Why does this seem like such a hard problem to solve for everyone that isn’t Apple, when Apple seemingly solved the Trackpad over a decade ago?
Is this it? An unknown ROI?
>the highly uncertain ROI for trying to align touchpad acceleration has prevented us from proposing a system change to the default Linux settings.
I can only speak for myself, but I gave up using trackpads on anything that isn’t a MacBook many years ago. Very occasionally I’ll try them and have always been disappointed. This prevents me from buying any laptop that isn’t a Mac and prevents me from running any OS that isn’t macOS on a laptop. I can’t be the only person who prioritizes the quality and feel of input devices when choosing a system. If this can make or break sales and adoption, it seems like the ROI would be pretty good. Even if we are just talking about Java app, if I’m using an obviously Java app that feels like a clunky Java app, I’ll usually find an alternative app that doesn’t feel horrible to use.
I’m glad progress is being made, but I struggle to understand why it’s still a problem at all when it’s been so good for so long with Apple. They even sell Bluetooth trackpads for desktops it’s so good.
It isn't... You can see this in an open source JavaScript implementation of kinetic scrolling by Apple called PastryKit[3] using a magic number momentum * 0.9.
The problem is, that on modern Linux environments, there is no clear responsibility for where scroll handling code belongs. Especially Kinetic / Inertial scrolling is handled way different than in macOS.
There is libinput (for handling and redirecting input events)
There is the display server
There is the compositor
There is the window manager
There is the app layer (every App, like Firefox, Gimp,
Currently kinetic scrolling is implemented on the App layer, every app has to handle the scrolling events manually to provide kinetic scrolling. This is not the case in macOS... the kinetic scrolling / rubber banding is handled within the OS.
In my opinion, the scrolling code could belong into the compositor, so that not every app developer has to write code to handle the scrolling, but still prevent unwanted effects like kinetic scrolling transfer between windows. Additionally, the kinetic scrolling approach is not configurable in Gnome... some touchpads / screens are scrolling way to fast, some are too slow...
I filed an issue[1] on cosmic in hope they'll get it right, but I don't have too high hopes that this is of much interest. On Fedora it works ok-ish with a little hack[2] called libinput-config.
It is an interesting thing to think about, I have friends that use Windows that are shocked that I willingly chose to get an external trackpad when I use my Mac as desktop.
Even more interesting is when I see my partner try to do something on my Mac using a trackpad, he seems... apprehensive? Like he is so afraid of doing the wrong thing and for me this trackpad has never done something I didn't want it to do. Like without even thinking about it while I was re-reading this comment, I had fingers just resting on my trackpad.
It has to be a combination of software and hardware. Likely shared software and hardware.
Like is wrist detection on the trackpad the same as the wrist detection on an iPad?
I believe that the 3D Touch tech that was once in the iPhone is the same tech that is in the track pad and the Apple Watch.
We saw them use the same (or similar) tech on the iPhone home button when they removed the physical button.
Is the multitouch functionality of the trackpad the same technology as in iPhones and iPads?
I am genuinely curious about some of these because they feel like the same technology from the outside looking in and it would explain a lot about why it works as well as it does.
And yeah on the ROI, I mean they sell a $130 external trackpad... that I had zero qualms about buying. Because when using my MacBook Pro as a laptop I heavily rely on gestures. Those gestures only work if the trackpad is as perfect as it can be. But those gestures is also software.
I think the reason is that "a good trackpad" as well as "a good keyboard" is not something that can be measured. Let's say that the cost of a good trackpad is equivalent to the cost of, let's say, 16 more Gb of RAM. Does the user given the same price choose to by the laptop with written on the box "32Gb of RAM" or the one that says 16? The first, because 32 is better than 16!
Apple is different because they have a product that is not comparable to other PCs, or they want you to believe that, thus they can put the price tag they want on it. Want they spend 100$ on a trackpad, they can, but a PC manufacturer can't.
Beside that, I think also the reason why PC manufacturer didn't invest on them is that most PC have Windows on them, and native multitouch trackpad gestures on Windows is rather a new thing (even on Linux, by the way, it started being supported as smoothly as macOS only with Wayland). Thus why have an hardware that supports something than in the end the OS that most people is using doesn't support?
I'm pretty sure there's some bias present due to adaption. I'm very much used to some non-MB touchpad, and whenever I use a MB it feels worse (too slow and mushy). I feel similar pain even when switching operating systems on the same laptop, which almost certainly has to do with muscle memory. In that sense "getting it right" for Apple users would mean other manufacturers would need to exactly copy Apple's behavior, and probably make other users unhappy.
I've been reading this kind of opinion for years, but I have always found the touchpad to be annoyingly slow under macOS.
On the other hand, MacBooks are basically the only laptops with a large enough touchpad to be comfortable, I don't know if there's some other secret sauce Apple algorithm in the firmware that contributes to the experience, but to me the perfect combination is with a MacBook running Linux, which is what I've been using for about 12 years now.
I also priorise input devices and because of that I would never get a laptop without a track point. Track pads (no matter which ones) are just such a poor choice of pointing device on a laptop, requiring one to essentially move the hand away from the keyboard. Unfortunately I'm pretty much locked into thinkpads now because all other track pointers are pretty crap. The again I can't really complain thinkpads are quite excellent compared to most other laptops.
Just goes to show that people can prioritise but come to very different conclusions
That “ROI” comment stood out. Companies should focus on making quality products without tying everything to ROI. The state of some software on Linux is just embarrassing. No attention to detail. Oh and I’ve been using Linux since I installed Slackware via floppy disks.
I have an external Apple touchpad and I got the Boot Camp drivers for it working on my gaming PC. I keep it to the left of my keyboard with my mouse on my right to alternate hands for RSI reasons and because even Windows has a lot of features that work best via trackpad gestures.
Generally Apple is only expected to make their own touchpads work well. So it's fewer devices to develop/test, the OS folks can talk to the hardware devs, see their designs and firware and even get to influence hardware decisions. Perhaps Apple puts in work for a handful of the top touchpad brands, but they also are incentivised to work with Apple.
Compare to linux, where they have zero influence over any of the hardware involved, and are expected to support every single hardware combo possible.
It's not a problem for Linux distributions that jettison all the GNU beliefs. ChromeOS has had perfect multitouch input with gestures for years. They ship opaque binaries from Synaptics or whomever and forget about the politics.
i'm going to be honest, maybe i'm just not particularly sensitive to poor input devices, but there have only been 2 trackpads i've used that actually felt bad, the vast majority are just... not noticeable to me? like i just use them and everything just feels fine. the only exceptions were a crappy old chromebook i had back in about 2016 and my current HP probook, itself a few years old now. i have heard very good things about the macbook trackpads, but macOS just doesnt interest me overmuch so i haven't ever bothered purchasing a macbook. it is something i'm considering, however, at least getting a used M1 air, just to try so i can see what all the fuss is about. maybe i'll be converted :)
Mac trackpads have been top notch as far back as I can remember, to the iBook G3. First one I actually owned was a derelict 2006 MacBook someone had thrown away in 2012, and it was still easier to use than the modern loaner Windows laptops at school.
And now with the modern Macs, I prefer the trackpad over a mouse even on a desk. Never would've thought it before.
I remember another one for the iPod interface but don't want to put that much research into it.
I think it comes down to patents and getting a bunch of small things just right... which you can do if you're Apple and you own the full stack, but is much more difficult supporting all the rest of random hardware.
Didn't Microsoft try to do something with the Surface laptops? Did that pan out?
But yes, it's mindboggling how bad trackpads are on PCs. I've had corporate Lenovo T-series, X1 Carbon, and Yoga for more than a decade, and while things have gotten slightly better I still need an external mouse
I may need to travel a lot by bus to my new job, and I'm now actually considering a Mac again even though Excel/PowerPoint is horrible due to missing hotkeys
One thing that might make a difference is that for a long time now, Apple trackpads are actually touchscreens sans screen. They use the same multitouch hardware as iPhones and iPads, which of course are precise and responsive.
I would guess that these are probably a bit more expensive than your run of the mill trackpad from e.g. Synaptics that ends up in the typical laptop.
In particular, Linux has been in the middle of a decade-long transition to a new display server that has split efforts for a while. The incumbant Xorg had a few attempts at Windows-style gesture libraries, but those were clunky and not at all like what you'd get on Mac (mostly). By the time quality solutions existed on x11, Wayland desktops were already shipping 1:1 gestures a-la Mac.
So basically, two separate philosophies took two roundabout paths to suit both their needs. It took some doing, but booting up KDE or GNOME in Wayland should "just work" with good trackpad gestures. Both desktops did a good job integrating it, IMO.
> They even sell Bluetooth trackpads for desktops it’s so good.
I use one! When they make one with USB-C charging I'll start recommending it to others again. =)
Pretty much everything besides Force Touch works, too. Multitouch gestures where you rotate or pinch your fingers, Bluetooth connectivity, it's all perfectly usable. The cherry on top is that KDE even has a little mouse-acceleration switch right in the Trackpad settings, no terminal commands required. I'd actually say the trackpad experience on modern Linux is great.
> Why does this seem like such a hard problem to solve for everyone that isn’t Apple
One factor is that many customers don't demand this kind of refinement, and of those who do many of them already use Macs.
Another is that it's not primarily a technical problem, but an organizational one. These kinds of interface refinements require coordinating across hardware, drivers, OS, toolkit, and applications. It would be hard for any one person to own that problem in Open Source Software.
A decade? That's nothing. macOS had a compositor 22 years ago, and Wayland still isn't as good. A bunch of unpaid amateurs just isn't good at moving humanity forward. At least the Linux kernel has some truly paid contributors; the talent bar is higher there. Apple software is a grand architected cathedral; most open source software is accreted, like a stalagmite.
I feel exactly the same as you do. I switched to MacBooks in 2007 primarily because of how much better the trackpad was than the Windows and Linux laptops I had. Still using a MacBook, haven't looked back.
I’m also baffled by this, but Apple's trackpads have been really good for much more than a decade. I remember doing Bézier curves on a G3’s trackpad and PC people thought I was a wizard.
multiple layers of gatekeeping, both corporate and individual. It’s understated in the article but present: hard battle to get access to configuration. After that experience there’s uncertainty if the battle to change the default is worth the investors level of effort.
> Why does this seem like such a hard problem to solve for everyone that isn’t Apple, when Apple seemingly solved the Trackpad over a decade ago?
The circle of enshittification, plain and simple.
Windows itself is the worst culprit, given that it took until (IIRC!) Windows 10 to arrive at a sensible gesture API and before that it was a hit-and-miss involving custom drivers for every model and barely any unification for gestures.
That in turn led to software for Windows never even utilizing the benefit of multitouch, and so in turn hardware manufacturers weren't pushed either because why invest effort when it's useless anyway?
On top of that, hardware build quality sucks on everything Windows. It's almost exclusively really small (i.e. half a cigarette pack) touchpads, recessed 2mm or more into the hardware, and full plastic that stains after less than half a year of moderate usage. In contrast, MacBooks ship with touchpads literally larger than the hands of someone who has worked in construction, and they're made out of glass that is nearly flush with the casing, so no dirt or anything even has a chance of accumulating.
(I don't even care about Linux at that point, where the hot mess of display drivers, window managers, UI frameworks and whatnot makes the complexity of "getting it right" even worse)
Even the mousewheel experience is janky as hell on Windows, I don't spend nearly enough time in Linux Desktop to know if it's equally as shit, but seriously; how can something that should be simple behave so badly?
It has little to do with 'ROI' and much more with the way hardware gets made.
Touchpad, touch screens and input devices are actually VERY difficult to get all the details right because you're dealing with material properties, differences that show up in manufacturing and even the geometry of the end user (small hands, big hands, wet hands, etc) among other factors.
Apple takes on the responsibility of their internal hardware (SoCs, all embedded boards, materials) AND software (embedded, OS, drivers, etc). They have a culture of caring about details and do a tremendous amount of R&D on these related details, at the design and manufacturing level, before releasing their product.
In contrast, almost all PCs are made by "integrators" (i.e. Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc) who take mostly off-the-shelf or semi-customized components, "integrate them" (I use it in quotes because often, as we know, products will ship with broken ACPI, EFI, broken drivers, etc) and put it out there. The drivers usually come from a hardware vendor who has little incentive to get "details" right, they will be lightly modified and then the OEM will shoehorn that into a semi-customized OS image and the device ships.
Further, traditional vendors like HP or Dell are under pressure to keep churning out "the next" iteration of their HW, so they don't really go back and improve drivers or firmware unless they are forced to.
On the Linux, FreeBSD and open-source side, you have an army of dedicated volunteers who often take highly sub-par or questionable hardware and work (often in the dark, or through reverse engineering) to make things reliable and add polish. The fact that things work "as well as they do" under modern Linux or *BSD is a miracle and mostly the result of individuals who care. There might be a few individuals at an OEM who care, but by and large the culture is not "we should make the most amazing product and provide documentation and support to the open-source community" and more "if they can get it figured out, good for them".
A more practical detail is the fact most touchpad ICs are made by Alps or Synaptics. And these devices include things like 'palm rejection' and other advanced features that haven't been enabled until somewhat recently because the IC vendor might not have shared the details with the people working on the open-source drivers.
You see nearly the same pattern with Android phones, how long before the next phone gets pushed out? Did they really fix the weird bugs that caused the previous phone to overheat, or the celluar link to drop calls unexpectedly? Fix the fact the satellite GPS doesn't work 1 out of 8 times?
Apple isn't perfect by any means, in fact I find the most current versions of macOS to be VERY user hostile but sadly most OEMs superficially copy Apple (i.e. moving to only ONE or TWO USB-C ports on a modern laptop) and miss the key point of making hardware & software actually working well together and openly supporting something other than Windows.
Look and feel of MacOS is great but above all I value freedom, serviceability and extendability. Therefore for some long time I had a 16GB Mac at work (because as Tolkien or someone else wrote, one does not simply put additional RAM in a MacBook) and 24 GB old Linux laptop at home and guess on which one did I run my VMs faster?
On the other hand Linux is still very unstable and uncomfortable. My Linux Mint Cinnamon was behaving unstable in prosaic cases, like entering PIN into my built in Wireless WAN.
I would love to see MacBook open for extension and interoperability
Apple has been perfecting its trackpad software since 1994, and it’s been getting better ever since. By contrast Apple keyboards have gotten worse since 1995 when it discontinued the Apple Extended Keyboard II. We don’t talk about Apple’s mice.
The TouchPads from Apple are good. Their keyboards are bad. There are two important I/O devices in a laptop, the keyboard and the display.
The keyboards from ThinkPads are near perfect and don’t fall apart. Lenovo decided to remove the 7th row to acquire more space for the TouchPad. Which is a design mistake because TouchPads don’t get better by becoming just bigger.
I never use the TouchPad in my ThinkPad. I mean it is there and works nice. Libinput improved a lot. But there is a TrackPoint in the keyboard. Never leave the home row. That is where HJKL is :)
I just got one of these with a Quadra 650 I bought. It's good but it's bugging the hell out of me that the bumps are on the d and k keys vs. the more modern f and j.
Eh, the multitouch magic mouse is pretty intuitive when you get used to it. Depending on what you do, it could be an excellent daily driver, but it does tend to have some limitations that can make it a non-starter...
The first-gen butterfly keyboards were pretty atrocious (although still kind of usable). I actually like the chiclet-key keyboards that Apple sells nowadays.
I remember this project starting. Not one single thing has changed that affects me as a result and I use Linux everywhere, daily. As far as I can tell it's a lot of small, niche work, that is almost completely immaterial to average users.
Meanwhile there's no stop scroll events across the ecosystem. The single biggest win that Linux touchpad needs is stop scroll events.
I'll bite my tongue on passing more judgement on how this effort has been portrayed over the past few years.
Is this something like what Qt `QScrollerProperties::MaximumClickThroughVelocity` controls? It's not exactly an event, but a click-through would stop the scroll immediately.
I welcome any and all improvements to touchpads on Linux and Windows systems. Switching from my personal MacBook to my work ThinkPad is like traveling back in time in terms of usability.
I always thought it was strange that people went through the inconveniences of plugging a mouse into their laptop when there was a trackpad right there until I had to use a Windows system and saw just how bad it was.
I just want the integrated touchpad of my Dell Latitude 9330 to work decently. The libinput driver is just crap with this model, to the point that I have to connect an Apple Magic Trackpad, and that works great. Synaptic driver works better for the internal one, but apparently it is old and deprecated and everybody writes that we should not be using that.
Was the Thinkpad running Windows? I find Linux (Debian distro running Wayland) on Thinkpads to be exceptionally good -- on par with (and in fact I would dare say better than) MacOS on Mac hardware.
I'm confused what this is trying to achieve. In my four years of Linux usage, I have had no complaints about the touchpad[0].
[0] Other than the issue where sometimes my touchpad requires an extra finger touch to work after resuming from suspend, but I have a hunch that is a hardware/firmware issue. In fact, I seem to recall that happening on a Windows machine once.
Same here. ThinkPad user for years, never had any issues. Whenever I help a friend with a MacBook I often feel like I cannot control the touchpad and so I ask the friend to do the clicking. I think the whole story here is people moving from Apple to Linux and wanting things to feel exactly the same.
Have you lived with a Macbook for a while? People who do generally feel pain when using any other trackpad afterwards. They are just much better. Feel more responsive. It becomes second nature and ingrained in your nerve pathways. Other trackpads feel wrong after getting used to a Macbook trackpad. They accelerate wrong.
As someone who has had multiple vendors with Ubuntu and Fedora installed, and having a work macbook, I can tell you the trackpad experience is much better on Apple. To me, it's the same user experience as going from a 60 hz screen to a 120 hz screen smoother animation, more immediate response, and better " intuitive " acceleration.
I find this project really confusing, as well. I'm sure sure this project is doing some good work, but I'd love if they take the time to catch us up a little bit, or maybe tweak their name to better reflect what it is they're actually doing. Like, for a modern Linux desktop on well supported modern hardware, what is this affecting?
From my perspective as someone who is rather picky about pixel perfect scrolling and animations, and happily using GNOME 45 with a Magic Touchpad, a Logitech mouse, and a Thinkpad touchpad, and finding nothing particularly amiss with any of those[0] … I'm, um, lost.
Is this all about backporting things to X11? I'm unfamiliar with how touchpads are over there nowadays. (Frankly that sounds like a waste of time to me, but if it still makes people happy, that's cool). Or has this project been actively contributing to exactly those things I'm using, and I just didn't realize?
[0] The Magic Touchpad is definitely a better experience than the Thinkpad one, but they both support multi-finger gestures, and Gtk apps correctly do pixel-perfect scrolling with kinetics and all that jazz. Could maybe do a better job doing the right thing when I lift my finger after scrolling at low speeds. If I used more apps with different toolkits, I know I'd be annoyed by the differences in behaviour between them, so there's definitely something missing there. Happily, since somewhat recently, pretty much every app I use supportsGtk 4 apps all support pixel-perfect scrolling with smooth scroll wheels, too, which is pretty cool.
The main thing I think is missing is universal support for kinetic/inertial scrolling, where you can fling your fingers on the touchpad and it keeps going after you stop. It seems to work with GTK but not Qt
I would find that incredibly annoying for touchpad inputs. Sure, I can understand kinetic input for touchscreens, but touchpads should be precision inputs, not the sort of thing where accidentally bumping two fingers on the touchpad sends you two pages down.
It's hard to guarantee a consistent experience given the large variation of hardware out there. Apple has the advantage of vertical integration, allowing them to optimally tune their drivers for a single device.
I think windows touchpads have also been improved after windows 10. Just a few years ago you could easily recognize windows user using notebook because they always brought a mouse with them, such bad was the touchpad on windows; actually it was way way worse than on linux.
That habit seems to be fading out, so I guess the touchpads have also been improving for windows users recently.
> at the moment, our lead developer is working on Linux touchpad improvements at less than 1/8 capacity. This means that progress is slow as he can only spend half a week per month on improvements.
How does it work? For most engineers, working on some complex task with this kind of scattered schedule means a need to spend the significant time on restoring the context.
Is there an initiative going on to make hibernation work on Linux?
I think this is a much higher priority... Honestly, this is the only thing that bothers me about Linux. I need to keep my machine suspended between use sessions, which is a waste of the planet's resources. Imagine that multiplied by the dozens (maybe 100's?) of thousands of engineers doing the same?
I have always been bewildered about the demand for suspend-to-disk (aka. hibernation). Suspend-to-RAM (aka. standby) consumes virtually no energy, doesn't create disk writes, and wakeup is instant.
The desire for hibernation seems to be constant and widespread though. Honest question, what do you expect from hibernation that you don't get from standby?
In this context, it's about scrolling when you slide your fingers along a trackpad surface.
It's supposed to be like "buttery smooth" scrolling on a smartphone. Whatever is on the screen should move with your fingers, with pixel accuracy and low delay, so it feels like you're dragging something around with your fingers.
When you let go, it might continue to scroll, as if you flicked the object with your fingers. This is called inertial scrolling. At the limits, it should show your attempt to scroll beyond the limits somehow. Apple and Android do this differently for patent reasons.
Of course with a touchpad the image isn't underneath your fingers like with a smartphone. So the scrolling amount doesn't have to be the same physical length as your finger movement. It's scaled, but it should feel similar to smartphone scrolling.
AFAIK: two fingers on the touchpad, move your fingers and observe how things scroll. When it is good you don't feel any lag and the content moves as fast or as slow (even by a single pixel) as your fingers are. Some inertial scrolling on top and that's it.
Privately I am using a lot of Chromebooks and it is good in my opinion, but I was never wowed by Apple implementation so maybe I am not a good person to ask.
> We now have smooth scrolling support in popular Java library called "awt." Many Java applications use this library underneath, including IDEs such as Eclipse, IDEA or Rider.
Eclipse doesn't use AWT, but rather uses SWT, a completely separate toolkit/API. That said, it's still great to hear that this is being improved.
Maybe this will allow mouse to scroll like a trackpad? That would be nice.
Particularly spreadsheets with tall cells can be almost impossible to scroll with a mouse because mouse scrolling is on lines and you need half lines to comfortably view what’s at the bottom of a tall cell. But use the track pad and it’s fine.
But while running a current Debian unstable with Mate desktop, I don't know in which applications I could test the gestures, neither do I know which gestures are supported
The touchpad experience on Gnome is largely great already. It has kinetic scroll and gestures.
My only gripe is that you can't control the scroll speed. Especially in Firefox it feels way to fast. There are config options for that, but they also apply to a mouse scrollwheel, which in turn will feel too slow.
I guess the lack of this setting on the OS level is caused by the ongoing discussion what the "correct" place for advanced touchpad settings would be (application/compositor/libinput), which has been mentioned in multiple comments here.
I grew up a PC gamer in the 2000s, so developed a very strong preference for no acceleration at all and a medium-low pointer speed.
Apple may have great trackpad hardware, but all the software smoothing/acceleration/inertia is infuriating when trying to make precise cursor movements.
I find myself constantly overcorrecting. These fractions of a second wasted add up in a day while trying to work. It's exhausting. Windows is even worse and I don't believe it's possible to completely get rid of the acceleration.
All these skeuomorphic attempts to apply physics to the UI are misguided. Why not bring back those old ugly icons and the wasted screen space too?
Seems like calling it "Linux touchpad like MacBook" is a way to make sure that no one will be willing to help you other than people who use MacBooks, and people who use MacBooks have no need for this.
I'm into "Linux touchpad with more tweakable and accessible parameters," or "Linux touchpad with better gesture support," but described like this, it's the type of thing I would ignore or not even hear about until it was an abandoned/dead project. I simply wouldn't realize that it's something useful for me to support. I exclusively use touchpads and Linux desktops, and while I've been frustrated at not being able to get the touchpad to feel like I would ideally want, if it felt like a Mac touchpad I would hate it.
A bunch of parameters that you can tweak to imitate MacBooks? Yes, please. A switch to turn your touchpad into a Mac touchpad? Who cares other than people who are only forced to use Linux for development on the job because their preferred Mac is too nerfed to allow them to allow them to get their work done?
As a larger statement, it seems that the strain of "What will make Linux catch on is making it more like Macs" has largely died off, largely because the people who want Macs buy Macs. It's a tactic as likely to be as successful as the "making Firefox indistinguishable from Chrome will make Chrome users switch to Firefox" pretense, and gets as much development support as the "making GIMP exactly like Photoshop" projects. The Firefox thing wouldn't have happened if they weren't completely funded by Google, and people who like Photoshop prefer Photoshop and aren't going to work on GIMP.
Somewhat relatedly, I hate hate hate clickpads. They are so much slower, unintuitive, and finicky yet every single laptop these days has the useless damn things.
I used to be so efficient with touchpads with tactile left and right mouse buttons. Now my modern laptop is practically useless to me without an external mouse, which significantly reduces its flexibility. I have spent days fiddling with utilities in Linux to alter settings to a state where its barely tolerable if I absolutely must use it.
We all know the "Year of the Linux Desktop" meme, but this deserves an answer.
I don't think linux will overtake apple on the desktop (which actually includes notebook and laptops) but the current state has been good enough for a few years. And I'm not saying it is good enough only in terms of it being ready or well rounded, I mean in terms of marketshare. Linux has surpassed the 4% mark in globalstats last month and combined with chromeOS (with which it share many drivers) had peaks above 7% last year; it is very likely that the record will be broken this year. Of course, globalstats may be inaccurate, but I guess it is a good picture of the trends.
This has had an interesting consequence: it is no longer a good idea to ignore linux on the desktop; at least not for hardware vendors. It's been a long time since I last saw a consolidated laptop with anything not working out of the box. In the software side, linux is still ignored by some big name vendors, namely adobe, microsoft and game studios. That point is still sad.
Now, considering most developers software are multiplatform and, besides games, most entertainment runs on the browser, the last obstacle is still software. As linux' usage grows (and although very slow, it grows increasingly faster), vendors will eventually have to change their minds about linux on the desktop. Nevertherless I don't think that will happen before the end of this decade, also I don't think will see linux beating windows or even mac on the desktop. But, since I'm not dependent on any non-multiplatform software, I really don't care: the current situation (even in terms of marketshare and the way it has been continually improving) is good enough for me and has been for some years already.
al_borland|2 years ago
Is this it? An unknown ROI?
>the highly uncertain ROI for trying to align touchpad acceleration has prevented us from proposing a system change to the default Linux settings.
I can only speak for myself, but I gave up using trackpads on anything that isn’t a MacBook many years ago. Very occasionally I’ll try them and have always been disappointed. This prevents me from buying any laptop that isn’t a Mac and prevents me from running any OS that isn’t macOS on a laptop. I can’t be the only person who prioritizes the quality and feel of input devices when choosing a system. If this can make or break sales and adoption, it seems like the ROI would be pretty good. Even if we are just talking about Java app, if I’m using an obviously Java app that feels like a clunky Java app, I’ll usually find an alternative app that doesn’t feel horrible to use.
I’m glad progress is being made, but I struggle to understand why it’s still a problem at all when it’s been so good for so long with Apple. They even sell Bluetooth trackpads for desktops it’s so good.
sandreas|2 years ago
The problem is, that on modern Linux environments, there is no clear responsibility for where scroll handling code belongs. Especially Kinetic / Inertial scrolling is handled way different than in macOS.
There is libinput (for handling and redirecting input events)
There is the display server
There is the compositor
There is the window manager
There is the app layer (every App, like Firefox, Gimp,
Currently kinetic scrolling is implemented on the App layer, every app has to handle the scrolling events manually to provide kinetic scrolling. This is not the case in macOS... the kinetic scrolling / rubber banding is handled within the OS.
In my opinion, the scrolling code could belong into the compositor, so that not every app developer has to write code to handle the scrolling, but still prevent unwanted effects like kinetic scrolling transfer between windows. Additionally, the kinetic scrolling approach is not configurable in Gnome... some touchpads / screens are scrolling way to fast, some are too slow...
I filed an issue[1] on cosmic in hope they'll get it right, but I don't have too high hopes that this is of much interest. On Fedora it works ok-ish with a little hack[2] called libinput-config.
[1]: https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-epoch/issues/204
[2]: https://gitlab.com/warningnonpotablewater/libinput-config.gi...
[3]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38619717/need-help-disse...
nerdjon|2 years ago
Even more interesting is when I see my partner try to do something on my Mac using a trackpad, he seems... apprehensive? Like he is so afraid of doing the wrong thing and for me this trackpad has never done something I didn't want it to do. Like without even thinking about it while I was re-reading this comment, I had fingers just resting on my trackpad.
It has to be a combination of software and hardware. Likely shared software and hardware.
Like is wrist detection on the trackpad the same as the wrist detection on an iPad?
I believe that the 3D Touch tech that was once in the iPhone is the same tech that is in the track pad and the Apple Watch.
We saw them use the same (or similar) tech on the iPhone home button when they removed the physical button.
Is the multitouch functionality of the trackpad the same technology as in iPhones and iPads?
I am genuinely curious about some of these because they feel like the same technology from the outside looking in and it would explain a lot about why it works as well as it does.
And yeah on the ROI, I mean they sell a $130 external trackpad... that I had zero qualms about buying. Because when using my MacBook Pro as a laptop I heavily rely on gestures. Those gestures only work if the trackpad is as perfect as it can be. But those gestures is also software.
alerighi|2 years ago
Apple is different because they have a product that is not comparable to other PCs, or they want you to believe that, thus they can put the price tag they want on it. Want they spend 100$ on a trackpad, they can, but a PC manufacturer can't.
Beside that, I think also the reason why PC manufacturer didn't invest on them is that most PC have Windows on them, and native multitouch trackpad gestures on Windows is rather a new thing (even on Linux, by the way, it started being supported as smoothly as macOS only with Wayland). Thus why have an hardware that supports something than in the end the OS that most people is using doesn't support?
blauditore|2 years ago
seszett|2 years ago
On the other hand, MacBooks are basically the only laptops with a large enough touchpad to be comfortable, I don't know if there's some other secret sauce Apple algorithm in the firmware that contributes to the experience, but to me the perfect combination is with a MacBook running Linux, which is what I've been using for about 12 years now.
cycomanic|2 years ago
Just goes to show that people can prioritise but come to very different conclusions
jxdxbx|2 years ago
I have an external Apple touchpad and I got the Boot Camp drivers for it working on my gaming PC. I keep it to the left of my keyboard with my mouse on my right to alternate hands for RSI reasons and because even Windows has a lot of features that work best via trackpad gestures.
advisedwang|2 years ago
Compare to linux, where they have zero influence over any of the hardware involved, and are expected to support every single hardware combo possible.
jeffbee|2 years ago
ambichook|2 years ago
harkinian|2 years ago
And now with the modern Macs, I prefer the trackpad over a mouse even on a desk. Never would've thought it before.
colechristensen|2 years ago
Here's one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks
I remember another one for the iPod interface but don't want to put that much research into it.
I think it comes down to patents and getting a bunch of small things just right... which you can do if you're Apple and you own the full stack, but is much more difficult supporting all the rest of random hardware.
eisa01|2 years ago
But yes, it's mindboggling how bad trackpads are on PCs. I've had corporate Lenovo T-series, X1 Carbon, and Yoga for more than a decade, and while things have gotten slightly better I still need an external mouse
I may need to travel a lot by bus to my new job, and I'm now actually considering a Mac again even though Excel/PowerPoint is horrible due to missing hotkeys
kayodelycaon|2 years ago
jwells89|2 years ago
I would guess that these are probably a bit more expensive than your run of the mill trackpad from e.g. Synaptics that ends up in the typical laptop.
smoldesu|2 years ago
So basically, two separate philosophies took two roundabout paths to suit both their needs. It took some doing, but booting up KDE or GNOME in Wayland should "just work" with good trackpad gestures. Both desktops did a good job integrating it, IMO.
> They even sell Bluetooth trackpads for desktops it’s so good.
I use one! When they make one with USB-C charging I'll start recommending it to others again. =)
Pretty much everything besides Force Touch works, too. Multitouch gestures where you rotate or pinch your fingers, Bluetooth connectivity, it's all perfectly usable. The cherry on top is that KDE even has a little mouse-acceleration switch right in the Trackpad settings, no terminal commands required. I'd actually say the trackpad experience on modern Linux is great.
asoneth|2 years ago
One factor is that many customers don't demand this kind of refinement, and of those who do many of them already use Macs.
Another is that it's not primarily a technical problem, but an organizational one. These kinds of interface refinements require coordinating across hardware, drivers, OS, toolkit, and applications. It would be hard for any one person to own that problem in Open Source Software.
7e|2 years ago
rad_gruchalski|2 years ago
Patents?
mb64|2 years ago
tambourine_man|2 years ago
raggi|2 years ago
mschuster91|2 years ago
The circle of enshittification, plain and simple.
Windows itself is the worst culprit, given that it took until (IIRC!) Windows 10 to arrive at a sensible gesture API and before that it was a hit-and-miss involving custom drivers for every model and barely any unification for gestures.
That in turn led to software for Windows never even utilizing the benefit of multitouch, and so in turn hardware manufacturers weren't pushed either because why invest effort when it's useless anyway?
On top of that, hardware build quality sucks on everything Windows. It's almost exclusively really small (i.e. half a cigarette pack) touchpads, recessed 2mm or more into the hardware, and full plastic that stains after less than half a year of moderate usage. In contrast, MacBooks ship with touchpads literally larger than the hands of someone who has worked in construction, and they're made out of glass that is nearly flush with the casing, so no dirt or anything even has a chance of accumulating.
(I don't even care about Linux at that point, where the hot mess of display drivers, window managers, UI frameworks and whatnot makes the complexity of "getting it right" even worse)
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
richrichardsson|2 years ago
vrinsd|2 years ago
Touchpad, touch screens and input devices are actually VERY difficult to get all the details right because you're dealing with material properties, differences that show up in manufacturing and even the geometry of the end user (small hands, big hands, wet hands, etc) among other factors.
Apple takes on the responsibility of their internal hardware (SoCs, all embedded boards, materials) AND software (embedded, OS, drivers, etc). They have a culture of caring about details and do a tremendous amount of R&D on these related details, at the design and manufacturing level, before releasing their product.
In contrast, almost all PCs are made by "integrators" (i.e. Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc) who take mostly off-the-shelf or semi-customized components, "integrate them" (I use it in quotes because often, as we know, products will ship with broken ACPI, EFI, broken drivers, etc) and put it out there. The drivers usually come from a hardware vendor who has little incentive to get "details" right, they will be lightly modified and then the OEM will shoehorn that into a semi-customized OS image and the device ships.
Further, traditional vendors like HP or Dell are under pressure to keep churning out "the next" iteration of their HW, so they don't really go back and improve drivers or firmware unless they are forced to.
On the Linux, FreeBSD and open-source side, you have an army of dedicated volunteers who often take highly sub-par or questionable hardware and work (often in the dark, or through reverse engineering) to make things reliable and add polish. The fact that things work "as well as they do" under modern Linux or *BSD is a miracle and mostly the result of individuals who care. There might be a few individuals at an OEM who care, but by and large the culture is not "we should make the most amazing product and provide documentation and support to the open-source community" and more "if they can get it figured out, good for them".
A more practical detail is the fact most touchpad ICs are made by Alps or Synaptics. And these devices include things like 'palm rejection' and other advanced features that haven't been enabled until somewhat recently because the IC vendor might not have shared the details with the people working on the open-source drivers.
You see nearly the same pattern with Android phones, how long before the next phone gets pushed out? Did they really fix the weird bugs that caused the previous phone to overheat, or the celluar link to drop calls unexpectedly? Fix the fact the satellite GPS doesn't work 1 out of 8 times?
Apple isn't perfect by any means, in fact I find the most current versions of macOS to be VERY user hostile but sadly most OEMs superficially copy Apple (i.e. moving to only ONE or TWO USB-C ports on a modern laptop) and miss the key point of making hardware & software actually working well together and openly supporting something other than Windows.
p0w3n3d|2 years ago
On the other hand Linux is still very unstable and uncomfortable. My Linux Mint Cinnamon was behaving unstable in prosaic cases, like entering PIN into my built in Wireless WAN.
I would love to see MacBook open for extension and interoperability
jxdxbx|2 years ago
ho_schi|2 years ago
The TouchPads from Apple are good. Their keyboards are bad. There are two important I/O devices in a laptop, the keyboard and the display. The keyboards from ThinkPads are near perfect and don’t fall apart. Lenovo decided to remove the 7th row to acquire more space for the TouchPad. Which is a design mistake because TouchPads don’t get better by becoming just bigger.
I never use the TouchPad in my ThinkPad. I mean it is there and works nice. Libinput improved a lot. But there is a TrackPoint in the keyboard. Never leave the home row. That is where HJKL is :)
deeg|2 years ago
ralphc|2 years ago
RIMR|2 years ago
dhosek|2 years ago
k8svet|2 years ago
Meanwhile there's no stop scroll events across the ecosystem. The single biggest win that Linux touchpad needs is stop scroll events.
I'll bite my tongue on passing more judgement on how this effort has been portrayed over the past few years.
iknowstuff|2 years ago
NoThisIsMe|2 years ago
mappu|2 years ago
redundantly|2 years ago
dhosek|2 years ago
xtracto|2 years ago
kiwijamo|2 years ago
LorenDB|2 years ago
[0] Other than the issue where sometimes my touchpad requires an extra finger touch to work after resuming from suspend, but I have a hunch that is a hardware/firmware issue. In fact, I seem to recall that happening on a Windows machine once.
yoavm|2 years ago
Sammi|2 years ago
unethical_ban|2 years ago
mr337|2 years ago
I have had a work MPB for years and while the touchpad is nice I just use the other touchpads with no problems.
Then again as I like bigger displays I use an external keyboard and mouse when not traveling.
dylan-m|2 years ago
From my perspective as someone who is rather picky about pixel perfect scrolling and animations, and happily using GNOME 45 with a Magic Touchpad, a Logitech mouse, and a Thinkpad touchpad, and finding nothing particularly amiss with any of those[0] … I'm, um, lost.
Is this all about backporting things to X11? I'm unfamiliar with how touchpads are over there nowadays. (Frankly that sounds like a waste of time to me, but if it still makes people happy, that's cool). Or has this project been actively contributing to exactly those things I'm using, and I just didn't realize?
[0] The Magic Touchpad is definitely a better experience than the Thinkpad one, but they both support multi-finger gestures, and Gtk apps correctly do pixel-perfect scrolling with kinetics and all that jazz. Could maybe do a better job doing the right thing when I lift my finger after scrolling at low speeds. If I used more apps with different toolkits, I know I'd be annoyed by the differences in behaviour between them, so there's definitely something missing there. Happily, since somewhat recently, pretty much every app I use supportsGtk 4 apps all support pixel-perfect scrolling with smooth scroll wheels, too, which is pretty cool.
circuit10|2 years ago
LorenDB|2 years ago
leighleighleigh|2 years ago
carpetfizz|2 years ago
asdff|2 years ago
glitchc|2 years ago
marcodiego|2 years ago
That habit seems to be fading out, so I guess the touchpads have also been improving for windows users recently.
kiwijamo|2 years ago
zx8080|2 years ago
How does it work? For most engineers, working on some complex task with this kind of scattered schedule means a need to spend the significant time on restoring the context.
rmbyrro|2 years ago
I think this is a much higher priority... Honestly, this is the only thing that bothers me about Linux. I need to keep my machine suspended between use sessions, which is a waste of the planet's resources. Imagine that multiplied by the dozens (maybe 100's?) of thousands of engineers doing the same?
cl3misch|2 years ago
The desire for hibernation seems to be constant and widespread though. Honest question, what do you expect from hibernation that you don't get from standby?
recursive|2 years ago
jlokier|2 years ago
It's supposed to be like "buttery smooth" scrolling on a smartphone. Whatever is on the screen should move with your fingers, with pixel accuracy and low delay, so it feels like you're dragging something around with your fingers.
When you let go, it might continue to scroll, as if you flicked the object with your fingers. This is called inertial scrolling. At the limits, it should show your attempt to scroll beyond the limits somehow. Apple and Android do this differently for patent reasons.
Of course with a touchpad the image isn't underneath your fingers like with a smartphone. So the scrolling amount doesn't have to be the same physical length as your finger movement. It's scaled, but it should feel similar to smartphone scrolling.
There's no arrow.
hawski|2 years ago
Privately I am using a lot of Chromebooks and it is good in my opinion, but I was never wowed by Apple implementation so maybe I am not a good person to ask.
wildrhythms|2 years ago
Toutouxc|2 years ago
feitingen|2 years ago
johnthuss|2 years ago
Eclipse doesn't use AWT, but rather uses SWT, a completely separate toolkit/API. That said, it's still great to hear that this is being improved.
cbsmith|2 years ago
wodenokoto|2 years ago
Particularly spreadsheets with tall cells can be almost impossible to scroll with a mouse because mouse scrolling is on lines and you need half lines to comfortably view what’s at the bottom of a tall cell. But use the track pad and it’s fine.
cweiske2|2 years ago
Wayland, XServer, Firefox, Gtk and QT patches were merged in 2021 already: https://bill.harding.blog/2021/06/06/linux-touchpad-like-mac...
But while running a current Debian unstable with Mate desktop, I don't know in which applications I could test the gestures, neither do I know which gestures are supported
cl3misch|2 years ago
My only gripe is that you can't control the scroll speed. Especially in Firefox it feels way to fast. There are config options for that, but they also apply to a mouse scrollwheel, which in turn will feel too slow.
I guess the lack of this setting on the OS level is caused by the ongoing discussion what the "correct" place for advanced touchpad settings would be (application/compositor/libinput), which has been mentioned in multiple comments here.
albertzeyer|2 years ago
I'm using this all the time on non-Mac platforms. Once you get used to this, it's hard to get back.
But I'm still waiting that such a feature gets more built into the core, e.g. libinput or so.
lagt_t|2 years ago
sublinear|2 years ago
Apple may have great trackpad hardware, but all the software smoothing/acceleration/inertia is infuriating when trying to make precise cursor movements.
I find myself constantly overcorrecting. These fractions of a second wasted add up in a day while trying to work. It's exhausting. Windows is even worse and I don't believe it's possible to completely get rid of the acceleration.
All these skeuomorphic attempts to apply physics to the UI are misguided. Why not bring back those old ugly icons and the wasted screen space too?
pessimizer|2 years ago
I'm into "Linux touchpad with more tweakable and accessible parameters," or "Linux touchpad with better gesture support," but described like this, it's the type of thing I would ignore or not even hear about until it was an abandoned/dead project. I simply wouldn't realize that it's something useful for me to support. I exclusively use touchpads and Linux desktops, and while I've been frustrated at not being able to get the touchpad to feel like I would ideally want, if it felt like a Mac touchpad I would hate it.
A bunch of parameters that you can tweak to imitate MacBooks? Yes, please. A switch to turn your touchpad into a Mac touchpad? Who cares other than people who are only forced to use Linux for development on the job because their preferred Mac is too nerfed to allow them to allow them to get their work done?
As a larger statement, it seems that the strain of "What will make Linux catch on is making it more like Macs" has largely died off, largely because the people who want Macs buy Macs. It's a tactic as likely to be as successful as the "making Firefox indistinguishable from Chrome will make Chrome users switch to Firefox" pretense, and gets as much development support as the "making GIMP exactly like Photoshop" projects. The Firefox thing wouldn't have happened if they weren't completely funded by Google, and people who like Photoshop prefer Photoshop and aren't going to work on GIMP.
luqtas|2 years ago
dang|2 years ago
Linux Touchpad like MacBook Update: 2022 progress and new poll - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34300973 - Jan 2023 (59 comments)
Linux Touchpad Like MacBook Update: Touchpad Gestures Now Shipping - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29555822 - Dec 2021 (419 comments)
Linux Touchpad like MacBook: Touchpad gestures land to Qt, Gimp and X server - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27414160 - June 2021 (3 comments)
Linux touchpad like a Mac update: Firefox gesture support live in nightly - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26102894 - Feb 2021 (16 comments)
Q3 Linux touchpad update: Multitouch gesture test packages now ready - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24700537 - Oct 2020 (136 comments)
Linux Touchpad Like a MacBook update: progress on multitouch - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23615218 - June 2020 (127 comments)
Linux touchpad: preliminary project funding, survey results - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23235609 - May 2020 (169 comments)
Linux touchpad like a MacBook Pro, May 2020 update - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23080435 - May 2020 (324 comments)
Linux touchpad like a MacBook: April 2020 update - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23039515 - May 2020 (155 comments)
Linux touchpad like a Macbook: progress and a call for help - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19485178 - March 2019 (212 comments)
Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17547817 - July 2018 (336 comments)
Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16843720 - April 2018 (1 comment)
Hucklederry|2 years ago
I used to be so efficient with touchpads with tactile left and right mouse buttons. Now my modern laptop is practically useless to me without an external mouse, which significantly reduces its flexibility. I have spent days fiddling with utilities in Linux to alter settings to a state where its barely tolerable if I absolutely must use it.
notso411|2 years ago
[deleted]
krunck|2 years ago
distantsounds|2 years ago
Right?
marcodiego|2 years ago
I don't think linux will overtake apple on the desktop (which actually includes notebook and laptops) but the current state has been good enough for a few years. And I'm not saying it is good enough only in terms of it being ready or well rounded, I mean in terms of marketshare. Linux has surpassed the 4% mark in globalstats last month and combined with chromeOS (with which it share many drivers) had peaks above 7% last year; it is very likely that the record will be broken this year. Of course, globalstats may be inaccurate, but I guess it is a good picture of the trends.
This has had an interesting consequence: it is no longer a good idea to ignore linux on the desktop; at least not for hardware vendors. It's been a long time since I last saw a consolidated laptop with anything not working out of the box. In the software side, linux is still ignored by some big name vendors, namely adobe, microsoft and game studios. That point is still sad.
Now, considering most developers software are multiplatform and, besides games, most entertainment runs on the browser, the last obstacle is still software. As linux' usage grows (and although very slow, it grows increasingly faster), vendors will eventually have to change their minds about linux on the desktop. Nevertherless I don't think that will happen before the end of this decade, also I don't think will see linux beating windows or even mac on the desktop. But, since I'm not dependent on any non-multiplatform software, I really don't care: the current situation (even in terms of marketshare and the way it has been continually improving) is good enough for me and has been for some years already.