9 ms·

One thing i've seen desktop Linux struggle with, or rather the kernel or some other subsystem/drivers, is mouse and trackpad handling. On OSX (and possibly Win

by ugh123 3y ago

One thing i've seen desktop Linux struggle with, or rather the kernel or some other subsystem/drivers, is mouse and trackpad handling. On OSX (and possibly Windows although its been a long time), its soooooo silky smooth. But on multiple Linux distros i've used, including Pop and Ubuntu, it just doesn't feel right even after adjusting all sorts of settings. This is one thing thats kept me from full time Linux DE usage :( Edit: i'm using an Apple trackpad.

vladvasiliu 3y ago
Right now, at least on my machines, Linux/X11 is better than Windows. I think that on macOS, the hardware is also miles ahead of what you can get on a pc. This isn't to downplay the software because I remember my MBP's touchpad being wonky under windows a few years back. But things have improved. My HP EliteBook 845 G8 is fine under Linux/X11. Still somewhat worse than the 2013 MBP, but not nearly as horrible as the HP two generations back. I'd rate it as comparable to my 2012 unibody MBP. Under windows, it's fine, too, but it has a weird lag if you pay attention.
- dmz73 3y ago
  Mac trackpad keeps getting mentioned as something that is leagues above the rest. I recently had to use MacBook air M2 and the trackpad was horrible. It was big but hard to use and it couldn't handle simple click and drag style of gesture that works on both windows and Linux. The buzzing feedback was random and confusing. I had to get a mouse after a few minutes struggling with it. For me experience on 15yo Dell with trackpad 1/4 the size feels superior to Mac.
  - epolanski 3y ago
    Drag and drop is awful on the trackpad indeed.
  - smohare 3y ago
    Sounds like you’re just not familiar with the relevant gestures? I can’t say I’ve had a single issue with my M2 trackpad.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    Where are you encountering buzzing feedback? I don't think I've experienced that in any Mac laptop I've used in the past 20 years. There's the haptic feedback from clicking but that's singular, distinct, and non-repeating.
    - kroltan 3y ago
      Could be the electrical nature of the case? When I used a Macbook for work, if it was plugged in (original charger and cable and all) then dragging my finger over the chassi or trackpad could be described as a "haptic buzz", it felt like there were ridges on it, like corrugated cardboard. When unplugged and on battery, it would feel smooth.
      - gooseyman 3y ago
        I too experienced this with my MBP. Some thought I was crazy, others felt. My surface pro 2 did this as well!
      - vladvasiliu 3y ago
        Yep, that's probably because the power adapter wasn't grounded. Here in Europe, at least in 2013, the adapter had two ways of plugging into an outlet: a cable and a plug that could be clipped on. The plug only had two prongs, while the cable had a ground connector. I'd get the "buzz" if the adapter wasn't grounded. This also happens with my HP laptop if I plug it into an ungrounded usb-c adapter, so I'd expect the same thing to happen to iPads.
  - klooney 3y ago
    It's all about what you're used to, they're all fine until you switch.
    - maleldil 3y ago
      Nah. I was used to Dell trackpads for years, but I immediately felt the Macbook's was superior immediately. We have many Windows laptops in the family, and everyone uses mice most of the time. I only use a mouse on my Macbook when it's hooked up to an external display. Even then, I sometimes wish I had a Magic Trackpad.
      - vladvasiliu 3y ago
        > We have many Windows laptops in the family, and everyone uses mice most of the time. Yup, at work we have "high end" enterprise HP Elitebooks. We've had a general refresh 1.5-2 years ago. Basically, everyone lugs around a mouse. And they're not "nice" mice, either, so it's not like they're getting any extra fancy ergonomics or what not. Hell, generally they're the basic 3 button Logitech, without even a back button (don't know how people can go without this today).
  - qumpis 3y ago
    To me the acceleration of the touchpad of macbooks feels unnatural, even after prolonged used. And this is coming from a linux user on an XPS. It's so rare to find this opinion being shared though.
    - vladvasiliu 3y ago
      I actually like the acceleration, and when I switched from the mac to linux, I spent a long time trying to reproduce it. Never quite got there, though.
- babypuncher 3y ago
  I've never had a problem getting good mouse performance on Windows, under what circumstances are you noticing any lag? Windows, like X11, uses a hardware mouse cursor. It sends a sprite to the GPU along with coordinates and it is drawn by the GPU outside your compositor's pipeline.
  - vladvasiliu 3y ago
    My wired mouse always worked as expected. Ditto for my wireless mice when using their own adapters. My MX Master 3s had some very noticeable lag at one point, but it got fixed by some windows and/or Bluetooth driver update. The touchpad, though, has a bit of lag that's noticeable when making sudden changes. For "regular" use it's not much of a problem and not really noticeable if you don't pay attention. But I only rarely use Windows, so whenever I do, I see it for a few minutes at first. It's a bit like moving to a Bluetooth mouse after using a wired one. My main gripe with the touchpad under windows, though, is that I can't get the "tap and hold" behavior of macOS/Linux. Meaning that if a double tap and drag, say to select text, it will "hold the tap" for a short time if I lift my finger. Since the touchpad is of the hinged variety, it's impractical to actually press on it and move the finger while pressed. Bonus points for pressing near the top not exactly doing anything. I think there is a setting to tap and hold, but that'll hold the tap indefinitely (or at least very long) until you tap again.
beebeepka 3y ago
What are you complaining about? It's one thing to like MacBook trackpads but what exactly is wrong with trackpad/mouse handling in Linux? I use the same mouse on Mac, Linux, and windows. It feels exactly the same on each OS when configured to the same dpi/speed/accell and polling rate
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
windthrown 3y ago
I may just not be as picky as others but I have felt my System76 laptop's trackpad with PopOS is quite smooth. Improved from when I previously just installed Ubuntu on random Dell laptops.
- gdelfino01 3y ago
  My System76 laptop's trackpad is also very smooth. The only moment when the mouse freezes for a while (sometimes) is when using the default screenshot application.
serf 3y ago
>it just doesn't feel right even after adjusting all sorts of settings. personal opinion: have you looked at the sheer number of options exposed for a modern trackpad in linux? it's insane; I don't really have any problem understanding the difficulty in achieving a good set of defaults -- there were like 200 exposed parameters the last time I tried to get it 'just right'. (a modern synaptics' touchpad on a new dell XPS.) if I was on some quest to make it feel like Windows or OSX i'd probably have to give up -- not that those two feel better to me, but the sheer granularity is intimidating. NOTE: this isn't to say that I dislike how the trackpad feels in Linux; I usually always get to a nice set of parameters that feels good to me, they just aren't the same as Windows or OSX, although I have little doubt that the granularity is there for someone to get it right.
jwells89 3y ago
This is partially due to hardware. Trackpads are anything but standardized. For example those Apple's been using for quite a while now are built with the same touch controllers they use in iPhones (essentially making them iPhone screens sans screen panel), and on the extreme opposite end you've got cheap ones like is built into a Logitech media center combo board I bought several years ago which emulates a mouse instead of presenting itself to the connected device as a trackpad (and as you might expect, is terrible to use).
wffurr 3y ago
There was a project to address this but it’s been slow going: https://www.gitclear.com/blog/linux_touchpad_update_january_2023 https://www.gitclear.com/blog/linux_touchpad_update_january_...
- aorth 3y ago
  I've been sponsoring the project since the beginning. They have to add support at all layers of the stack, and in Linux that's a lot of (moving) targets! Wayland, libinput, Firefox, Chrome, GNOME, KDE, etc... it's open source. We can't just sit around and complain. For what it's worth, I've been using an Apple Magic Trackpad 2 for five+ years via USB and Bluetooth and it works well. Pinch to zoom, two-finger swipe for forward/backward in the browser, and others.
kccqzy 3y ago
I'm also using an Apple trackpad on Linux (over both Bluetooth and USB) and it works absolutely fine. I didn't need to adjust any settings. It feels native. No difference whatsoever that I can perceive between this trackpad on Linux and on macOS.
mark_l_watson 3y ago
I agree about the trackpad. I have two old Max Laptops running Ubuntu and the trackpad experience is perfect. That said, I have a style involving sometimes using both index fingers on my System76 trackpad and the experience is really good, but to be honest it always takes me a minute to get in a groove with it.
babypuncher 3y ago
Apple's Magic Trackpad has a disappointingly low polling rate. It feels bad even on my Mac when using it with a 120hz display. The built-in trackpad on the other hand feels great. Is it possible this is your problem?
ComputerGuru 3y ago
I've shared my opinion before on why mouse/trackpad handling is terrible on most Linux distributions [0], thanks to a misguided obsession w/ rewriting the entire stack and throwing away vendor-provided acceleration curves (most recently in order to provide gesture support instead of just building it on top of the correct, working solution). More importantly, there is a solution for fixing this and I've done my part by open sourcing a multi-touch gesture solution (userland daemon) that's driver-agnostic and runs on top of the vendor-provided drivers w/ their correct acceleration curves [1]. (But TBH I don't know if this applies to Apple's trackpad because I don't know if there are any first-party drivers w/ proper acceleration curves for Linux or if they've all been – unfortunately poorly – reverse engineered.) [0]: https://neosmart.net/blog/multi-touch-gestures-on-linux/ https://neosmart.net/blog/multi-touch-gestures-on-linux/ [1]: https://github.com/mqudsi/syngesture/ https://github.com/mqudsi/syngesture/
- tannhaeuser 3y ago
  Interesting. I came to accept the rewrite for libinput, considering it's being developed by the same developer as synaptics, and he/she who codes gets to decide whether to maintain something he/she considers a mess of course. However, the only possible reaction from my side was to leave behind what was causing physical pain for me and return to Mac OS. From past discussions ([1], [2]), it appears I'm far from the only one. I hope the extant desktop devs at Red Hat and elsewhere enjoy their big refactorings for the sake of it as a hobby (wayland, gnome, libinput, systemd) but man does it suck. It's such a regression I've given up any hope and think desktop Linux has already peaked around 2016-18. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35313903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35313903 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35428847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35428847
  - ComputerGuru 3y ago
    You’re not the only one to express this sentiment; a lot of people grappling with the discontinuities in the X11 to Wayland migration (and the gnome 2 to gnome 3 to gnome 4) have been saying the same thing. And that’s just for cases where the same developers have decided to move on to a new approach and the community has begrudgingly agreed to march along.
sebastiandb 3y ago
I'm using a Dell laptop, but I'm running vanilla GNOME on EndeavourOS (took out the distro-specific customizations in the installer), and its trackpad support seems perfect on mine. Everything is as smooth as I've seen on Windows or MacOS. The settings menu for it is nice. I especially like how it comes with a three-finger swipe left or right to switch workspaces/desktops, or a three-finger swipe up to get an overview of your current desktop. It all feels natural, and it gives me a sense of control; if I swipe slowly, it switches slowly, rather than just make the transition deterministically after I've swiped in some direction (something I've experienced elsewhere on Linux). I also like that you can use two-fingers to zoom in on a webpage with Firefox, just as on Windows. GNOME is the first DE I've tried where all of this touchpad support was implemented so well, although I haven't tried that many, to be fair. Sorry if I sound like an advertisement; I just wanted to be specific about what I like about GNOME's trackpad support as opposed to just saying that it "works fine for me."
- seabrookmx 3y ago
  I'm running stock Fedora (which uses GNOME) on a Framework laptop and it's the same for me. It's the first time I've had Mac level trackpad support and UI responsiveness out of any non-Mac.. windows or Linux.
smoldesu 3y ago
I'm using a Magic Trackpad 2; my experience has been just about perfect on KDE Wayland. GNOME's implementation is good too, but KDE's feels slightly more intuitive to me. KDE gives you more granular trackpad settings than MacOS offers out-of-box, and the Wayland session has more gestures than you can shake a stick at. I think you owe yourself another visit :)
tryptophan 3y ago
I'm using a razor basilisk and it just feels so awful to use on linux. The best part of the mouse is the great scroll wheel(very similar to the mx master but better) and this part does not work at all on linux. Scrolling in general is just a total mess in linux and it frustrates me so much that I went back to windows. The mouse movements also feel so janky for reasons I can't really put my finger on.
littlestymaar 3y ago
I got forced by my employer to use a mac two years ago, and I had the exact opposite experience: the trackpad was so far from what I was used to (from reversed scroll motion, to the many accidental and undiscoverable multi-touch or smart gesture shennanigans) that I just hated it, and I soon plugged a mouse. UX is a very subjective thing, and it depends a lot on your background: you're never going to feel instantly home when switching platform no matter how “polished” it is supposed to be.
- sangriafria 3y ago
  The only unexpected gesture I had was the swipe back/forward a page (I've had the same issue on mobile as well) but I just disable this particular gesture. Which gestures did you find that you accidentally triggered?
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  The reverse scrolling is something I have to disable on any Mac I use. It feels natural on a phone but backwards on a touchpad. Weird.
pjerem 3y ago
There have been incredible improvements on this precise topic during 2022. You should give your Apple Trackpad a new try on the latest Gnome on Wayland.
LoganDark 3y ago
GNOME Wayland supports Apple trackpads extremely well, based on my experience using a Magic Trackpad 2 with Fedora Silverblue.
inamberclad 3y ago
Seconded. On the rare times when I boot into the Windows partition on my laptop, the touchpad feels noticably better. Linux doesn't even handle all the quirks of my touchpad correctly so occasionally it'll get extremely slow and laggy, bordering on unusable! It's a Dell XPS-15 9510 and I haven't been able to solve this despite the laptop being out for almost two years. I've upgraded the touchpad firmware and the BIOS multiple times.
ekianjo 3y ago
I have never understood why people want so much from a trackpad. Keyboard shortcuts will do most things much faster and more reliably.
- phendrenad2 3y ago
  More reliably, but not as efficient. If you're navigating around using a touchpad, you can do gestures without leaving the touchpad.
flippinburgers 3y ago
I use pop os and for some nearly insanity level reason highlighting is VERY janky. It often looses focus, switches the start point, completely becomes unavailable, and generally has nearly driven me to go insane. Maybe it is my mouse but I kinda doubt it.
maxloh 3y ago
The missing piece seems to be mouse acceleration. Linux have it but the acceleration curve is quite different from Windows' offering. > A mouse acceleration feature accelerates the motion of your pointer. It enables users to move their pointer faster and cover more on-screen distance with merely a faster mouse movement rather than the physical distance the mouse covers. https://www.makeuseof.com/windows-10-disable-mouse-acceleration/ https://www.makeuseof.com/windows-10-disable-mouse-accelerat...

by ugh123 3y ago

vladvasiliu 3y ago

Right now, at least on my machines, Linux/X11 is better than Windows. I think that on macOS, the hardware is also miles ahead of what you can get on a pc. This isn't to downplay the software because I remember my MBP's touchpad being wonky under windows a few years back. But things have improved. My HP EliteBook 845 G8 is fine under Linux/X11. Still somewhat worse than the 2013 MBP, but not nearly as horrible as the HP two generations back. I'd rate it as comparable to my 2012 unibody MBP. Under windows, it's fine, too, but it has a weird lag if you pay attention.

dmz73 3y ago
Mac trackpad keeps getting mentioned as something that is leagues above the rest. I recently had to use MacBook air M2 and the trackpad was horrible. It was big but hard to use and it couldn't handle simple click and drag style of gesture that works on both windows and Linux. The buzzing feedback was random and confusing. I had to get a mouse after a few minutes struggling with it. For me experience on 15yo Dell with trackpad 1/4 the size feels superior to Mac.
- epolanski 3y ago
  Drag and drop is awful on the trackpad indeed.
- smohare 3y ago
  Sounds like you’re just not familiar with the relevant gestures? I can’t say I’ve had a single issue with my M2 trackpad.
- jwells89 3y ago
  Where are you encountering buzzing feedback? I don't think I've experienced that in any Mac laptop I've used in the past 20 years. There's the haptic feedback from clicking but that's singular, distinct, and non-repeating.
  - kroltan 3y ago
    Could be the electrical nature of the case? When I used a Macbook for work, if it was plugged in (original charger and cable and all) then dragging my finger over the chassi or trackpad could be described as a "haptic buzz", it felt like there were ridges on it, like corrugated cardboard. When unplugged and on battery, it would feel smooth.
    - gooseyman 3y ago
      I too experienced this with my MBP. Some thought I was crazy, others felt. My surface pro 2 did this as well!
    - vladvasiliu 3y ago
      Yep, that's probably because the power adapter wasn't grounded. Here in Europe, at least in 2013, the adapter had two ways of plugging into an outlet: a cable and a plug that could be clipped on. The plug only had two prongs, while the cable had a ground connector. I'd get the "buzz" if the adapter wasn't grounded. This also happens with my HP laptop if I plug it into an ungrounded usb-c adapter, so I'd expect the same thing to happen to iPads.
- klooney 3y ago
  It's all about what you're used to, they're all fine until you switch.
  - maleldil 3y ago
    Nah. I was used to Dell trackpads for years, but I immediately felt the Macbook's was superior immediately. We have many Windows laptops in the family, and everyone uses mice most of the time. I only use a mouse on my Macbook when it's hooked up to an external display. Even then, I sometimes wish I had a Magic Trackpad.
    - vladvasiliu 3y ago
      > We have many Windows laptops in the family, and everyone uses mice most of the time. Yup, at work we have "high end" enterprise HP Elitebooks. We've had a general refresh 1.5-2 years ago. Basically, everyone lugs around a mouse. And they're not "nice" mice, either, so it's not like they're getting any extra fancy ergonomics or what not. Hell, generally they're the basic 3 button Logitech, without even a back button (don't know how people can go without this today).
- qumpis 3y ago
  To me the acceleration of the touchpad of macbooks feels unnatural, even after prolonged used. And this is coming from a linux user on an XPS. It's so rare to find this opinion being shared though.
  - vladvasiliu 3y ago
    I actually like the acceleration, and when I switched from the mac to linux, I spent a long time trying to reproduce it. Never quite got there, though.
babypuncher 3y ago
I've never had a problem getting good mouse performance on Windows, under what circumstances are you noticing any lag? Windows, like X11, uses a hardware mouse cursor. It sends a sprite to the GPU along with coordinates and it is drawn by the GPU outside your compositor's pipeline.
- vladvasiliu 3y ago
  My wired mouse always worked as expected. Ditto for my wireless mice when using their own adapters. My MX Master 3s had some very noticeable lag at one point, but it got fixed by some windows and/or Bluetooth driver update. The touchpad, though, has a bit of lag that's noticeable when making sudden changes. For "regular" use it's not much of a problem and not really noticeable if you don't pay attention. But I only rarely use Windows, so whenever I do, I see it for a few minutes at first. It's a bit like moving to a Bluetooth mouse after using a wired one. My main gripe with the touchpad under windows, though, is that I can't get the "tap and hold" behavior of macOS/Linux. Meaning that if a double tap and drag, say to select text, it will "hold the tap" for a short time if I lift my finger. Since the touchpad is of the hinged variety, it's impractical to actually press on it and move the finger while pressed. Bonus points for pressing near the top not exactly doing anything. I think there is a setting to tap and hold, but that'll hold the tap indefinitely (or at least very long) until you tap again.

beebeepka 3y ago

What are you complaining about? It's one thing to like MacBook trackpads but what exactly is wrong with trackpad/mouse handling in Linux? I use the same mouse on Mac, Linux, and windows. It feels exactly the same on each OS when configured to the same dpi/speed/accell and polling rate

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

windthrown 3y ago

I may just not be as picky as others but I have felt my System76 laptop's trackpad with PopOS is quite smooth. Improved from when I previously just installed Ubuntu on random Dell laptops.

gdelfino01 3y ago
My System76 laptop's trackpad is also very smooth. The only moment when the mouse freezes for a while (sometimes) is when using the default screenshot application.

serf 3y ago

>it just doesn't feel right even after adjusting all sorts of settings. personal opinion: have you looked at the sheer number of options exposed for a modern trackpad in linux? it's insane; I don't really have any problem understanding the difficulty in achieving a good set of defaults -- there were like 200 exposed parameters the last time I tried to get it 'just right'. (a modern synaptics' touchpad on a new dell XPS.) if I was on some quest to make it feel like Windows or OSX i'd probably have to give up -- not that those two feel better to me, but the sheer granularity is intimidating. NOTE: this isn't to say that I dislike how the trackpad feels in Linux; I usually always get to a nice set of parameters that feels good to me, they just aren't the same as Windows or OSX, although I have little doubt that the granularity is there for someone to get it right.

jwells89 3y ago

This is partially due to hardware. Trackpads are anything but standardized. For example those Apple's been using for quite a while now are built with the same touch controllers they use in iPhones (essentially making them iPhone screens sans screen panel), and on the extreme opposite end you've got cheap ones like is built into a Logitech media center combo board I bought several years ago which emulates a mouse instead of presenting itself to the connected device as a trackpad (and as you might expect, is terrible to use).

wffurr 3y ago

There was a project to address this but it’s been slow going: https://www.gitclear.com/blog/linux_touchpad_update_january_2023 https://www.gitclear.com/blog/linux_touchpad_update_january_...

aorth 3y ago
I've been sponsoring the project since the beginning. They have to add support at all layers of the stack, and in Linux that's a lot of (moving) targets! Wayland, libinput, Firefox, Chrome, GNOME, KDE, etc... it's open source. We can't just sit around and complain. For what it's worth, I've been using an Apple Magic Trackpad 2 for five+ years via USB and Bluetooth and it works well. Pinch to zoom, two-finger swipe for forward/backward in the browser, and others.

kccqzy 3y ago

I'm also using an Apple trackpad on Linux (over both Bluetooth and USB) and it works absolutely fine. I didn't need to adjust any settings. It feels native. No difference whatsoever that I can perceive between this trackpad on Linux and on macOS.

mark_l_watson 3y ago

I agree about the trackpad. I have two old Max Laptops running Ubuntu and the trackpad experience is perfect. That said, I have a style involving sometimes using both index fingers on my System76 trackpad and the experience is really good, but to be honest it always takes me a minute to get in a groove with it.

babypuncher 3y ago

Apple's Magic Trackpad has a disappointingly low polling rate. It feels bad even on my Mac when using it with a 120hz display. The built-in trackpad on the other hand feels great. Is it possible this is your problem?

ComputerGuru 3y ago

I've shared my opinion before on why mouse/trackpad handling is terrible on most Linux distributions [0], thanks to a misguided obsession w/ rewriting the entire stack and throwing away vendor-provided acceleration curves (most recently in order to provide gesture support instead of just building it on top of the correct, working solution). More importantly, there is a solution for fixing this and I've done my part by open sourcing a multi-touch gesture solution (userland daemon) that's driver-agnostic and runs on top of the vendor-provided drivers w/ their correct acceleration curves [1]. (But TBH I don't know if this applies to Apple's trackpad because I don't know if there are any first-party drivers w/ proper acceleration curves for Linux or if they've all been – unfortunately poorly – reverse engineered.) [0]: https://neosmart.net/blog/multi-touch-gestures-on-linux/ https://neosmart.net/blog/multi-touch-gestures-on-linux/ [1]: https://github.com/mqudsi/syngesture/ https://github.com/mqudsi/syngesture/

tannhaeuser 3y ago
Interesting. I came to accept the rewrite for libinput, considering it's being developed by the same developer as synaptics, and he/she who codes gets to decide whether to maintain something he/she considers a mess of course. However, the only possible reaction from my side was to leave behind what was causing physical pain for me and return to Mac OS. From past discussions ([1], [2]), it appears I'm far from the only one. I hope the extant desktop devs at Red Hat and elsewhere enjoy their big refactorings for the sake of it as a hobby (wayland, gnome, libinput, systemd) but man does it suck. It's such a regression I've given up any hope and think desktop Linux has already peaked around 2016-18. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35313903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35313903 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35428847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35428847
- ComputerGuru 3y ago
  You’re not the only one to express this sentiment; a lot of people grappling with the discontinuities in the X11 to Wayland migration (and the gnome 2 to gnome 3 to gnome 4) have been saying the same thing. And that’s just for cases where the same developers have decided to move on to a new approach and the community has begrudgingly agreed to march along.

sebastiandb 3y ago

I'm using a Dell laptop, but I'm running vanilla GNOME on EndeavourOS (took out the distro-specific customizations in the installer), and its trackpad support seems perfect on mine. Everything is as smooth as I've seen on Windows or MacOS. The settings menu for it is nice. I especially like how it comes with a three-finger swipe left or right to switch workspaces/desktops, or a three-finger swipe up to get an overview of your current desktop. It all feels natural, and it gives me a sense of control; if I swipe slowly, it switches slowly, rather than just make the transition deterministically after I've swiped in some direction (something I've experienced elsewhere on Linux). I also like that you can use two-fingers to zoom in on a webpage with Firefox, just as on Windows. GNOME is the first DE I've tried where all of this touchpad support was implemented so well, although I haven't tried that many, to be fair. Sorry if I sound like an advertisement; I just wanted to be specific about what I like about GNOME's trackpad support as opposed to just saying that it "works fine for me."

seabrookmx 3y ago
I'm running stock Fedora (which uses GNOME) on a Framework laptop and it's the same for me. It's the first time I've had Mac level trackpad support and UI responsiveness out of any non-Mac.. windows or Linux.

smoldesu 3y ago

I'm using a Magic Trackpad 2; my experience has been just about perfect on KDE Wayland. GNOME's implementation is good too, but KDE's feels slightly more intuitive to me. KDE gives you more granular trackpad settings than MacOS offers out-of-box, and the Wayland session has more gestures than you can shake a stick at. I think you owe yourself another visit :)

tryptophan 3y ago

I'm using a razor basilisk and it just feels so awful to use on linux. The best part of the mouse is the great scroll wheel(very similar to the mx master but better) and this part does not work at all on linux. Scrolling in general is just a total mess in linux and it frustrates me so much that I went back to windows. The mouse movements also feel so janky for reasons I can't really put my finger on.

littlestymaar 3y ago

I got forced by my employer to use a mac two years ago, and I had the exact opposite experience: the trackpad was so far from what I was used to (from reversed scroll motion, to the many accidental and undiscoverable multi-touch or smart gesture shennanigans) that I just hated it, and I soon plugged a mouse. UX is a very subjective thing, and it depends a lot on your background: you're never going to feel instantly home when switching platform no matter how “polished” it is supposed to be.

sangriafria 3y ago
The only unexpected gesture I had was the swipe back/forward a page (I've had the same issue on mobile as well) but I just disable this particular gesture. Which gestures did you find that you accidentally triggered?
SoftTalker 3y ago
The reverse scrolling is something I have to disable on any Mac I use. It feels natural on a phone but backwards on a touchpad. Weird.

pjerem 3y ago

There have been incredible improvements on this precise topic during 2022. You should give your Apple Trackpad a new try on the latest Gnome on Wayland.

LoganDark 3y ago

GNOME Wayland supports Apple trackpads extremely well, based on my experience using a Magic Trackpad 2 with Fedora Silverblue.

inamberclad 3y ago

Seconded. On the rare times when I boot into the Windows partition on my laptop, the touchpad feels noticably better. Linux doesn't even handle all the quirks of my touchpad correctly so occasionally it'll get extremely slow and laggy, bordering on unusable! It's a Dell XPS-15 9510 and I haven't been able to solve this despite the laptop being out for almost two years. I've upgraded the touchpad firmware and the BIOS multiple times.

ekianjo 3y ago

I have never understood why people want so much from a trackpad. Keyboard shortcuts will do most things much faster and more reliably.

phendrenad2 3y ago
More reliably, but not as efficient. If you're navigating around using a touchpad, you can do gestures without leaving the touchpad.

flippinburgers 3y ago

I use pop os and for some nearly insanity level reason highlighting is VERY janky. It often looses focus, switches the start point, completely becomes unavailable, and generally has nearly driven me to go insane. Maybe it is my mouse but I kinda doubt it.

maxloh 3y ago

The missing piece seems to be mouse acceleration. Linux have it but the acceleration curve is quite different from Windows' offering. > A mouse acceleration feature accelerates the motion of your pointer. It enables users to move their pointer faster and cover more on-screen distance with merely a faster mouse movement rather than the physical distance the mouse covers. https://www.makeuseof.com/windows-10-disable-mouse-acceleration/ https://www.makeuseof.com/windows-10-disable-mouse-accelerat...