"Linux Touchpad like Macbook" Update: 2023 Progress on Smooth Scrolling
"Linux Touchpad like Macbook" Update: 2023 Progress on Smooth Scrolling
Perfectly replicating a Mac trackpad on a Linux system might be the final push for me to switch. Once those gestures are part of your flow, they are almost impossible to live without. It is one of the primary things Apple has ever gotten consistently right.
It's great to see how different people priorities are! For me this is one of the least interesting features ever, I have never used a laptop with a trackpad to do any (meaningful) work. That said, I am really glad if people with different priorities will get the chance to have their preferred flow in Linux!
I don’t usually like trackpads on other machines, but the gestures to switch desktops, zoom, change pages, and everything else that Apple builds in become so ingrained in your muscles that they save an enormous amount of navigational time. There really is no comparison. It is one of the essential features that keeps me from fully switching to Linux for every device in my home.
They always make them out of materials that feel luxurious to touch, which is another bit of computing philosophy I’ve adopted from them—if it touches my body, it should be extremely high quality. This goes for trackpads, mice, keyboards, clothes, and furniture.
Even if you don’t use their machines, it is worth checking out a demo of their gestures just to make you reconsider what a trackpad should be.
Permanently Deleted
PSH. They dont even know up from down.
It’s designed like pushing paper towards you or away from you—I actually find it more natural. Imagine the screen is a long piece of paper continuing down to your hand and you’ll see what I mean. Push away to push the screen up, pull towards yourself to pull the screen down.
Plus, if you don’t like it, it is easily customized in the trackpad preferences.
Smooth scrolling? Scrolling on linux isn't smooth? 😶🌫️ Does mac have some kind of delay with an ease in / ease out?
There's a lot of different aspects to a good touchpad experience but from my knowledge linux distros do not implement smooth scrolling, apps have to do it individually
But what is smooth scrolling? It's a serious question.
I always thought my scrolling experience was quite fluid. Even used a mac for about a week and went back to linux without missing anything.
Nice. I'm using a dell 7440 latitude with Mint Cinnamon and the track pad is glitchy to say the least.
Where exactly is this downloadable? I read the blog post and followed the links and still haven't figured out what to do.
I'm fairly sure the project is funding Linux kernel contributions, so if you're using latest kernel releases the improvements mentioned are already in (if your desktop manager makes use of them).
Looks like it's achieved by editing some .conf files. It's mentioned in the link provided.
Nice. I've personally been using Linux on a Mid 2012, and the touchpad responsiveness + gesture support has been one of my favorite things about the experience.
Really nice to see gestures in general getting more support in the wider Linux dev community 👍
It would be nice if libinput had any idea about scaling touchpad scrolling. You can make something that isn't entirely terrible by lying about your trackpad size and some other crap, but it is a royal pita.
I dare say, the last time i used an awt app was years ago. Im glad its there but eclipse really is being eclipsed by the infathomable horror that is electron based "editors".