5 ms·

I love the idea of Linux on a mac, but until the touchpad software is up to the same standard as the apple version I'll make do with osx. edit: I believe they

I love the idea of Linux on a mac, but until the touchpad software is up to the same standard as the apple version I'll make do with osx. edit: I believe they are looking for donations.. I'll find a link when I have time.

Y_Y 4y ago
https://asahilinux.org/support/ https://asahilinux.org/support/
- btown 4y ago
  Also don't forget to subscribe to Asahi Lina! https://www.youtube.com/c/AsahiLina https://www.youtube.com/c/AsahiLina
smoldesu 4y ago
Linux has had Magic Trackpad support long predating it's support for Apple Silicon. On KDE/GNOME sessions in Wayland, you'll get 1:1 touchpad gestures for desktop management. Asahi should be using Wayland out of the box, so you'll be getting trackpad gestures along with the regular HID support. Edit: here's what it looks like in action - https://youtu.be/aBEsxTVRsEo?t=100 https://youtu.be/aBEsxTVRsEo?t=100 It's also worth noting that Firefox ships with pinch-to-zoom and swipe-back gestures by default for Wayland now, too.
- b112 4y ago
  All of that is meaningless, if you move, and click, when typing.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    I've not noticed any issues with palm-rejection when typing on Linux. If your trackpad does have issues, you can disable it while typing (but most Windows Precision trackpads work fine). I'm mostly using the Magic Trackpad on my desktop though. It's very possible you might find a laptop with bad palm-rejection firmware, but I don't think that's an issue with these. Or Synaptics touchpads, in my experience.
    - themadturk 4y ago
      I've had problems with palm rejection in MacOS on the M1 MBA; nowhere near as bad as on Dell machines running various flavors of Linux, but they are there.
      - flohofwoe 4y ago
        Heh, interestingly I also noticed more problems on my 14" M1 MBP than I had on my previous mid-2014 13" MBP (or more specifically: any problems at all, because the touchpad on my previous MBP was pretty much perfect). I suspect it's simply because of the bigger touchpad. Even if the "error rate" is the same as before, there are just more potential errors because of the bigger touchpad surface.
- flohofwoe 4y ago
  It less about the gestures, but about the general "feel" of the touchpad: latency, accuracy, acceleration, palm detection etc etc etc "just works" on macOS. I never had even close to the same experience on Windows, let alone on Linux. Maybe there's a mythical "Mac-like" Linux touchpad driver out there that doesn't suck, but if it isn't installed by default on a vanilla Ubuntu setup (or any other maintream distro) then it might just as well not exist.
  - jeppester 4y ago
    While my experience with Windows mirrors yours, I must say I've generally been quite fond with the feel of touchpads on Linux. Both my spouse's laptop and mine were dramatically better in Linux compared to the Windowses they came with.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Good news! It's in vanilla Ubuntu now. The main holdup was Wayland - go get your Wintel machine and try booting up a Wayland session in KDE or GNOME. If your trackpad was manufactured with multitouch, chances are it will have gesture support. Any distro shipping GNOME 41-ish or Plasma >5.25 should have this by-default. As for the feel... I'm gonna be honest, I don't notice any difference from my Mac. If anything, my Magic Trackpad has more gesture options on my KDE machine out-of-the-box. Don't knock it till you've tried it!
    - flohofwoe 4y ago
      Erm well, I'm on Ubuntu 22.04 with Wayland and the touchpad is still crap :/ Worst thing is that I can't enable "tap to click" because the palm detection just doesn't work at all.
    - pantalaimon 4y ago
      Why Wayland? You get libinput on both Wayland and X11 and X11 has gestures since 21.1
    - coupdejarnac 4y ago
      I have an external Magic Trackpad 2 running with Wayland/Ubuntu 22.04, and it works great.
andy_ppp 4y ago
I just sponsor marcan on GitHub here: https://github.com/sponsors/marcan https://github.com/sponsors/marcan but there might be better ways. Not sure about touchpad support.
unpopularopp 4y ago
Strange hill to die on when full hardware accelerated graphics doesn't even work. Touchpad is the last problem
- dordoka 4y ago
  https://asahilinux.org/2022/12/gpu-drivers-now-in-asahi-linux/ https://asahilinux.org/2022/12/gpu-drivers-now-in-asahi-linu...
  - pengaru 4y ago
    > This is still an alpha driver
    - viraptor 4y ago
      Yes, but it works. You can use it and it does acceleration on par for lower OpenGL versions.
- suction 4y ago
  [dead]
- flohofwoe 4y ago
  A touchpad experience that doesn't get in the way is at least as important as good desktop rendering performance though.
  - dordoka 4y ago
    Have any of you actually tried Asahi? Touchpad works flawlessly. A rust based, open source GPU driver is working since December and swiftly advances daily to a fully stable state.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    You should try using MacOS with software-accelerated desktop rendering. Having seen both sides of the fence, having hardware acceleration for your desktop is a king's ransom relative to trackpad gestures.
rowanG077 4y ago
I'm the opposite. I recently bought a MacBook pro and the latency of my mouse is so nauseating that I still use my old linux laptop for work.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  Not sure if you really do mean latency, or the much more subjective-and-common complaint about the acceleration curve. If you mean the latter, there are ways to customize that to be more like other desktop environments (sorry for not linking anything, currently on mobile and I don’t have time now to vet search results, but there are built in CLI settings which should be pretty easy to find). Mostly commenting in case the above leads in a helpful direction, but if you actually mean latency of trackpad input apart from the acceleration curve, I’m wildly curious to hear more about what you’re experiencing and expecting otherwise!
  - rowanG077 4y ago
    Acceleration was my first thought as well. But I turned that off with some command I found online. I'm not talking about the track pad (although that has quite a lot of latency as well). I'm talking about a mouse.
    - yazaddaruvala 4y ago
      Is your mouse wireless? I have no perceptible latency (and I game) on my M1 Pro MacBook with a wired mouse.
      - rowanG077 4y ago
        Yes it's wireless. The same mouse in windows or Linux is night and day though.

Y_Y 4y ago

https://asahilinux.org/support/ https://asahilinux.org/support/

btown 4y ago
Also don't forget to subscribe to Asahi Lina! https://www.youtube.com/c/AsahiLina https://www.youtube.com/c/AsahiLina

smoldesu 4y ago

Linux has had Magic Trackpad support long predating it's support for Apple Silicon. On KDE/GNOME sessions in Wayland, you'll get 1:1 touchpad gestures for desktop management. Asahi should be using Wayland out of the box, so you'll be getting trackpad gestures along with the regular HID support. Edit: here's what it looks like in action - https://youtu.be/aBEsxTVRsEo?t=100 https://youtu.be/aBEsxTVRsEo?t=100 It's also worth noting that Firefox ships with pinch-to-zoom and swipe-back gestures by default for Wayland now, too.

b112 4y ago
All of that is meaningless, if you move, and click, when typing.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  I've not noticed any issues with palm-rejection when typing on Linux. If your trackpad does have issues, you can disable it while typing (but most Windows Precision trackpads work fine). I'm mostly using the Magic Trackpad on my desktop though. It's very possible you might find a laptop with bad palm-rejection firmware, but I don't think that's an issue with these. Or Synaptics touchpads, in my experience.
  - themadturk 4y ago
    I've had problems with palm rejection in MacOS on the M1 MBA; nowhere near as bad as on Dell machines running various flavors of Linux, but they are there.
    - flohofwoe 4y ago
      Heh, interestingly I also noticed more problems on my 14" M1 MBP than I had on my previous mid-2014 13" MBP (or more specifically: any problems at all, because the touchpad on my previous MBP was pretty much perfect). I suspect it's simply because of the bigger touchpad. Even if the "error rate" is the same as before, there are just more potential errors because of the bigger touchpad surface.
flohofwoe 4y ago
It less about the gestures, but about the general "feel" of the touchpad: latency, accuracy, acceleration, palm detection etc etc etc "just works" on macOS. I never had even close to the same experience on Windows, let alone on Linux. Maybe there's a mythical "Mac-like" Linux touchpad driver out there that doesn't suck, but if it isn't installed by default on a vanilla Ubuntu setup (or any other maintream distro) then it might just as well not exist.
- jeppester 4y ago
  While my experience with Windows mirrors yours, I must say I've generally been quite fond with the feel of touchpads on Linux. Both my spouse's laptop and mine were dramatically better in Linux compared to the Windowses they came with.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  Good news! It's in vanilla Ubuntu now. The main holdup was Wayland - go get your Wintel machine and try booting up a Wayland session in KDE or GNOME. If your trackpad was manufactured with multitouch, chances are it will have gesture support. Any distro shipping GNOME 41-ish or Plasma >5.25 should have this by-default. As for the feel... I'm gonna be honest, I don't notice any difference from my Mac. If anything, my Magic Trackpad has more gesture options on my KDE machine out-of-the-box. Don't knock it till you've tried it!
  - flohofwoe 4y ago
    Erm well, I'm on Ubuntu 22.04 with Wayland and the touchpad is still crap :/ Worst thing is that I can't enable "tap to click" because the palm detection just doesn't work at all.
  - pantalaimon 4y ago
    Why Wayland? You get libinput on both Wayland and X11 and X11 has gestures since 21.1
  - coupdejarnac 4y ago
    I have an external Magic Trackpad 2 running with Wayland/Ubuntu 22.04, and it works great.

andy_ppp 4y ago

I just sponsor marcan on GitHub here: https://github.com/sponsors/marcan https://github.com/sponsors/marcan but there might be better ways. Not sure about touchpad support.

unpopularopp 4y ago

Strange hill to die on when full hardware accelerated graphics doesn't even work. Touchpad is the last problem

dordoka 4y ago
https://asahilinux.org/2022/12/gpu-drivers-now-in-asahi-linux/ https://asahilinux.org/2022/12/gpu-drivers-now-in-asahi-linu...
- pengaru 4y ago
  > This is still an alpha driver
  - viraptor 4y ago
    Yes, but it works. You can use it and it does acceleration on par for lower OpenGL versions.
suction 4y ago
[dead]
flohofwoe 4y ago
A touchpad experience that doesn't get in the way is at least as important as good desktop rendering performance though.
- dordoka 4y ago
  Have any of you actually tried Asahi? Touchpad works flawlessly. A rust based, open source GPU driver is working since December and swiftly advances daily to a fully stable state.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  You should try using MacOS with software-accelerated desktop rendering. Having seen both sides of the fence, having hardware acceleration for your desktop is a king's ransom relative to trackpad gestures.

rowanG077 4y ago

I'm the opposite. I recently bought a MacBook pro and the latency of my mouse is so nauseating that I still use my old linux laptop for work.

eyelidlessness 4y ago
Not sure if you really do mean latency, or the much more subjective-and-common complaint about the acceleration curve. If you mean the latter, there are ways to customize that to be more like other desktop environments (sorry for not linking anything, currently on mobile and I don’t have time now to vet search results, but there are built in CLI settings which should be pretty easy to find). Mostly commenting in case the above leads in a helpful direction, but if you actually mean latency of trackpad input apart from the acceleration curve, I’m wildly curious to hear more about what you’re experiencing and expecting otherwise!
- rowanG077 4y ago
  Acceleration was my first thought as well. But I turned that off with some command I found online. I'm not talking about the track pad (although that has quite a lot of latency as well). I'm talking about a mouse.
  - yazaddaruvala 4y ago
    Is your mouse wireless? I have no perceptible latency (and I game) on my M1 Pro MacBook with a wired mouse.
    - rowanG077 4y ago
      Yes it's wireless. The same mouse in windows or Linux is night and day though.