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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 entir

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.
abdullahkhalids 3y ago
Very cool. I am trying to compare the gesture support for syngesture and MacOS [0], which I have never used. In syngesture, it seems you can swipe left/right/up/down with 1-5 fingers. In MacOS, there are additional things you can do. * Spread or bring closer 2-4 fingers. * Swipe from the edge to do a different action than swiping in the bulk of the pad. Are there any system limitations on linux that prevent the implementation of such gestures? [0] https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT204895 https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT204895
- ComputerGuru 3y ago
  Thanks for looking. There is no such fundamental limitation and the code was written to support these and other gestures in the future. However I don’t use those other gestures myself and had no motivation to write in support for them. (They might also not be particularly in demand by users as I’ve never been asked to add them.) (Also, syngestures separately recognizes and supports both taps and swipes, and it supports both/either with anywhere from 1 to 5 fingers.)
  - abdullahkhalids 3y ago
    Oh, I hardly doubt anyone needs that many gestures. But just for the sake of fun math. The MacOS page lists 15 gestures. With syngestures, we can * Tap with 1-5 fingers. (5 actions) * Swipe with one finger (just the mouse) (1 action) * Swipe with two fingers either horizontally or vertically (usually scroll) (2 actions) * Swipe with 3,4,5 fingers either up/down/left/right (3x4=12 actions) Total is 20 actions. So actually there are more possibilities with syngestures.
    - ComputerGuru 3y ago
      Hahaha I never thought of it like that! But to admit it myself and to my own detriment, having seen people so accustomed to their phones try to “pinch and zoom” in real life makes me think that no number of additional gestures will make up for not supporting the ones macOS/iOS does.
askvictor 3y ago
Nice; I've been looking for a way to do two-finger-swipe -> Browser back/forward in Ubuntu/Pop for a few years now, and still haven't found a solution. Hoping this is it!
- ComputerGuru 3y ago
  That was my own motivation and this should work for you out of the box. (just that the default/sample config file is for three finger swipe, not two.)
- pantalaimon 3y ago
  I think Firefox supports this natively, but it’s hidden behind a config option (dom.w3c_touch_events.enabled) and you need to enable XInput2 by setting the MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1 environment variable

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.

abdullahkhalids 3y ago

Very cool. I am trying to compare the gesture support for syngesture and MacOS [0], which I have never used. In syngesture, it seems you can swipe left/right/up/down with 1-5 fingers. In MacOS, there are additional things you can do. * Spread or bring closer 2-4 fingers. * Swipe from the edge to do a different action than swiping in the bulk of the pad. Are there any system limitations on linux that prevent the implementation of such gestures? [0] https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT204895 https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT204895

ComputerGuru 3y ago
Thanks for looking. There is no such fundamental limitation and the code was written to support these and other gestures in the future. However I don’t use those other gestures myself and had no motivation to write in support for them. (They might also not be particularly in demand by users as I’ve never been asked to add them.) (Also, syngestures separately recognizes and supports both taps and swipes, and it supports both/either with anywhere from 1 to 5 fingers.)
- abdullahkhalids 3y ago
  Oh, I hardly doubt anyone needs that many gestures. But just for the sake of fun math. The MacOS page lists 15 gestures. With syngestures, we can * Tap with 1-5 fingers. (5 actions) * Swipe with one finger (just the mouse) (1 action) * Swipe with two fingers either horizontally or vertically (usually scroll) (2 actions) * Swipe with 3,4,5 fingers either up/down/left/right (3x4=12 actions) Total is 20 actions. So actually there are more possibilities with syngestures.
  - ComputerGuru 3y ago
    Hahaha I never thought of it like that! But to admit it myself and to my own detriment, having seen people so accustomed to their phones try to “pinch and zoom” in real life makes me think that no number of additional gestures will make up for not supporting the ones macOS/iOS does.

askvictor 3y ago

Nice; I've been looking for a way to do two-finger-swipe -> Browser back/forward in Ubuntu/Pop for a few years now, and still haven't found a solution. Hoping this is it!

ComputerGuru 3y ago
That was my own motivation and this should work for you out of the box. (just that the default/sample config file is for three finger swipe, not two.)
pantalaimon 3y ago
I think Firefox supports this natively, but it’s hidden behind a config option (dom.w3c_touch_events.enabled) and you need to enable XInput2 by setting the MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1 environment variable