr old laptop.
- fsflover 5y ago
  Never happened in 10 years. I recommend to try hardware designed for Linux and not "Windows certified". Ideally, with preinstalled Linux.
  - snemvalts 5y ago
    Happened to my x220
- wilsonjholmes 5y ago
  I have had terrible luck with suspend/hibernation on all of the laptops I have used Linux on, so I just resort to shutting down and starting up... I have SSDs so it is not that big of a deal, but still. I cannot wait for the day I can simply close my laptop lid and have the battery not drain ~12% an hour.
  - pmontra 5y ago
    Which laptop do you have? I'd like to keep clear of it and its manufacturer when I'll have to buy a new one. My nearly 8 years old ZBook from HP loses maybe 3% per hour with 32 GB RAM to keep powered. It was much less with 16 GB. Don't you have a 128 GB laptop, right? More seriously, did you check if people have the same problem with that laptop and Windows? Or some firmware update from the manufacturer to fix the battery.
- WJW 5y ago
  Wifi is the worst. I had a wifi driver fail on me the other day after the updates included a newer kernel version that didn't work with the current wifi driver. Newer ones were available on github, but downloading requires wifi. Eventually I managed to make a hotspot out of my phone and connect to github via bluetooth. Otherwise, no complaints.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rvz 5y ago
Hardly a dent has been made on the desktop. I still see users running either Windows or macOS. ChromeOS is possibly the 'closest' to this (and that is proprietary), but Google is going to replace it with Fuchsia anyway; meaning that we will soon be back to square -1 on the Linux desktop. Oh dear.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  ChromeOS is technically the closest yes, but also the furthest from the ideals behind Linux and the FLOSS movement.
Aaargh20318 5y ago
> I can't wait until all proprietary software becomes obsolete due to FLOSS becoming good enough for everyone. The problem is ‘good enough’ is a moving target and FOSS isn’t exactly closing the gap.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 29083011397778 5y ago
  I would absolutely disagree! 20 years ago, Linux required some arcane incantations, but was sold in stores, and was somewhat useful. 10 years ago, Linux required patiently going through lots of forums to find out why sound didn't work, and tweaking some config files - though fewer than before. This year, Linux was featured on LTT as "Can we viably switch / use Linux for home use as regular geeks?" You're right that "Good Enough" takes many forms, and it is a moving target. But whether it's closing the gap might just be a difference in which timescale one uses.
  - Aaargh20318 5y ago
    Sure, you may be able to download an ISO or USB image and relatively easily install Linux today without worrying about what sound or graphics driver you need like you could with other OSes 20 years ago. But that doesn't mean the competition didn't move forward as well. Today I can wipe the entire drive on my MacBook and re-install everything from scratch over the internet, without install media, directly from the firmware. When can I buy an off-the-shelf computer that can do this with Linux ? After installing macOS I set up my account, enter my iCloud details and all my photo's just appear, I can send and receive text messages, phone and video calls. My clipboard syncs to my phone, and I use my phone to take a photo or scan a document and insert it directly into whatever document I was typing. I can start typing an e-mail on my phone, decide it's too long to type on the little on-screen keyboard and seamlessly move the task to my desktop. I can take a photo of some text on my phone, copy it as plain text, and then paste the text into anything on my desktop. All of this with no setup required. How much time will it take Linux to be able to do all of this ? And what else will it have to catch up to by then ?
ximeng 5y ago
My Ubuntu laptop is just fine apart from every now and then randomly pausing and not accepting user input for a minute or so at max CPU. Seems to be maybe Chrome related, so that's maybe the next thing for me to try to migrate off after Windows.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  Is it an extension doing it or low ram? Never happeneds to me on skylake thinkpad even with 8GB ram, just slow to open.
  - ximeng 5y ago
    Quite difficult to debug as system is unresponsive when it happens, so would have to delve into logs. Maybe a Chrome memory management or graphics acceleration issue, I don't use many extensions but it's possible I guess. 12GB of RAM, but that can get eaten up by Chrome pretty easily.
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      I use ungoogled chromium, try the flatpak, new binary doesn’t work in Ubuntu, works great for me. Try with them all off and turn them on one by one.
- pmontra 5y ago
  It reminds me of an issue with the gsconnect GNOME extension. They apparently fixed it. I reinstalled it today and it seems OK.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
outworlder 5y ago
> From what I see the proprietary operating systems are in decline now It is a very slow decline, but it's being largely going on unnoticed. Rewind the clock 20 years, there were all sorts of paid software offerings everywhere on the desktop. You couldn't uncompress a zip without paying (or stealing from) someone. Unless you were a Linux rebel running slackware or whatever. We can do a lot on Linux now. We have thousands of Steam games running on the Proton+Wine+Vulkan combination (often with similar performance, in some cases even better). Most of the missing apps are available in the browser - which is a blessing and a curse. Everything is moving to open source software. The issue now is different: we have commercial offerings on top of open source, closing their gardens. Take Android. Ridiculous amount of open source software, arguably the most deployed software worldwide. Controlled by a corporation. Lots of apps have moved to the web, where we have a similar problem. Their foundations are most often based on open-source. But they are behind some corporation or another. Heck, the big cloud providers all have in their core a whole plethora of open source software. The operating system concept, as we know it, is in decline. This may be a global maxima for FOSS OS. I hope it isn't.
- gonehome 5y ago
  For the vast majority of users the OS is just a way to get to the web. The web (browser) is the OS, but the apps are centralized, incompatible, and primarily SaaS subscriptions (or worse, ad based). Desktop operating systems are primarily thin clients to these services. Native apps on the existing stack are dead outside of a few niche applications. It's why I think Urbit is cool, if you built an OS from first principles to take into account the web what would it look like? It's basically moving the API layer up the stack to include auth and application distribution.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  Is android or iOS proprietary? The desktop is declining, it’s market share is so bad that windows literally build an android emulator and Linux subsystem. I’d say it’s less on desktop but all the computing is mobile. It would be better to move away from all OS and just have ISA software.
- jodrellblank 5y ago
mirekrusin 5y ago
You mean FOSS, not flossing, right? There are many people who love open source and yet applaud when proprietary solutions move things forward – good for them. There is place for everyone with good intentions, we can all make life interesting, no need for war tinted atmosphere.
- fsflover 5y ago
  https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.en.html
  - mirekrusin 5y ago
    Thanks
duped 5y ago
Android, iOS, Windows, and OS-X together account for 97% of consumer computing devices if this is to be believed https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all/worldwide/2020 https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all/worldwide/202.... Android is the only "open source" out of the bunch, but most devices running it have plenty of closed source internals the devices' are useless without. There's still no viable FOSS OS for mobile/tablets. Not that they don't exist, just that they don't have the featureset and development velocity of Android and iOS.
- fsflover 5y ago
  > There's still no viable FOSS OS for mobile/tablets. I am using my Pinephone with Mobian/Phosh as a daily driver now. It's a bit rough but getting good enough quickly.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  I don’t think there will ever be a FOSS OS for consumers that is the préfèred option. There is too many moving targets to ever be “done” and chasing those customers is profitable and requires money. That’s the perfect domain of a business. I’m ok with this too. As another comment mentioned, once upon a time you couldn’t unzip a file with outpaying. Now it’s standardized and free (as in freedom and beer). Let apple and google and Microsoft fight and spend money tweaking the gui just right and bundling in whatever crap they want. FOSS community will lag behind and pick up the tail freeing everyone not on the bleeding edge. Imagine if things like unzipping wasn’t free in 2021? How much shittier phones and services would be. Hell even Niche projects like the oculus quest would be a mess without basic tools being ubiquitous. Unlike some FOSS supporters, I’m ok with commercial interests in software. 2021 might not be free, but it’s still in the making - if 2020 is free, everyone can help build the best 2021 from a more level playing field when we can stand on the free shoulders of giants. Ps: companies should donate more to open source software development and protection and maintenance.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  At least the OSX kernel is open source and easy to port to, Saurik and the early jailbreakers got apt and all the CLI tools on the first gen iPhone. >There's still no viable FOSS OS for mobile/tablets. Not that they don't exist, just that they don't have the featureset and development velocity of Android and iOS. Tell me what I can't do with Android that linux can do, I can do the reverse of what I can do on Android that linux on mobile can't. Its there if you want it. All the new Android phones are getting mainline. Check out my thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29373106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29373106 Sailfish has good Android emulation as well.
marcodiego 5y ago
As part of the FLOSS rooting crowd, I'd really like that to happen. But we have to face reality: on the desktop, after decades we're still fighting for 2% of the marketshare. Not that progress hasn't happened. Quite on the contrary. Linux on the desktop experience nowadays is VASTLY superior to even 5 years ago. Of course, users from other camps will complain of features that have been lacking for many years (thumbnails in the file picker!) but alternatives aren't without their problems either: get a seasoned linux to try MacOS or Windows and you'll recognize weaknesses on the other approaches too. For me, linux on the desktop has been ready for a long time. I don't care if the market share is still in the single digits if it is good enough for me. Since I like the freedom, privacy, security and (yes) ease of use of desktop linux and do not depend on non-multiplatform software and services, there's just no better OS for me. Not everybody has this choice though. So, linux on the desktop not being popular is not a problem. If it continues popular enough not to be ignored by hardware vendors and service providers, everything else will continue to improve over time.
- fsflover 5y ago
  > there's just no better OS for me Try Qubes OS.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    What benefit will he have?
    - fsflover 5y ago
      https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/how-to-pitch-qubes-os/4499/15 https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/how-to-pitch-qubes-os/4499/15
      - GhettoComputers 5y ago
        If you can't pitch it yourself, I don't see the point, the first link is just about paranoia. Were you ever curious but afraid: – to click on that link in the email, – to open that email attachment, – to go to that shady-looking website, – to install and run that suspicious program or even a virus, – to insert that USB stick from someone untrusted? Wth Qubes you do it all securely in a disposable VM and your personal files are safe. The worst thing which might happen is that the disposable VM breaks. If the pitch is to make people paranoid to run a new OS they need to learn isolation on, there are way easier ways like running a normal VM, which most people are still not going to understand very well or do.
vlunkr 5y ago
I think that for it to really take off someone needs to release a laptop where linux is truly supported over windows, and they maintain, or help maintain, a distro to runs perfectly on that hardware. That's the only way you're going to avoid the driver issues that will ruin the experience for typical users. I know there are some, like System76 but looking at their site quickly, they start at around $1,000. For the average user that's waaay too high, especially if they can get what they need out of a chromebook.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  Chromebooks existed for years, even has coreboot. They have them for Dell, and Lenovo Thinkpads. The main issue is there is no benefit for the end user. Why would they want to switch to linux as an end user?
  - deadbunny 5y ago
    Knock $50 off the price and people will care.
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      They just installed Windows on their netbooks last time it was even cheaper. The people who think steam deck will make linux mainstream are going to just see the next deck come with windows and everyone who gets a deck installing windows on it to play games.
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      They might, but they'll be getting Linux for the wrong reasons. And will end up dissatisfied because they'll be expecting Windows only free. Which will hurt adoption more. FLOSS was never about free as in beer.
  - vlunkr 5y ago
    That's a great point. Unless there's some software you want to use that can't run on Chromebooks, there's probably not a compelling reason to switch.
aaronbrethorst 5y ago
2022 will be the year of Linux on the desktop.
handrous 5y ago
I think it's more likely Google's new Fuchsia OS will displace Linux for most desktop use (and maybe more than just that) than that Linux will get its shit together and ship a GUI layer good and cohesive enough to compete. And I write that as someone who used Linux desktops heavily (and, for long stretches, exclusively) for about a decade. It's, what, BSD licensed? Open source, but not GPL-alike Free Software. Still, that's pretty decent. I reckon the only way that doesn't happen is if they pull the plug (quite possible) or they shift to keeping the GUI layer proprietary (also quite possible).
- trasz 5y ago
  BSD is Free Software, FSF-certified.
  - fsflover 5y ago
    Not, it's not: https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html. FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD all include instructions for obtaining nonfree programs in their ports system. In addition, their kernels include nonfree firmware blobs.
    - trasz 5y ago
      It is. We are talking about software licenses, not FSF opinion on software distributions.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - handrous 5y ago
    Ah, even after all these years I get tripped up on which terms only apply to viral-license open source.
    - trasz 5y ago
vwoolf 5y ago
From what I see the proprietary operating systems are in decline now [Citation needed] If anything, one of the world's most-used OSes, which could have gone more open, did the opposite: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on... Yes, I approve of e.g. https://puri.sm https://puri.sm, but they're so far behind.
criddell 5y ago
Linux, macOS, and Windows have all been good enough for a long, long time now. If you need to run some application that only runs or (or runs best on) some particular operating system, then that's probably what you buy.

disabled 5y ago

I have my Ubuntu 18.04 looking like MacOS. The only thing limiting it from really feeling like a Mac is the touchpad. You can see it here: https://ibb.co/H7khM7h https://ibb.co/H7khM7h A good guide for starting out is here: https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-macos-theme-on-ubuntu-20-04-focal-fossa-linux https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-macos-theme-on-ubuntu...

codezero 5y ago
Does Ubuntu sleep/wake easily with a lid close (maintaining runtime state), and avoid weird battery drain issues? To me, that's the killer feature of macOS. I am usually connected w/ a mouse and keyboard, the touchpad is great on the go, but nothing really substitutes the ability to turn it off and on again without thinking twice.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  Laptop kernel driver issue. Newest 5.17 doesn't 5.16 does on my laptop, but most laptops I have had that flawlessly function.
marcodiego 5y ago
My girlfriend uses a MacBook and likes it. She bought a cheap windows all-in-one desktop and simply couldn't use windows. I made the effort during one weekend to make it look and behave like MacOS as much as I could. Appearance-wise it is very very close. I got some gnome extensions to mimic the behavior quite closely too. In terms of software, it is still missing MSO and some magic apple integration to their other products. Otherwise, she is now a happy linux user on the desktop.
andrewmackrodt 5y ago
There's more to macOS than look of the desktop, notably the universal menu and full screen mode opens to a new workspace. I find the latter a big productivity boost when working on an undocked laptop as the gestures to switch workspace or windows between an application are so well integrated.

GhettoComputers 5y ago

How do I install it?

mdoms 5y ago
There are some extremely confusing instructions here (these are the only installation instructions linked anywhere from the main website): https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Libinput#Installation https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Libinput#Installation Linux will NEVER be a mainstream desktop platform as long as end users have to answer questions like "am I 'under Wayland'?" or "what does 'under Wayland' mean?" or "why does the alternative to 'under Wayland' seem to be 'for Xorg' (whatever that is)?" or "how do I 'install the xf86-input-libinput package' and why does it have such a weird name?"
- zamadatix 5y ago
  On a normal distro it's just part of the default install, not something you have to even know exists. Arch just doesn't have a "default install", it's "build your own" distro focused on power users that like to control things at that level.
  - mdoms 5y ago
    Literally just read this exchange in this very thread. I wish you "linux is easy" folks could agree on something for once. > > People have been saying this for the last 20 years and I've yet to build a linux workstation that isn't at least 20-30% more time consuming to configure, maintain and tweak than a Mac and sometimes a lot more time than that. > Bootup archlinux image, type in archinstall, make sure to select gnome... It's that easy.
    - zamadatix 5y ago
      Eh, I don't even consider myself in the "Linux is easy" group but I wouldn't pull up the word of a negative karma fresh single comment account that was created after the conversation started as gospel for the validation an entire group of people on HN are inconsistent. It just happens you don't need to do anything special to install this on any traditional distro that ships with a default GUI install option. Regardless of your views on the viability of Linux overall these changes to libinput are really as zero effort as it can get on any OS, just wait for the update to push.

iknowstuff 5y ago

It would be lovely if Firefox supported the two-finger back/forward swipe.

ComputerGuru 5y ago

I wrote a (userland) general purpose and driver/hardware-agnostic multitouch daemon w/ gesture support for Linux that works with the existing input stack (i.e. doesn’t require switching to libinputy but also supports it), if anyone is interested: https://neosmart.net/blog/2020/multi-touch-gestures-on-linux/ https://neosmart.net/blog/2020/multi-touch-gestures-on-linux... https://github.com/mqudsi/syngesture https://github.com/mqudsi/syngesture The biggest benefit is that you can use drivers with actually correct acceleration curves like xf86-input-synaptics (if you’re on X11) instead of the offensively bad, NIH reimplementation that ships with libinput. Oh wait, I’m on HN so I shouldn’t neglect to mention my project is written in rust!

toomim 5y ago
Woah, this solves the acceleration problem? I want to try it!! Thank you!
- ComputerGuru 5y ago
  You’re most welcome. Please read the article before downloading or cloning from GitHub: this “solves” the acceleration issue by not breaking it in the first place; imho what libinput should have done by developing gesture support on top of the existing, working driver/hardware stack instead of throwing away the userland/kernel separation and all layers of abstraction. The linked project is only the userland daemon that uses the raw Linux Multitouch Protocol events to interpret gestures; to get the acceleration curves working again I recommend using this in conjunction with xf86-input-synaptics as your actual input driver (which provides the correct acceleration curves for compatible hardware - basically all touchpads since they all cloned synaptics’ hardware once upon a time - but doesn’t by itself have gesture support). Side note: Syngesture (this project) isn’t dependent on X11 or Wayland, but I don’t know if anyone has ported or will port xf86-input-synaptics to Wayland, which is/was pretty much developed along the same lines as libinput: rewrite everything from scratch without taking into account that some things you’re throwing out actually work really well (regardless of the fact that they are built for X11 or not), get rid of all abstractions that made it possible to plug in better components/replacements at various points in the stack, and without a concern for actual feature parity for what they are purportedly replacing.

nickysielicki 5y ago

Until haptic touchpads become available outside of MacBooks, touchpads are always going to suck under Windows and Linux. Gestures aren’t the main thing preventing me from enjoying the touchpad on my Dell — it’s plenty big and it supports four finger gestures under Windows. The problem is that the entire thing shifts down a couple millimeters when I click and my finger ends up dragging slightly, which moves my click off what I’m clicking on. I don’t understand how Apple has had a monopoly on this for half a decade. Lenovo had a thinkpad come out last year with a haptic touchpad but I haven’t seen anything further. Is it patents?

leetrout 5y ago
They all have poor palm detection, too, IME
radicaldreamer 5y ago
I had a coworker who worked on the haptic trackpad for 4 years before he left Apple and they shipped it a year after that (so at least 6 years or so of R&D), I'm sure there are dozens of patents around the technology and probably a high barrier for entry for other companies. He griped that they didn't even send him the 12" MacBook it initially shipped in and that the R&D for it was ring fenced from the Mac hardware teams so both were working in isolation until the product was developed with the tech.
GhettoComputers 5y ago
You’re holding it wrong, just use the thinkpoint.
AlexandrB 5y ago
This was a really surprising thing to read. For me the Apple's haptic touchpads were a slight downgrade from their excellent non-haptic touchpads in <=2012 MacBook Pros. I liked the stiff clicky feel of the "real" touchpads over the haptic simulated click. Though the haptic touchpads do seem to be more reliable and are better at registering clicks near the top of the pad.
- 5y ago

cxr 5y ago

I'll make the same point I make every time this topic comes up: there are Chromebooks with great touchpad experiences, and that's been the case for a long, long time. This is not a "Linux" or "open source" problem; this is a problem of ignorance and/or insufficient interest on the part traditional (i.e. non-ChromeOS) distros and their users. It's nuts that this was and continues to be a high-profile, multi-year effort spawning discussions that end up framing the whole thing as elusive—rather than, you know, a solved problem that is pretty much not even worth mentioning but for the long tradition of poor execution.

jeppesen-io 5y ago
I can't really tell the diffeence between Gnome 40 and Chromebooks touchpad experiences. What makes Chromebooks so much better?
- jeffbee 5y ago
  I think the main difference is Chromebook users did not have to wait a decade to get working touchpad gestures.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tentacleuno 5y ago
  When I use my trackpad on GNOME 40, the jitter is downright embarrassing. On a bad day, you can leave your two fingers in place and it'll jump around 25% of the page in a web browser, or the cursor starts to get drunk shakes. It's so much better on Windows. This is a software problem, and right now the Linux ecosystem is doing a pretty poor job.
lpasselin 5y ago
Which Chromebooks?
- kelvie 5y ago
  I'm not sure if it's global to chromebooks, but my pixelbook touchpad so far has been the only non-apple one I've ever tried that was tolerable. Though I haven't tried many others in the past 5 years.

leetrout 5y ago

Here's what I'm looking for: Solid linux laptop with a macbook style centered keyboard and touch pad. (system76 has offset touchpad / keyboard and it drives me insane) Near perfect palm detection on the track pad like a macbook. Does anyone have a recommendation? I've not tried any newer lenovo lappies nor have I tried linux on a Razer laptop which looks very similar to a macbook. Maybe just wait for linux to run on M1?

cultofmetatron 5y ago
have you looked at the https://frame.work/ https://frame.work/ laptop? dunno about palm detection but its centered like the macbook
- leetrout 5y ago
  Thanks! That looks really cool
- randomluck040 5y ago
  This is so great but unfortunately not available in Germany yet. Looking forward to it.
  - cultofmetatron 5y ago
    this might be more your cup of tea then https://eu.starlabs.systems https://eu.starlabs.systems
    - randomluck040 5y ago
      Thank you, I’ll take a look. I wonder how I never stumbled on this one. Thanks!
kesslern 5y ago
I haven't had any issues with palm detection on my Thinkpad X1 Extreme. It's just worked since day 1. I have both Gen 1 and 2.

tuldia 5y ago

Nice! Thanks for the hard work everyone involved! I have nothing to complain, things just works for me so far, but great to see improvements in the pipe! :D

josteink 5y ago

121 sponsors is pitiful. Consider me in, and I hope everyone in here who honestly wants this to happen considers sponsoring too.

gowld 5y ago
$60/yr for an unfinished touchpad driver is high.
- canadaduane 5y ago
  $60/yr for a touchpad driver for every Linux user in the world is quite reasonable. Plus, you get to stop paying after it's done, and no one can take it away from you :)
reginold 5y ago
I sponsor this project for $5/month. Started a few months ago. I'm happy to support! For Linux desktop to succeed with consumers like me, it has to move beyond being for mechanics only, which means we have to do our part and pay money for it.
notthathardbro 5y ago
1. The "developer" in this thread, isn't doing any dev work. Hint, there's not a single link to a PR or commit in the blog post as far as I can tell. 2. The same "lead" on this project is mostly just filing issues on other projects and writing PM-esque summary blog posts about the efforts. 3. Virtually all of the work has been on "back-porting" features from Wayland to X11. 4. A number of the things that are claimed in this post have been in progress for years and were done by "upstream" devs anyway. They're literally just included for fluff. 5. Man, this is just mind-boggling. Most (no, actually all) of these bullet points are "already done", "going to be done by upstream anyway" or "under investigation". HOW ARE PEOPLE CONTINUALLY FALLING FOR THIS? Even the Sway PR is from Jan2020. So, yeah, I'm not interested in sponsoring and continue to be surprised at how people fawn over this. But then again, I pay deep attention to who/where the work is being done in Wayland these days. The people that deserve funding are the ones going and actually doing the implementation work, cutting cross toolkits, etc.

MayeulC 5y ago

I'm left wondering -- isn't this a toolkit/library issue? I am a bit afraid of seeing gestures handled differently in multiple programs, like inertial scrolling, or pinch-to-zoom speed. At least gestures are always detected by libinput AFAIK, so there's that. But instead of implementing this in every application, wouldn't it be nicer to implement the common part in a library and link that library to all app that require/want touch handling? This would provide homogeneous behavior, and would allow sharing configuration files.

p12tic 5y ago
Most applications will use either Gtk or Qt widget libraries, so a lot of similarity of how applications behave already exists. I don't think it's possible to make Gtk and Qt themselves behave identically at this point. For example Qt is a commercial project and an effort that would break backwards compatibility is not worth it. Gtk on the other hand has strong opinions about how things should work, so it would be hard to change that too.
- jhasse 5y ago
  There was a Gtk backend for Qt which would have solved this: https://github.com/CrimsonAS/gtkplatform https://github.com/CrimsonAS/gtkplatform
- MayeulC 5y ago
  > Qt is a commercial project and an effort that would break backwards compatibility Not sure how that would break backwards compatibility. Moreover, Qt has always tried to plug into native libraries and integrate as well as possible with the host platform. You have a fair point about GTK. Any implementation should at least cater exactly to their need or they will make their own.

p12tic 5y ago

Hi, I'm the developer behind this effort. I can answer any questions you have.

GhettoComputers 5y ago
Is there binaries I can install or do I need to compile something? I have no idea where the code is.
- p12tic 5y ago
  In short - there are no binaries and it's relatively hard to compile these manually, so I recommend to wait until the Linux distributions picks these projects up. This usually takes around 6 to 12 months.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Holy cow, that was a LOL from hell. Are you serious? 6-12 months is the biggest tease. "Here's this really cool thing, but maybe, if you're lucky, you'll be able to use it in a year or so." That's the quarter super glued to the floor kind of frustrating.
    - jwatt 5y ago
      It's not super glued to the floor. It's on a train, on its way to your station. How far away your station is from the train entirely depends on the length of the release cycle of your Linux distribution, and is completely outwith the control of this developer. That's how Linux distros work. If you want it sooner you can always use a rolling release, such as Manjaro.
    - pantalaimon 5y ago
      The new X server is already in Debian experimental [0], with a bit of luck it trickles down to unstable just in time for Ubuntu to pick it up for the 22.04 release. If you are running Arch you already have it [1]. [0] https://packages.debian.org/experimental/xorg-server-source https://packages.debian.org/experimental/xorg-server-source [1] https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/xorg-server/ https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/xorg-server/

null4bl3 5y ago

That sounds awesome. I remember trying to create a setup using touchegg some years ago, with very little luck

izoow 5y ago

I always found touchpads on Linux to be quite okay, mice on the other hand… For example, I find scrolling with mice in most browsers on Linux unbearably slow compared to other systems, and there’s no option to speed it up, and overall a lack of customization options when it comes to mice. I’m starting to wonder whether Linux developers don’t use mice, or if there’s something wrong with me or my setup, because I rarely hear about it. And as stupid as it sounds, being able to scroll properly is probably the #1 thing keeping me off Linux desktop right now.

proxycon 5y ago
personally i've got a logitech mx master mouse, it has the logitech hyperscroll technology. Quite wonderfull to use on linux.
- aetherspawn 5y ago
  A lot of apps don't interact well with Hyperscroll at all, and when it sends the "1 pixel" scroll event continuously every 10ms, they'll either keep scrolling for days after the wheel stops spinning or scroll like 1000 lines when you only moved it half a rotation.
depressedpanda 5y ago
I've never thought about this, but you're actually correct - normal scrolling really is quite slow. There are two reasons this has never bothered me though: 1. I always install Vimium in order to avoid using the mouse when browsing the web. (So in that regard your statement above is correct :-) ) 2. For fast scrolling with the mouse, you could try enabling autoscroll in Firefox; once enabled middle click will activate it, then the page will scroll based on the direction and distance you move the mouse from the scroll anchor.

jillesvangurp 5y ago

Nice, I recently replaced my mac book pro with a cheap Samsung laptop (emergency replacement, the mac died and the new ones are unobtainable currently). I installed Manjaro on it and it was a relatively OK experience getting that going. I had some issues with the sound that took some "maybe this will work" style copy paste of all sorts of magical cli incantations to get working. But I kind of knew what I was getting into so I'm not disappointed by that. The important thing is that I have a functioning laptop with all my developer toys running. However, the touchpad support is so awful that I ordered a mouse. I never needed one of those with any macbook I've ever owned. It seems it's impossible to configure the touchpad in a sane way without ending up with piles of custom scripts. E.g. the scrolling speed is way off and I constantly have my single clicks interpreted as middle clicks, which does such fun things as close the browser tab instead of opening it. Simple tasks such as selecting text are made hard because the mechanical pressure needed for the clicks actually tends to move the cursor by enough that you basically mis-click. I briefly used the touchpad under windows before I wiped the disk. So, I know the same touch pad can behave a lot more reasonable given better software. So, any improvements in this area are very welcome!

zekica 5y ago
Cheap laptops have generally crappy touchpads. I have one (on a Lenovo ThinkBook) that has 5 finger multi-touch and it works completely fine with Gnome 40+ gestures. The only thing bothering me is a lack of consistent inertial two-finger scrolling. Never had left clicks misinterpreted as middle clicks.
- jillesvangurp 5y ago
  Two click scrolling kind of works though it's set to some ridiculous speed. If click it slightly sideways with my finger it's interpreted as a two finger click.
depressedpanda 5y ago
It may be that single click in the bottom center of your touch pad is interpreted as middle click. I have a touch pad that does this, but it's a feature to me, so I never looked into how to disable it. If the mechanical pressure necessary to click is too much, that's a hardware issue, so not much you can do there. I worked around it by enabling tap-to-click, which works fine for me, but I tend to keep my palms away from the track pad while typing.

mgaunard 5y ago

Why do touchpads exist? First thing I do is disable them. Do power users (which tend to use Linux) really use those things?

marginalia_nu 5y ago
They're not that bad if they have decent wrist detection. I'd rather use a proper keyboard and mouse of course, but my laptop is quite comfortable to use with a touch pad (on Linux). Although I don't buy into the whole gesture stuff. I just want the basics.
stjo 5y ago
Let me explain my downvote: 1) Obviously such efforts will help non-power users as well. A lot of people use touchpads. 2) Yes, power users also use touchpad. Duh.
- mgaunard 5y ago
  Touchpads get in the way of using the keyboard reliably, which is your primary source of input. They also provide inputs that are themselves unreliable and inaccurate. You're better off controlling the cursor with a trackpoint which also means you don't need to move your hands off the keyboard.
  - HatchedLake721 5y ago
    Ehm, I assume you never used a MacBook for work? (giving it a go or I tried my friends MacBook doesn’t count) No they don’t get in the way of using keyboard and no they’re not unreliable or inaccurate. I use MacBook keyboard + touchpad for almost a decade without external mouse and keyboard on purpose and I do 120 wpm on a on 2017 MacBook Pro with a 1st generation butterfly keyboard without touchpad getting into my way.
    - mgaunard 5y ago
      I do have a Macbook Pro from circa 2010. I understand that by Apple fanboy standards, another older than a year is ancient, but to me that's pretty recent hardware. Only way I found to make this useable is to treat it as a SSH server I connect to remotely. Its touchpad certainly wasn't anything special, it's probably worse than the non-Mac average, only ever clicked correctly in some parts, before quickly getting stuck forever.

k1rcher 5y ago

Very interesting. I’m running PopOS on my framework, running Wayland— the touchpad gestures is very good. But still not up to par with MacBook. I’m extremely curious as to how this compares. I think it’s both PopOS’s gestures as well as the hardware (the framework touchpad is quite good!) that has resulted in such a fantastic experience, at least compared to other laptop touchpads I’ve used. Definitely the closest to MacBook gestures I’ve experienced. I’m working on getting an eGPU setup going so I can properly run X instead of Wayland, and am very excited to try this out. (Please correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is Wayland if you’re running integrated graphics, X if you have a GPU)

canadaduane 5y ago
Wow, we are very similar! Running PopOS on a new framework laptop and loving it. Agree it is good but not up to par with MacBook. I set up linuxtouchpad.org if you're interested in dropping by the forum or chat channel.
wildrhythms 5y ago
It seems incredible to me that Linux, and even Windows, is still trying to figure out how to make a trackpad experience on par with what Apple offered 15+ years ago.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Well, they've had to support about 100x more devices than Apple does. Conversely, it's incredible that Apple still hasn't figured out how to get Vulkan running on their handful of supported hardware.
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    The difference here is that Apple doesn't want Vulkan rendering, because they have their own special graphics stack that they want everyone else to use instead. The Linux and Windows folks want good touchpad support and work is being done to improve it. I must say that the touchpad support on Windows is pretty great if the vendor bothered to implement the right type of driver (the recent driver model, I think it's called "high precision" or something?) but many touchpad vendors don't do that and instead ship simple drivers based on their old code base and call it a day. On the Linux side it's just a capacity problem that won't go away any time soon. This project seems to be the only group of people in the Linux community that cares enough to take the huge amount of time to re-write and re-design the software stack to accept better gestures, and even with their dedication it's been taking them a while (understandably so!).

sandreas 5y ago

I wonder, why nobody is mentioning two-finger scrolling (also inertial scrolling or kinetic scrolling). Interesting fact: Ubuntu and Fedora have a fully working implementation for this - although scrolling is way too fast, while other distros don't have this. KDE distros also don't have this, even if KDE Wayland is used. Can anyone tell my, why on Ubuntu and Fedora this works for EVERY app, whereas in other distros using GNOME 40 or 41 (e.g. Arch) it is only working on SOME or NONE of the apps...? Is there a patch for libinput or MUTTER, that is not in the official GNOME repos?

reginold 5y ago

I've been a sponsor of this project on Github for $5/month. That said, I'm more of a consumer rather than a developer. I know my trackpad on Linux seems to sux, and I can't see how anything gets better for consumers on Linux without us paying for work like this. I'm curious for feedback -- is this team making good progress, did you install the code, etc? Should I double my sponsorship of this project?

wbharding 5y ago
Yes please? :)

eyelidlessness 5y ago

I mean this in as kind a way as possible: I’m surprised this wasn’t already a solved problem, but I’m glad my Linux using peers will benefit from it.

tambourine_man 5y ago

Gestures are nice but what I love most about Apple trackpads is everything else. Accidental input avoidance, precision along with speed, registering a click anywhere on the surface… The gesture I care the most is smooth scrolling, which is a combination of OS graphic and input. Again, nothing smooth scrolls like the Mac or iOS

wbharding 5y ago
Yes! It’s the sum of all these little details that makes the Mac implementation amazing. When I started using macOS I took for granted how much work had gone into making its touchpad experience possible, because it Just Worked. Now that I’ve been nudging this Linux project forward for a couple years, I can appreciate how much long-term coordinated effort is truly required to make the touchpad experience become so smooth it’s forgettable. :)

mkl 5y ago

Does anyone know a good external touchpad that would work with this?

deleted 5y ago

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Shadonototra 5y ago

why do they prioritize firefox over chrome? it's a way to not get popular, if you don't support what everyone is using..

kevincox 5y ago

What I really want to see is support for the `browser.gesture.swipe.*` options in Firefox. Being able to do a multi-finger swipe up to close the tab, left and right to go forward and back made browsing with just a trackpad very pleasant. The only real thing that I miss from macOS on a work laptop.

wqz 5y ago

When running X on a previous Debian version, it was possible to edit the synaptic settings to prevent accidental touchpad touches when typing (along with a lot of other settings to make the user experience excellent). Now running Wayland on Debian 11/Bullseye (with Gnome), there are only a few possible simple settings (that I can find), and so I have continual issues with window de-focussing due to accidentally touching the touchpad. Is there anything that I can do now to fix this issue? (I took a look at the blog post and also the https://neosmart.net/blog/2020/multi-touch-gestures-on-linux/ https://neosmart.net/blog/2020/multi-touch-gestures-on-linux... link, but still don't understand the state of things and if my problem is solved by installing any of these new packages.) edit> The libinput webpage says this: "How do I configure my device on Wayland? See Where is the configuration stored? Use the configuration tool provided by your desktop environment (e.g. gnome-control-center) or direct access to your desktop environment’s configuration storage (e.g. gsettings)." https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/faqs.html#how-do-i-configure-my-device-on-wayland https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/faqs.htm... Does this mean that it is not possible to set anything that isn't included in Gnome's minimal settings of libinput?

jacobmischka 5y ago

Looks like a great effort, but there's two things I don't understand: 1. Is this for X only? That's all I see mentioned on the page. If so, that seems like a pretty big waste, Wayland is definitely the way forward and efforts like this will only delay that even further. 2. That said, I use Wayland on my XPS13 in Gnome, and touchpad gestures feel pretty great already, comparable to a MacBook in my opinion.