Linux touchpad mini-update

A few tiny notes from the land of Linux touchpad improvements:

  1. If you’d like to ensure you’re notified when I have substantive updates on the touchpad driver, I’ve setup a subscription list here: https://tinyletter.com/inedibill. It will be used only for sending updates about the touchpad driver, so probably no more than one email every couplefew months
  2. Matt Mayfield has been doing hero’s work on ensuring that Linux touchpad driver can successfully discard thumb input. His commits to this end are in this branch. In using the libinput debug tool, it’s apparent that Matt’s branch is excellent at allowing a second finger to rest on the touchpad while still taking the active finger input as cursor movement, whereas the latest libinput release tends to interpret any cursor movement with an extra finger down as scrolling. We’re working to make it possible to download an installable version of Matt’s changes soon.
  3. I’ve begun the process of attempting to enumerate the acceleration differences between Linux and Mac here. If anyone else wants to take a stab at concisely describing how acceleration differs on macOS vs Linux touchpad, feel free to drop me a line at bill -at- staticobject.com and I’ll aim to incorporate your findings.

Hoping to have a more robust update on this in the next couple months, or when we get an installable driver available (if sooner).

5 Replies to “Linux touchpad mini-update”

  1. Good news, Bill!
    You’re going to change experience of millions people.
    If you need help/donation/motivation just let us know. I’ll try to involve people into crowdfunding and will take participation in a campaign by myself.

  2. Great to see that you guys are working on it when the Linux foundation and Corporates have just ditched the Linux desktop space.

    If you’ll be able to bring it to even Microsoft version of precision touchpad, it’ll be a great feat which will delight so many users like me and bring them back to Linux. Believe it or not, touchpad is the only reason I left Linux. I try every version of Ubuntu and come back to Windows after disappointment.

    I’ve read several articles from major publications which say that the whole Linux community has a abandoned working or investing on desktop space. Linux community is just focus on servers.

  3. Keep up the great work guys! A great touchpad is all that separates Linux Desktop from being a solid competitor to Windows/Mac!

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