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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 deskt

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.

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.