[HN Gopher] Linux Touchpad Like MacBook Update: Touchpad Gesture...
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Linux Touchpad Like MacBook Update: Touchpad Gestures Now Shipping
Author : wbharding
Score : 313 points
Date : 2021-12-14 19:01 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gitclear.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gitclear.com)
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| I wrote a (userland) general purpose and driver/hardware-agnostic
| multitouch daemon w/ gesture support for Linux that works with
| the existing input stack (i.e. doesn't require switching to
| libinputy but also supports it), if anyone is interested:
|
| https://neosmart.net/blog/2020/multi-touch-gestures-on-linux...
|
| https://github.com/mqudsi/syngesture
|
| The biggest benefit is that you can use drivers with actually
| correct acceleration curves like xf86-input-synaptics (if you're
| on X11) instead of the offensively bad, NIH reimplementation that
| ships with libinput.
|
| Oh wait, I'm on HN so I shouldn't neglect to mention my project
| is written in rust!
| adisbladis wrote:
| As someone who absolutely despises libinput (I have an
| unsupported use-case which will never be supported) I applaud
| this effort.
|
| Thank you!
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > I have an unsupported use-case which will never be
| supported
|
| Can you please elaborate?
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Is this compatible with the new XInput 2.4 touchpad gestures?
|
| https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/proto/xorgproto/-/merge_...
| DerArzt wrote:
| > Oh wait, I'm on HN so I shouldn't neglect to mention my
| project is written in rust!
|
| Thanks for that, it gave me a chuckle.
| toomim wrote:
| Woah, this solves the acceleration problem? I want to try it!!
| Thank you!
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| You're most welcome. Please read the article before
| downloading or cloning from GitHub: this "solves" the
| acceleration issue by not breaking it in the first place;
| imho what libinput should have done by developing gesture
| support on top of the existing, working driver/hardware stack
| instead of throwing away the userland/kernel separation and
| all layers of abstraction.
|
| The linked project is only the userland daemon that uses the
| raw Linux Multitouch Protocol events to interpret gestures;
| to get the acceleration curves working again I recommend
| using this in conjunction with xf86-input-synaptics as your
| actual input driver (which provides the correct acceleration
| curves for compatible hardware - basically all touchpads
| since they all cloned synaptics' hardware once upon a time -
| but doesn't by itself have gesture support).
|
| Side note: Syngesture (this project) isn't dependent on X11
| or Wayland, but I don't know if anyone has ported or will
| port xf86-input-synaptics to Wayland, which is/was pretty
| much developed along the same lines as libinput: rewrite
| everything from scratch without taking into account that some
| things you're throwing out actually work really well
| (regardless of the fact that they are built for X11 or not),
| get rid of all abstractions that made it possible to plug in
| better components/replacements at various points in the
| stack, and without a concern for actual feature parity for
| what they are purportedly replacing.
| frostwarrior wrote:
| Does it support three finger drag? It's the MacOS feature I
| miss the most.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| You mean click with three fingers once and let go to initiate
| a drag, move the cursor with one finger on the touchpad to
| its destination, then click and let go with three fingers to
| end it?
|
| That's a very good question as I didn't consider stateful
| gestures (where state doesn't reset when all fingers are
| removed). It can be shimmed (without touching the code) in
| the configuration file by replacing the invocation of xdotool
| (or whatever) with a wrapper script that provides state
| enabling a "toggle mousedown" rather than just explicit,
| separate mouseup and mousedown events but I wonder if there's
| a clean way to model that into the event loop as serialized
| to/from the configuration file directly. Feel free to open a
| GitHub issue if you like.
| weikju wrote:
| > You mean click with three fingers once and let go to
| initiate a drag, move the cursor with one finger on the
| touchpad to its destination, then click and let go with
| three fingers to end it?
|
| Not quite.. on macOS, you can enable three-finger drag
| which means that when you touch down with 3 fingers and
| drag them on the trackpad, it's the equivalent of clicking-
| and-dragging with a mouse.
|
| There's no laborious use three fingers then one then three
| again. Just like swiping with 2 fingers does scrolling,
| using 3 fingers just grabs whatever's under the cursor and
| moves it (whether that's a window, or starts selecting
| text, moves a scrollbar, anything).
| lapinot wrote:
| A while since i used macos but isn't this the same action
| as taping then drag (eg down/up/down/drag/up)?
| pph wrote:
| After a quick glimpse it seems this only supports simple
| actions upon registering a gesture, however it should be
| possible to extend for that use-case.
|
| To abstract it a bit: You would need to
|
| 1. Trigger an event on the gesture start (detect 3
| fingers -> hold alt, mousedown)
|
| 2. Have mouse movement enabled
|
| 3. Trigger another event on gesture end (lift fingers ->
| mouseup, lift alt).
| nickysielicki wrote:
| Until haptic touchpads become available outside of MacBooks,
| touchpads are always going to suck under Windows and Linux.
| Gestures aren't the main thing preventing me from enjoying the
| touchpad on my Dell -- it's plenty big and it supports four
| finger gestures under Windows. The problem is that the entire
| thing shifts down a couple millimeters when I click and my finger
| ends up dragging slightly, which moves my click off what I'm
| clicking on.
|
| I don't understand how Apple has had a monopoly on this for half
| a decade. Lenovo had a thinkpad come out last year with a haptic
| touchpad but I haven't seen anything further. Is it patents?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This was a really surprising thing to read. For me the Apple's
| haptic touchpads were a slight _downgrade_ from their excellent
| non-haptic touchpads in <=2012 MacBook Pros. I liked the stiff
| clicky feel of the "real" touchpads over the haptic simulated
| click. Though the haptic touchpads do seem to be more reliable
| and are better at registering clicks near the top of the pad.
| leetrout wrote:
| They all have poor palm detection, too, IME
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| I had a coworker who worked on the haptic trackpad for 4 years
| before he left Apple and they shipped it a year after that (so
| at least 6 years or so of R&D), I'm sure there are dozens of
| patents around the technology and probably a high barrier for
| entry for other companies.
|
| He griped that they didn't even send him the 12" MacBook it
| initially shipped in and that the R&D for it was ring fenced
| from the Mac hardware teams so both were working in isolation
| until the product was developed with the tech.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| You're holding it wrong, just use the thinkpoint.
| pmontra wrote:
| Your experience is exactly the reason for I buy laptops with 3
| physical buttons and a touchpad that doesn't move. Then I
| disable tap to click. Nothing moves around and it's very clear
| which button I click, left middle or right.
|
| I also don't do any gesture except of course vertical and
| horizontal scrolling. Maybe pinch to zoom would be useful like
| on my phone. I got hotkeys for everything else I care about.
| Anyway I welcome this project, it improves Linux.
| thekyle wrote:
| I believe that the new Surface Laptop Studio has a haptic
| touchpad.
| cxr wrote:
| I'll make the same point I make every time this topic comes up:
| there are Chromebooks with great touchpad experiences, and that's
| been the case for a long, long time. This is not a "Linux" or
| "open source" problem; this is a problem of ignorance and/or
| insufficient interest on the part traditional (i.e. non-ChromeOS)
| distros and their users. It's nuts that this was and continues to
| be a high-profile, multi-year effort spawning discussions that
| end up framing the whole thing as elusive--rather than, you know,
| a solved problem that is pretty much not even worth mentioning
| but for the long tradition of poor execution.
| jeppesen-io wrote:
| I can't really tell the diffeence between Gnome 40 and
| Chromebooks touchpad experiences. What makes Chromebooks so
| much better?
| jeffbee wrote:
| I think the main difference is Chromebook users did not have
| to wait a decade to get working touchpad gestures.
| [deleted]
| dylan604 wrote:
| You don't need gestures or touchpad at all in a terminal. I
| surprised the touchpad doesn't go against some sort of ethos,
| then again, maybe that's why they suck so badly.?? Real coders
| don't let their hands leave the keyboard!
| visarga wrote:
| Between mouse and touchpad I know which requires less hand
| movement away from the keyboard.
| HatchedLake721 wrote:
| Main reason I don't use external keyboard and mouse.
| lpasselin wrote:
| Which Chromebooks?
| leetrout wrote:
| Here's what I'm looking for:
|
| Solid linux laptop with a macbook style centered keyboard and
| touch pad. (system76 has offset touchpad / keyboard and it drives
| me insane)
|
| Near perfect palm detection on the track pad like a macbook.
|
| Does anyone have a recommendation? I've not tried any newer
| lenovo lappies nor have I tried linux on a Razer laptop which
| looks very similar to a macbook.
|
| Maybe just wait for linux to run on M1?
| pmontra wrote:
| +1000 for the centered keyboard (and touchpad) with 15"+
| screens. I'd pay an extra to get rid of the number pad.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Pixelbook Go.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| What's wrong with OSX on M1? It works great for all CLI stuff.
| howinteresting wrote:
| The BSD coreutils are inferior to the GNU ones, and using the
| GNU coreutils on Macs is a hassle.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Disagree!
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29456115#29456758
| howinteresting wrote:
| I like the uutils idea but they have a very long way to
| go. The GNU coreutils are still the very best you can
| get.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Can you quantify that? How is it the best or better than
| the rust ones?
| howinteresting wrote:
| No, of course I can't quantify that. Not everything in
| life is quantifiable. But I can tell you from over 15
| years of experience writing shell scripts across Linux
| and MacOS that the GNU coreutils are superior. Little
| things like 'find -name' without '.' working, to bigger
| ones like 'sed -i' and 'readlink -f'.
|
| I love Rust but uutils are really not mature enough,
| which is understandable given how new they are -- the
| linked thread has examples of where they fall short. I
| would be delighted to start using them once they become
| drop-in replacements for GNU coreutils (so existing shell
| scripts don't break). Meanwhile, I use fd and bat in
| interactive shells (but can't use them in shell scripts
| distributed to others obviously).
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| >The GNU coreutils are still the very best you can get.
|
| I don't understand this statement then, have you heard of
| this https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/blob/master/GU
| IDE.md
|
| It sounds like you want bash POSIX support and it to be
| default before you would use them. The error nobody else
| replicated, and its stable enough to be included in
| debian.
| https://sylvestre.ledru.info/blog/2021/03/09/debian-
| running-...
| trasz wrote:
| GNU coreutils are an exercise in software bloat.
| xtracto wrote:
| I use both OSX and Linux extensively. I had the choice to go
| either way for my work computer and I chose OSX (intel chip).
|
| A couple of days ago I wanted to use a Ruby gem (
| https://github.com/rubyjs/therubyracer ) for some random
| project. To install the library (compile native bindings),
| OSX wanted me to download an install 12 GB of crap (full
| XCode, it didn't work with the command line tools)... In
| linux it was just a matter of downloading and installing the
| gem (100MB at most). That's crazy.
|
| What I dislike more and more about OSX is how they have been
| aggresive against developers and technical people in the last
| years (like, why do I have to jump through hoops to modify my
| /usr/lib folder with SUDO/root? I AM ROOT ASSHOLE OS, LET ME
| DO WHATEVER I WANT TO MY COMPUTER.
|
| But other than that, it's OK.
| visarga wrote:
| Use MacBook to ssh into your real Linux box or VM. It's a
| beautiful terminal for Linux.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| If you have the butterfly keyboard no it doesn't!
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Have you tried the Nix package? Not sure if homebrew has
| the same issue.
| sce wrote:
| It reminds of a coworker, a frontend developer and Linux
| user. He asked for a macbook pro from his employer, and after
| using it for a year he switched back to Linux. He said it was
| because he missed using it.
|
| I use Linux primarily because of ideology, but luckily it's
| also the best OS out there, for me at least and many others.
|
| For others Mac OS or Windows will be better for them, and
| that's fine.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I use both, I don't LOVE OSX, and find it annoying, but its
| just as bad as gnome to me.
| josteink wrote:
| > What's wrong with OSX on M1?
|
| It's not open-source and it's not Linux.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Their kernel at least is and it's Unix. From a user
| standpoint I don't have any issues with it, it's like if
| Linux could run photoshop natively and had good paid
| software and you can't change the UI. It's not ideal but it
| works for me.
| alerighi wrote:
| But the rest of the system is not. I want I computer that
| I can use in the way that I want, with the software that
| I want, and not a computer that must be used as Apple
| wants, and limits you in using an hardware that you
| bought.
|
| The reason why I use Linux is that I can do whatever I
| want on my computer, I don't have to have signed
| applications, annoying prompts to tell me that the
| software is not Apple approved (till there are the
| prompts and Apple doesn't decide to forbid all unsigned
| software as on iOS), and similar.
|
| Also from an hardware standpoint Mac are overpriced
| machines, with insufficient I/O that forces you to bring
| a bag of adapters with yourself and components that are
| all soldered on the motherboard, impossible to upgrade.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| > But the rest of the system is not. I want I computer
| that I can use in the way that I want, with the software
| that I want, and not a computer that must be used as
| Apple wants, and limits you in using an hardware that you
| bought.
|
| You can't run a lot of software on linux, you can run
| less of it compared to windows and osx. All hardware is
| limited, all the x86 laptops have soldered CPUs, there is
| no such thing as unlimited hardware.
|
| >Also from an hardware standpoint Mac are overpriced
| machines, with insufficient I/O that forces you to bring
| a bag of adapters with yourself and components that are
| all soldered on the motherboard, impossible to upgrade.
|
| M1 is not overpriced for its benefits, the x86 stuff I
| agree with though and fuck their keyboards. No more Jony
| Ive, so ports are back!
|
| >The reason why I use Linux is that I can do whatever I
| want on my computer, I don't have to have signed
| applications, annoying prompts to tell me that the
| software is not Apple approved (till there are the
| prompts and Apple doesn't decide to forbid all unsigned
| software as on iOS), and similar.
|
| The problem I have with this is that its not that you can
| do whatever, you MUST do it and use a lot of time in
| configuration. I find the root prompt just as annoying in
| linux. I just want a working environment, not a bunch of
| software that asks me to set every preference.
| fsflover wrote:
| > Their kernel at least is
|
| It does not solve main problems of the proprietary
| software: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-
| even-more-impor....
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I don't see the problem, I want to run better software I
| have to pay for, not crappy free stuff, and giving choice
| to do that is not a negative. If linux did not allow any
| paid software, it would not make it a better OS.
| fsflover wrote:
| > better software I have to pay for, not crappy free
| stuff
|
| Free software is not about price, it's about freedom. It
| can (and should!) be paid for.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I have tried to replace photoshop with free software
| forever, and nothing still comes close to CS2. I don't
| care to make my life harder or use crappier tools because
| its not free. There is nothing free about crippling a
| workflow.
| leetrout wrote:
| No snark: I love OSX but as I get older I would like to
| support free as in beer and free as in speech computing
| devices.
|
| I think there could be some real hope for Linux on a laptop,
| especially the M1, and being able to use all the Linux tools
| directly (looking at you, containers).
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I mean from a user standpoint I don't have any issues, I
| would use the M1 until Linux on there gtt set s stuff like
| GPU acceleration, at least OS X is free beer and the kernel
| is FOSS even though it's BSD.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Well, except Docker. And all of your apps that are still x86
| (and ARM support is WONTFIX), and then there's the 32-bit
| applications and the 32-bit libraries, and the plate-spinning
| clusterfsck that we call Homebrew, and your coreutils have to
| be manually upgraded or replaced altogether, and then you're
| probably going to want to find a replacement for
| Terminal.app, and while you're at it you may as well install
| a better window manager like Amethyst or Yabai. What's that?
| I can't disable the normal desktop interface and need to make
| do with 4gb of memory bloat at all times? That's alright I
| guess, I'll just disable system integrity protection and try
| to remo- hold on, you're telling me that there's a new update
| coming through? And none of my software is ready yet? That's
| unfortunate, it's already rebooting... and now we're in a
| boot loop. Siri, when was my last Time Machine backup? Siri?
| You there?
|
| It may be hard to believe, but sometimes, for some people,
| just installing Linux is what they need.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| have you looked at the https://frame.work/ laptop? dunno about
| palm detection but its centered like the macbook
| randomluck040 wrote:
| This is so great but unfortunately not available in Germany
| yet. Looking forward to it.
| leetrout wrote:
| Thanks! That looks really cool
| Engineering-MD wrote:
| I've not tried it, but the framework laptop I'm told is fairly
| similar.
| fsflover wrote:
| https://puri.sm/products/librem-14
| devwastaken wrote:
| All of that looks decent except for the barrel power adapter.
| fsflover wrote:
| It can also be charged from usb-c.
| bubblethink wrote:
| It's 2-3 generations old at this point. Really wouldn't
| recommend getting something this old. Comet Lake -> Ice
| Lake -> Tiger Lake -> Alder Lake (now). The starlabs
| starbook is quite interesting if you care about coreboot.
| kesslern wrote:
| I haven't had any issues with palm detection on my Thinkpad X1
| Extreme. It's just worked since day 1. I have both Gen 1 and 2.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I have a Thinkpad X1 Yoga Gen 6, and haven't had any issues
| with palm detection either, unless I rest it too hard and it
| registers a physical click (which maybe only happened once or
| twice).
| fsflover wrote:
| I can't wait until all proprietary software becomes obsolete due
| to FLOSS becoming good enough for everyone. From what I see the
| proprietary operating systems are in decline now, whereas Linux
| is getting better and better all the time.
| [deleted]
| rvz wrote:
| Hardly a dent has been made on the desktop. I still see users
| running either Windows or macOS.
|
| ChromeOS is possibly the 'closest' to this (and that is
| proprietary), but Google is going to replace it with Fuchsia
| anyway; meaning that we will soon be back to square -1 on the
| Linux desktop.
|
| Oh dear.
| snemvalts wrote:
| Just wait until your wifi or suspend breaks on a distro change
| on your 5 yr old laptop.
| wilsonjholmes wrote:
| I have had terrible luck with suspend/hibernation on all of
| the laptops I have used Linux on, so I just resort to
| shutting down and starting up... I have SSDs so it is not
| that big of a deal, but still. I cannot wait for the day I
| can simply close my laptop lid and have the battery not drain
| ~12% an hour.
| pmontra wrote:
| Which laptop do you have? I'd like to keep clear of it and
| its manufacturer when I'll have to buy a new one. My nearly
| 8 years old ZBook from HP loses maybe 3% per hour with 32
| GB RAM to keep powered. It was much less with 16 GB. Don't
| you have a 128 GB laptop, right?
|
| More seriously, did you check if people have the same
| problem with that laptop and Windows? Or some firmware
| update from the manufacturer to fix the battery.
| WJW wrote:
| Wifi is the worst. I had a wifi driver fail on me the other
| day after the updates included a newer kernel version that
| didn't work with the current wifi driver. Newer ones were
| available on github, but downloading requires wifi.
| Eventually I managed to make a hotspot out of my phone and
| connect to github via bluetooth.
|
| Otherwise, no complaints.
| fsflover wrote:
| Never happened in 10 years. I recommend to try hardware
| _designed_ for Linux and not "Windows certified". Ideally,
| with preinstalled Linux.
| snemvalts wrote:
| Happened to my x220
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > I can't wait until all proprietary software becomes obsolete
| due to FLOSS becoming good enough for everyone.
|
| The problem is 'good enough' is a moving target and FOSS isn't
| exactly closing the gap.
| [deleted]
| marcodiego wrote:
| It definitely closed many gaps. Most servers, supercomputers,
| embedded devices, routers, smartphones, smart tv's... depend
| on free software one way or another.
|
| A few software markets have been completely dominated by
| FLOSS: system software, compilers, lexers, shells, kernels,
| codecs, programming languages, arduino-like tools...
|
| On the professional market, just look at what blender became.
| Other examples for end users: OBS is probably the most used
| broadcast software available. People ignore that most people
| don't need the features Sound Forge and Audacity has probably
| many more users. Other examples in this same category: VLC,
| Handbrake, Inkscape, 7-zip, Calibre, Krita...
|
| Even on the places where it is not a leader, it is sometimes
| good enough. I can totally easily edit a video using
| kdenlive; record, edit and master a music using Audour;
| compose a scene using Natron; compose music using MuseScore;
| edit 3d models using Wings3D; design an environment using
| SweetHome3D; render using many of the top-notch state-of-art
| FLOSS renders like Luxrender or whatever comes with Blender
| these days.
|
| Desktop software is much more beautiful, intuitive and stable
| than before. And it doesn't try to milk you for money,
| attention or personal data. Flatpaks, AppImages and snaps
| finally make it possible for users of the most popular
| distros to use the same software, the same version, working
| the same way regardless of the distro.
|
| Now, go back a few years. The situation was entirely
| different. You could do nothing of what was described using
| only FLOSS if you go back enough. Or, you could, but it would
| be complicated and unstable. This is no longer the case.
|
| Of course there are still gaps, but many have been closed
| over the years and most remaining ones are slowly closing.
| iamstupidsimple wrote:
| > A few software markets have been completely dominated by
| FLOSS: system software, compilers, lexers, shells, kernels,
| codecs, programming languages, arduino-like tools...
|
| While not discounting how good coreutils are, everything
| you've listed is basically a commodity at this point.
|
| Companies who live higher in the stack swoop in and claim
| all of the value.
| commoner wrote:
| That's not a bad thing. Proprietary software tends to
| lead by implementing new features first, and then FOSS
| alternatives catch up over time. As the software category
| matures and innovation slows down, the FOSS solutions
| become strong enough to overtake the proprietary
| solutions in popularity. At that point, the software
| category is commoditized.
|
| It's a gradual release of intellectual property into the
| commons, similar to the expiration of patents and
| copyrights, but at a pace determined by market forces
| instead of government regulation.
| 29083011397778 wrote:
| I would absolutely disagree! 20 years ago, Linux required
| some arcane incantations, but was sold in stores, and was
| somewhat useful. 10 years ago, Linux required patiently going
| through lots of forums to find out why sound didn't work, and
| tweaking some config files - though fewer than before. This
| year, Linux was featured on LTT as "Can we viably switch /
| use Linux for home use as regular geeks?"
|
| You're right that "Good Enough" takes many forms, and it is a
| moving target. But whether it's closing the gap might just be
| a difference in which timescale one uses.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| Sure, you may be able to download an ISO or USB image and
| relatively easily install Linux today without worrying
| about what sound or graphics driver you need like you could
| with other OSes 20 years ago. But that doesn't mean the
| competition didn't move forward as well.
|
| Today I can wipe the entire drive on my MacBook and re-
| install everything from scratch over the internet, without
| install media, directly from the firmware. When can I buy
| an off-the-shelf computer that can do this with Linux ?
|
| After installing macOS I set up my account, enter my iCloud
| details and all my photo's just appear, I can send and
| receive text messages, phone and video calls. My clipboard
| syncs to my phone, and I use my phone to take a photo or
| scan a document and insert it directly into whatever
| document I was typing. I can start typing an e-mail on my
| phone, decide it's too long to type on the little on-screen
| keyboard and seamlessly move the task to my desktop. I can
| take a photo of some text on my phone, copy it as plain
| text, and then paste the text into anything on my desktop.
|
| All of this with no setup required.
|
| How much time will it take Linux to be able to do all of
| this ? And what else will it have to catch up to by then ?
| ximeng wrote:
| My Ubuntu laptop is just fine apart from every now and then
| randomly pausing and not accepting user input for a minute or
| so at max CPU. Seems to be maybe Chrome related, so that's
| maybe the next thing for me to try to migrate off after
| Windows.
| pmontra wrote:
| It reminds me of an issue with the gsconnect GNOME extension.
| They apparently fixed it. I reinstalled it today and it seems
| OK.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Is it an extension doing it or low ram? Never happeneds to me
| on skylake thinkpad even with 8GB ram, just slow to open.
| ximeng wrote:
| Quite difficult to debug as system is unresponsive when it
| happens, so would have to delve into logs. Maybe a Chrome
| memory management or graphics acceleration issue, I don't
| use many extensions but it's possible I guess. 12GB of RAM,
| but that can get eaten up by Chrome pretty easily.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I use ungoogled chromium, try the flatpak, new binary
| doesn't work in Ubuntu, works great for me. Try with them
| all off and turn them on one by one.
| [deleted]
| handrous wrote:
| I think it's more likely Google's new Fuchsia OS will displace
| Linux for most desktop use (and maybe more than just that) than
| that Linux will get its shit together and ship a GUI layer good
| and cohesive enough to compete. And I write that as someone who
| used Linux desktops heavily (and, for long stretches,
| exclusively) for about a decade.
|
| It's, what, BSD licensed? Open source, but not GPL-alike Free
| Software. Still, that's pretty decent.
|
| I reckon the only way that doesn't happen is if they pull the
| plug (quite possible) or they shift to keeping the GUI layer
| proprietary (also quite possible).
| trasz wrote:
| BSD is Free Software, FSF-certified.
| handrous wrote:
| Ah, even after all these years I get tripped up on which
| terms only apply to viral-license open source.
| trasz wrote:
| There is just one: "GPL". I'm not aware of any other
| viral licenses. But I suspect you've meant copyleft
| instead, which is something different from virality -
| there are plenty of copyleft licenses, eg MPL, which are
| not viral.
| handrous wrote:
| Maybe that's what I was looking for. FFS, way back in the
| mists of time I'm pretty sure I had a _hat_ that read
| "COPYLEFT". You'd think I'd be able to get it correct.
| outworlder wrote:
| > From what I see the proprietary operating systems are in
| decline now
|
| It is a very slow decline, but it's being largely going on
| unnoticed. Rewind the clock 20 years, there were all sorts of
| paid software offerings everywhere on the desktop. You couldn't
| uncompress a zip without paying (or stealing from) someone.
| Unless you were a Linux rebel running slackware or whatever.
|
| We can do a lot on Linux now. We have thousands of Steam games
| running on the Proton+Wine+Vulkan combination (often with
| similar performance, in some cases even better). Most of the
| missing apps are available in the browser - which is a blessing
| and a curse.
|
| Everything is moving to open source software. The issue now is
| different: we have commercial offerings on top of open source,
| closing their gardens. Take Android. Ridiculous amount of open
| source software, arguably the most deployed software worldwide.
| Controlled by a corporation.
|
| Lots of apps have moved to the web, where we have a similar
| problem. Their foundations are most often based on open-source.
| But they are behind some corporation or another.
|
| Heck, the big cloud providers all have in their core a whole
| plethora of open source software.
|
| The operating system concept, as we know it, is in decline.
| This may be a global maxima for FOSS OS. I hope it isn't.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _Rewind the clock 20 years, there were all sorts of paid
| software offerings everywhere on the desktop. You couldn 't
| uncompress a zip without paying (or stealing from) someone._"
|
| Windows XP had built in zip support and was released 20 years
| and 4 months ago. Before that, from memory pkunzip was free
| and it was zip which needed payment, but wikipedia links to a
| review of an early version from a BBS here
| http://cd.textfiles.com/rbbsv3n1/pool/pkpolicy.zip which
| states that it was free for noncommercial use, shareware
| license for commercial use, and that Phil Katz had helped
| people implement unzip (on deflate algorithm I think) in
| their own code without charging for his help.
|
| You move onto talking about Steam (not open source) which is
| used as a DRM and payment engine for many closed source games
| - and that is one of the more popular uses of closed source
| software (as well as things like Microsoft Office), XBox,
| Playstation, Nintendo and PC gaming. Having proprietary Steam
| running a proprietary game after you login to Valve's
| proprietary online authentication, on a free reimplementation
| of proprietary Win32, but hooray because there's Linux
| somewhere inside, doesn't seem very close to the future
| Stallman was hoping for or the ideals of free software or
| open source. What would it mean to change the source of an
| online game? Probably that you can't connect to any servers
| anymore. What would it mean to move your FIFA team to another
| game engine?
|
| The GDPR at least gives Europeans some rights to download
| their data from cloud services in a machine readable format,
| but strangely you don't seem to have that right to your data
| in a proprietary game stored on your local machine with
| access gated through a proprietary online service.
| marcodiego wrote:
| >> "Rewind the clock 20 years, there were all sorts of paid
| software offerings everywhere on the desktop. You couldn't
| uncompress a zip without paying (or stealing from)
| someone."
|
| > Windows XP had built in zip support and was released 20
| years and 4 months ago. Before that, from memory pkunzip
| was free and it was zip which needed payment, but wikipedia
| links to a review of an early version from a BBS here
| http://cd.textfiles.com/rbbsv3n1/pool/pkpolicy.zip which
| states that it was free for noncommercial use, shareware
| license for commercial use, and that Phil Katz had helped
| people implement unzip (on deflate algorithm I think) in
| their own code without charging for his help.
|
| Free as in beer. Not FLOSS.
|
| > You move onto talking about Steam (not open source) which
| is used as a DRM and payment engine for many closed source
| games - and that is one of the more popular uses of closed
| source software (as well as things like Microsoft Office),
| XBox, Playstation, Nintendo and PC gaming. Having
| proprietary Steam running a proprietary game after you
| login to Valve's proprietary online authentication, on a
| free reimplementation of proprietary Win32, but hooray
| because there's Linux somewhere inside, doesn't seem very
| close to the future Stallman was hoping for or the ideals
| of free software or open source. What would it mean to
| change the source of an online game? Probably that you
| can't connect to any servers anymore. What would it mean to
| move your FIFA team to another game engine?
|
| Stallman about non-free games on linux:
| https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonfree-games.html
| fossuser wrote:
| For the vast majority of users the OS is just a way to get to
| the web.
|
| The web (browser) is the OS, but the apps are centralized,
| incompatible, and primarily SaaS subscriptions (or worse, ad
| based). Desktop operating systems are primarily thin clients
| to these services. Native apps on the existing stack are dead
| outside of a few niche applications. It's why I think Urbit
| is cool, if you built an OS from first principles to take
| into account the web what would it look like? It's basically
| moving the API layer up the stack to include auth and
| application distribution.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Is android or iOS proprietary? The desktop is declining, it's
| market share is so bad that windows literally build an
| android emulator and Linux subsystem. I'd say it's less on
| desktop but all the computing is mobile.
|
| It would be better to move away from all OS and just have ISA
| software.
| vlunkr wrote:
| I think that for it to really take off someone needs to release
| a laptop where linux is truly supported over windows, and they
| maintain, or help maintain, a distro to runs perfectly on that
| hardware. That's the only way you're going to avoid the driver
| issues that will ruin the experience for typical users.
|
| I know there are some, like System76 but looking at their site
| quickly, they start at around $1,000. For the average user
| that's waaay too high, especially if they can get what they
| need out of a chromebook.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Chromebooks existed for years, even has coreboot.
|
| They have them for Dell, and Lenovo Thinkpads. The main issue
| is there is no benefit for the end user. Why would they want
| to switch to linux as an end user?
| deadbunny wrote:
| Knock $50 off the price and people will care.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| They just installed Windows on their netbooks last time
| it was even cheaper. The people who think steam deck will
| make linux mainstream are going to just see the next deck
| come with windows and everyone who gets a deck installing
| windows on it to play games.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| You mean FOSS, not flossing, right?
|
| There are many people who love open source and yet applaud when
| proprietary solutions move things forward - good for them.
|
| There is place for everyone with good intentions, we can all
| make life interesting, no need for war tinted atmosphere.
| fsflover wrote:
| https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.en.html
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Thanks
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| 2022 will be the year of Linux on the desktop.
| duped wrote:
| Android, iOS, Windows, and OS-X together account for 97% of
| consumer computing devices if this is to be believed
| https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-
| share/all/worldwide/202....
|
| Android is the only "open source" out of the bunch, but most
| devices running it have plenty of closed source internals the
| devices' are useless without.
|
| There's still no viable FOSS OS for mobile/tablets. Not that
| they don't exist, just that they don't have the featureset and
| development velocity of Android and iOS.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I don't think there will ever be a FOSS OS for consumers that
| is the prefered option.
|
| There is too many moving targets to ever be "done" and
| chasing those customers is profitable and requires money.
| That's the perfect domain of a business.
|
| I'm ok with this too. As another comment mentioned, once upon
| a time you couldn't unzip a file with outpaying. Now it's
| standardized and free (as in freedom and beer). Let apple and
| google and Microsoft fight and spend money tweaking the gui
| just right and bundling in whatever crap they want. FOSS
| community will lag behind and pick up the tail freeing
| everyone not on the bleeding edge.
|
| Imagine if things like unzipping wasn't free in 2021? How
| much shittier phones and services would be. Hell even Niche
| projects like the oculus quest would be a mess without basic
| tools being ubiquitous.
|
| Unlike some FOSS supporters, I'm ok with commercial interests
| in software. 2021 might not be free, but it's still in the
| making - if 2020 is free, everyone can help build the best
| 2021 from a more level playing field when we can stand on the
| free shoulders of giants.
|
| Ps: companies should donate more to open source software
| development and protection and maintenance.
| fsflover wrote:
| > There's still no viable FOSS OS for mobile/tablets.
|
| I am using my Pinephone with Mobian/Phosh as a daily driver
| now. It's a bit rough but getting good enough quickly.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| At least the OSX kernel is open source and easy to port to,
| Saurik and the early jailbreakers got apt and all the CLI
| tools on the first gen iPhone.
|
| >There's still no viable FOSS OS for mobile/tablets. Not that
| they don't exist, just that they don't have the featureset
| and development velocity of Android and iOS.
|
| Tell me what I can't do with Android that linux can do, I can
| do the reverse of what I can do on Android that linux on
| mobile can't. Its there if you want it. All the new Android
| phones are getting mainline. Check out my thread.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29373106
|
| Sailfish has good Android emulation as well.
| duped wrote:
| I know it's changed recently, but for quite awhile the
| answer to "what can I do on Android that Linux on mobile
| can't" was "make a phone call."
|
| That class of product issue is why FOSS is different than
| the marketplace. It's often behind in creature
| comforts/UI/UX and lightyears beyond in technical
| capability. Because FOSS developers spend time on things
| they care about, not about what the market does.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I prefer when FOSS piggybacks onto larger projects.
| F-droid is amazing, I have all the comforts of real
| android and the nerdy stuff from FOSS and root addons. I
| get the best of both worlds, great hardware for the
| price, great support from a good UI, and great support
| from the ports of CLI and nerds who also like to have
| their android phones be real linux computers.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| People have been saying this for the last 20 years and I've yet
| to build a linux workstation that isn't at least 20-30% more
| time consuming to configure, maintain and tweak than a Mac and
| sometimes a lot more time than that.
| hasel wrote:
| Bootup archlinux image, type in archinstall, make sure to
| select gnome... It's that easy.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Arch is not a good goto if you don't want to spend a lot of
| configuration time
| edgyquant wrote:
| To get an OS? Sure. To get one setup to run my dev
| environment, games and media? I have to pull in a GitHub
| repo and run a script that installs and configures
| everything for me (before the usual tasks of logging in to
| a hundred websites.) I swore Linux was super easy to setup
| for years, and as someone whose daily driver is MacOS now I
| still agree it's the easiest to setup to my needs, but all
| 3 main OSs can get you a system in a couple
| clicks/keystrokes. Windows is probably the most difficult
| to setup for me (MacOS is at least unix so my scripts for
| Linux mostly work on the Mac as well) and I only use it for
| my gaming pc (which was for years Ubuntu, I just decided to
| install windows on it since I only use it to game anymore.)
|
| I love Linux, it's been my OS since Vista came out and I
| switched to SUSE Community Edition, but we get so used to
| our OSs we forget part of the ease of use is being
| familiar. When I problem pops up on Ubuntu I can solve it
| within a minute. When one pops up on Mac it takes me some
| googling (and I give up on windows.) None if these systems
| are all the easy (or difficult) to use, it's just a few
| basic concepts and then a ton of time figuring stuff out.
| outworlder wrote:
| > People have been saying this for the last 20 years and I've
| yet to build a linux workstation that isn't at least 20-30%
| more time consuming to configure, maintain and tweak than a
| Mac and sometimes a lot more time than that.
|
| That's a high bar to clear. One thing that Apple does that
| makes a lot of sense is that they own the hardware and the
| software. Hackintoshes are a good indication of how things
| would look like if they had to support more hardware than
| they do.
|
| This is one of the reasons why I have recommended Macs for
| the less tech savvy members of my family. Just works, great
| manufacturer support (noone really comes close), has things
| like Time Machine to keep backups running. My "support calls"
| dropped drastically.
|
| My mother had a Linux netbook(remember those?) for banking
| purposes but a Mac for general usage. She would be able to
| browse on Linux, but things would get messy the moment she
| would want to, say, use her cricut machine.
|
| Let's compare with Windows? That truly takes a whole lot of
| time, specially because the OS seems to "rot" over time. It's
| become less of an issue (possibly also because our hardware
| is so powerful). My Windows desktop has taken way more work
| to maintain than my Linux machines(plural) + Macs. I have to
| keep that for VR, Fusion360 (going to ditch that as soon as I
| can) and the odd game that doesn't work properly (Sea of
| Thieves in-game chat?). Can't wait to get rid of it and use
| only Linux - which takes hardly any "maintenance" at all
| (other than installing updates and even that is just a
| click).
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| > _That 's a high bar to clear. One thing that Apple does
| that makes a lot of sense is that they own the hardware and
| the software._
|
| It's an ideological bar though. Pick a line or models of
| laptops and officially support that specific line. Keep the
| list smallish and from popular manufacturers. Everything
| else deals with it they way we do now.
|
| Linux on supported hardware is pretty low maintenance. But
| it's still not quite as nice as MacOS. And god forbid you
| get the latest hardware.
| pkulak wrote:
| This seems off to me. I remember when I was using Mac, if I
| got a new machine, I had at least a day of downtime.
| Everything is minor, but it totally adds up. You've got to
| run around to dozens of websites, download, and click through
| menus to install Docker/Homebrew/IntelliJ/etc. Then there are
| all the nanny systems you have to turn off every time you hit
| them the first time. Oh, gotta give the console access to the
| filesystem. Half the binaries you download aren't signed to
| Apple's liking, so you gotta work around each one of those,
| and how you work around it changes with every major version
| of MacOS. Hell, just dragging, holding and releasing the
| 2-dozen useless default apps the hell out of the Dock takes a
| solid minute. Did you sign in to iCloud yet, btw? Siri would
| love to be enabled to, if you have a moment. Your home folder
| isn't in the finder, just a bunch of iCloud stuff and the
| Desktop. Do you remember how to option-click in the magic
| spot to find it and make a shortcut? It's death by a million
| cuts.
|
| That said, I'm not gonna pretend that Linux is some utopia
| and everything works immediately. But there's no way it's
| worse. I have a script that takes any machine from a
| formatted drive to a working OS exactly how I need it,
| unattended, in about 20 minutes. That's extreme, but everyone
| at least has a list of the packages they need that they can
| copy paste install into the terminal as soon as the installer
| is done.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Depends on what you're used to and what your needs are. I
| can have a Mac in reasonably usable shape in 30-45m,
| whereas getting Linux configured to my liking (especially
| under KDE) quickly turns into a multi-hour affair and ends
| in an unsatisfying state because of all the little things
| that can't be the way I like unless I start digging into
| source code or writing my own desktop bits.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| MacOS is a lot easier if you restore from a Time Machine
| backup. In four hours I can buy a new machine and be logged
| in and working like nothing happened. Done that plenty of
| times.
|
| I think the biggest thing I can point to is how well Apple
| products work for the average person. I buy new ones every
| 2~3 years and keep N-1 as a spare. N-2 goes to someone who
| has asked me too many PC support questions.
|
| Everyone I've given an apple laptop has eventually bought a
| new one. They bitched about the price, but they were
| ultimately willing to pay for it. My dad worked for IBM for
| many years and was not happy I "wasted money" on my first
| mac in college. Ten years later after him still saying
| that, I gave him a laptop. That was a few years ago and
| last month he bought a new M1 Air. Meanwhile, a number of
| the people he works with have converted to Apple laptops
| because they've seen how well his works.
| stnikolauswagne wrote:
| I am on my 4th macbook in 7 years, I have not had to
| install any program twice and all my settings so far have
| carried over between devices, with the sole exception of
| security settings. Maybe I got absurdly lucky but I have
| never had this little issues with switching devices thanks
| to migration assistant.
| pkulak wrote:
| Ah yeah, I guess I've never done the migration assistant
| thing. Seems dirty not to start with a clean slate, but
| maybe that's just my hangup.
|
| But, you can also just copy your home directory on Linux
| for the same kinda process.
| zippergz wrote:
| I do think that's where you're hurting yourself. I've
| been using Macs since before OS X came out, and in the OS
| X era I have never had long downtime when switching to a
| new machine. In the old days before Migration Assistant,
| you'd just clone the drive. These days you use Migration
| Assistant. I do understand the "dirty" sentiment, but in
| reality I've been upgrading via cloning or Migration
| Assistant for close to 20 years now with never a clean
| install, and it's worked well.
| pkulak wrote:
| Absolutely not hurting myself. I love Linux. :D I don't
| think I'll ever switch back. I actually understand how
| every aspect of my machine works, and this feeling of
| control is absolutely addictive.
|
| I kinda lost the thread at this point, but I was just
| trying to make the point the Macs aren't magically usable
| out of the box, at least for power users.
| handrous wrote:
| I have dozens of GUI programs--commercial and open-source--
| and even more command line programs and I'm like 99% sure
| the _only_ one I installed in any way other than `brew
| install [name]` was homebrew itself. Oh, wait, not quite
| true: Apple 's software (Numbers, Pages, Keynote, et c.) I
| manage through the App Store. That's it.
|
| The fact that Brew's package selection is one of the most
| complete that exists (I think Arch's and Gentoo's get
| _fairly_ close, maybe with a few not-enabled-by-default
| ones added in?), is one of the main reasons I like it so
| much.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| You can't really configure a Mac at all.
| duped wrote:
| You don't need to nearly as much, by comparison.
| howinteresting wrote:
| How do you turn off workspace switching animations on
| Macs?
|
| Note, I said "turn off", which the "Reduce Motion"
| setting does not do.
|
| Also, how do you get a 4k monitor to run at 144Hz on an
| Intel Mac?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Depends which OSX version you have for both, I don't know
| if your hardware supports the last one, but you might
| need the correct cable, HDMI doesn't do it for me, and if
| your intel GPU can't, it won't, not an OSX issue.
| howinteresting wrote:
| They are both MacOS issues.
|
| The first one is simply impossible to do on Monterey.
|
| The 4k 144 thing is a software regression (so not a
| hardware limitation) that still hasn't been fixed:
| https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253168625
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I hate the every year we update model. I never do it for
| iOS or OSX. Miss snow leopard: selling point: 0 new
| features.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| I don't have a 4k monitor but I have an ultrawide that
| does 144Hz. The only way I found to use it that way was
| via SwitchResX.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Does it make a big difference? I heard 60hz freesync
| would make a bigger difference than high refresh, it
| looked nice when I had 144hz but aside from me sliding my
| mouse it didn't really change anything.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| If you can't, you can't call it need to. I'd compare it
| to GNOME.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| From someone who's used both macOS and GNOME a good deal,
| GNOME to me feels a lot more like iPadOS if it had been
| mildly adjusted to run on desktops than it does macOS.
| There's several aspects of GNOME and its app suite that
| are more inflexible than macOS and its apps.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I completely agree. If someone uses GNOME and says OSX
| isn't configuration friendly, the critique is very
| hypocritical, enough to be dismissed. If you say that and
| use almost any other DE (I love KDE) sure. Someone saying
| the overcooked steak is disgusting while eating a burnt
| piece of toast is hard to take serious, they are
| constantly breaking addons and plugins, its like they
| don't want any 3rd party support, not unlike the often
| critiqued apple desktop.
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| For some that's a feature, not a bug. I really wish there
| was at least a CLI you could use to tweak certain behaviors
| instead of a mix on nvram and system preference
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Agree but they're complaining like I bought food at a
| restaurant and I can't cook it. Seems like an invalid
| complaint.
| irae wrote:
| You can't really configure your car after you bought it
| either. Or your blender or your hair dryer.
|
| Not everything in the world needs to be configurable to be
| good. Yes, when moving from Windows to Mac, people miss
| stuff that could be configured. When moving from Mac to
| Windows, from Mac to Linux etc, it is always the same
| story.
|
| But people often miss the point that being configurable
| does not always means making it better necessarily. Part of
| configuration is to allow people to work differently, and
| that is good. But configuration to make it work like the
| competition (make Mac work like windows, or Mac work like
| linux) is beyond what configuration should be able to do
| anyway. Otherwise you end up with no consistency and a bad
| compromise.
|
| Even with Macs trying to offer a consistent experience, Mac
| apps can often behave differently. Back in the day when I
| used Linux I felt like many apps I needed to learn how they
| dealt with the most basic things like the menu locations,
| like window management, preferences/settings/configuration
| etc. Too much configuration is not healthy all the time.
| And Linux culture of "configure all the things" might be
| hurting Linux adoption itself.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I agree, configuration is evil. I love my zero config
| fish shell.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I guess it depends on what you're configuring. I'm using
| microk8s at work and the part of my team that has to deal
| with the VM-encapsulated version that runs on Mac or Windows
| is always mired in configuration woes.
|
| Granted, that's a far cry from touchpad configs--but if you
| keep your dotfiles in git then touchpad config is something
| you only have to once (per touchpad that you own).
| [deleted]
| hanklazard wrote:
| Try pop!_os. Really easy to install and use. It's my daily
| driver on a carbon X1 and I'm not a developer or anything.
| WJW wrote:
| pop! is indeed really nice, with the possible exception
| that for some reasons I have to manually recompile the
| nvidia drivers (and sometimes wifi drivers) with some
| arcane `dkms` commands every time the OS updates include a
| kernel update. After the second time this happened I just
| pasted all the commands in a text file for later reference
| but it sure is annoying. Apparently not everyone has this
| problem though, so maybe my computer is just weird.
| leetrout wrote:
| Tossing out a second +1 for pop!
|
| I've not used it in about a year now and I do miss it. They
| were adding support for a tiling WM mode and it wasn't bad
| (needed some work).
|
| I was using it on System76 hardware and had zero issues
| with the OS and S76 replaced my keyboard when it went bad.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| maybe you're just a passionate tweaker. the basic stuff I
| need for my workstation has to be configured on any OS - be
| it Windows, Linux or Mac. the more advanced stuff is mostly
| optional and I usually do it additionally on linux just
| because I can. so, I'd say this is a bit of an apple-pear-
| comparison.
| kevinherron wrote:
| Oh sweet summer child.
| fsflover wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29534714
| AlexanderDhoore wrote:
| Year of the Linux Desktop!! /s
| hvgk wrote:
| If that happens I'm going to eat my mac mini for lunch.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Does it matter? Most servers and phones run Linux. My damn
| Sony DSLR runs android. Desktops are dying Linux won.
| [deleted]
| marcodiego wrote:
| As part of the FLOSS rooting crowd, I'd really like that to
| happen. But we have to face reality: on the desktop, after
| decades we're still fighting for 2% of the marketshare.
|
| Not that progress hasn't happened. Quite on the contrary. Linux
| on the desktop experience nowadays is VASTLY superior to even 5
| years ago. Of course, users from other camps will complain of
| features that have been lacking for many years (thumbnails in
| the file picker!) but alternatives aren't without their
| problems either: get a seasoned linux to try MacOS or Windows
| and you'll recognize weaknesses on the other approaches too.
|
| For me, linux on the desktop has been ready for a long time. I
| don't care if the market share is still in the single digits if
| it is good enough for me. Since I like the freedom, privacy,
| security and (yes) ease of use of desktop linux and do not
| depend on non-multiplatform software and services, there's just
| no better OS for me. Not everybody has this choice though.
|
| So, linux on the desktop not being popular is not a problem. If
| it continues popular enough not to be ignored by hardware
| vendors and service providers, everything else will continue to
| improve over time.
| fsflover wrote:
| > there's just no better OS for me
|
| Try Qubes OS.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| What benefit will he have?
| fsflover wrote:
| https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/how-to-pitch-qubes-
| os/4499/15
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| If you can't pitch it yourself, I don't see the point,
| the first link is just about paranoia.
|
| Were you ever curious but afraid: - to click on that link
| in the email, - to open that email attachment, - to go to
| that shady-looking website, - to install and run that
| suspicious program or even a virus, - to insert that USB
| stick from someone untrusted? Wth Qubes you do it all
| securely in a disposable VM and your personal files are
| safe. The worst thing which might happen is that the
| disposable VM breaks.
|
| If the pitch is to make people paranoid to run a new OS
| they need to learn isolation on, there are way easier
| ways like running a normal VM, which most people are
| still not going to understand very well or do.
| [deleted]
| fsflover wrote:
| > If you can't pitch it yourself, I don't see the point
|
| I linked my own text.
|
| Security is one benefit, and I agree that it's not so
| important for everyone. There are other benefits, as
| described. A normal VM is much less secure, because the
| host OS will have the Internet access and you will not
| benefit from hardware virtualization. It's also less
| convenient in my opinion. The UX of Qubes is really good.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Most of those pitches are not important.
|
| >Were you ever been concerned about opening your personal
| email (controlling numerous online accounts) in the same
| browser where you go to random websites? Actually, even
| when the browsers are different it can be a problem on a
| monolithic OS!
|
| Mozilla has containers that people also barely use.
|
| >On Qubes OS, you open those things in separate VMs,
| isolated with hardware, not software. It's often better 2
| than physical (air-gap) isolation. Recommended by
| Snowden.
|
| It runs VM, this is not isolated with hardware.
| https://www.qubes-os.org/news/2019/03/05/qsb-048/
|
| >Are you tired of remembering tens of complicated
| passwords, or using a password manager? On Qubes OS, you
| can save all your passwords as plain text (in a dedicated
| offline VM) and copy them into the necessary fields (in
| other VMs) whenever needed.
|
| Password managers are fine, why would someone tire of
| them?
|
| I don't think you are pitching it correctly, if you want
| to succeed at selling Qubes, remember most people use
| laptops, the amount of ram required to run Qubes and the
| battery drain is not worth it for the performance hit. It
| would be much better to sell it as an OS on a remote
| computer that uses Xen, there are huge problems like
| audio quality, slow loading, and I would never recommend
| it as a mobile device OS. Most of the benefits are done
| with less resource intense methods, and learning a new OS
| for most of these features and mainly drawbacks is not a
| good pitch. I think it would be great on a remote device
| with your computer as a thin client, but it has very
| little day to day practical use.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I agree completely I don't care if it's not mainstream.
| Desktops are usually gaming computers from what I see in my
| groups no reason to have Linux on there. Linux is on all the
| servers, most mobile devices, and I mentioned even Sony
| cameras run Android.
|
| I don't see any benefit to Linux on desktop being mainstream.
| I like that it keeps away a lot of users since making things
| too easy since they're unwilling to compile from GitHub is a
| feature, not a bug. It's a mostly a programmer OS for
| programmers.
| RussianCow wrote:
| I find this attitude completely elitist and counter
| productive. Why shouldn't Linux be for everybody, usable on
| every type of device? Why should we need to rely on
| proprietary software for our day-to-day tasks? Don't you
| think there is benefit to this?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| >Why shouldn't Linux be for everybody, usable on every
| type of device?
|
| It is, but you often have the effort to put into it.
| Windows isn't usable for everyone, but that doesn't make
| me elitist, OSX is hard for others, but I don't see that
| being a problem. Some people can't do everything you do,
| and there are differences in our abilities. If you expect
| everything to be easy, and people not willing to put in
| work to have a functional OS, you should not expect them
| to use linux, it offers no benefits to most users, its
| made by hackers to hack on, Android is linux for
| everyone, and even then they find it hard. Don't expect
| people to run when they can't crawl.
|
| >Why should we need to rely on proprietary software for
| our day-to-day tasks?
|
| Because the free stuff sucks, GIMP still sucks. They
| stuck to having 3 windows open forever, GNOME doesn't
| like being configured, GTK always breaks stuff, and I
| just want stuff that "just works". When FOSS does it well
| like KDE being better than Windows's UI, or Firefox being
| better than IE6 I will choose it. I don't pick based on
| their principals, I just want good software, and like
| most people I am willing to pay for quality. I refuse to
| use a pinephone out of principal, I refuse to make my
| life hell.
| pjerem wrote:
| FYI, Gimp have a single window mode since about a decade.
| fwiw, I love gimp as it is (and I prefer multi windows).
|
| I think saying it sucks is just being rude against one of
| the most amazing foss project of all times and it's
| maintainers.
|
| Yes Gimp isn't photoshop but it covers 100% of my needs.
| Totally worth the money I never put on it.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| >FYI, Gimp have a single window mode since about a
| decade.
|
| I know, I used it recently. They are so bad with the UI I
| find myself using Krita as a better photoshop
| replacement.
|
| >I think saying it sucks is just being rude against one
| of the most amazing foss project of all times and it's
| maintainers.
|
| Comparing it to Krita, it is hard to compliment any of
| it, the UI, the features, the difficulty. Its been 25
| years, and lots of FOSS stuff has caught up with paid
| options, and I see Krita being a photoshop replacement
| way before GIMP becomes usable.
| dsego wrote:
| Somebody can probably say the same things about ms paint,
| not much of an argument there.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| >get a seasoned linux to try MacOS or Windows and you'll
| recognize weaknesses on the other approaches too.
|
| The tricky part of identifying "weaknesses" coming from and
| going to any two OSes or desktop environments is figuring out
| exactly what qualifies as a weakness and what is simply
| unfamiliar.
|
| Like for example, a lifelong Windows user is probably going
| to think that anything that's not the spitting image of a
| Win9X style desktop is chock full of "weaknesses", and a
| diehard tiling WM veteran Linux user is going to see anything
| not built around tiling as "weak", when neither is fully true
| in an objective sense.
|
| This is a bit of a frustration for me as someone who
| primarily uses macOS but dabbles in Linux: most people
| haven't used macOS extensively, and so Mac-style desktops
| tend to be seen by the individuals who develop DEs as full of
| "weaknesses", and as a result there are no Linux DEs that are
| mac-like beyond the surface. There's no shortage of Winlike
| DEs though.
| btdmaster wrote:
| Not exactly Linux, but would helloSystem[1] be suitable?
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26092040
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I've been keeping my eye on that and it will probably
| come closer than anything else to date, but I'm skeptical
| that it'll nail everything so long as it's using Qt. Much
| of what makes macOS interesting is rooted in Cocoa, so a
| good macOS clone is going to have to be built in
| something that's a close analogue (if perhaps modernized
| in some ways) to Cocoa.
| sneak wrote:
| The thing that makes the Mac the Mac is not the window
| chrome.
| baq wrote:
| graphics drivers alone are in the tens of millions of lines
| of code (counting both kernel and user mode). there's no way
| open source community can do that amount of work for free
| every couple years as long as new hardware is being
| developed.
|
| this may become the case once hardware is good for 20 years.
| we aren't there yet, though we're closer than a decade ago.
| (typing this on an aging 8 year old desktop, which is really
| due for an upgrade).
| commoner wrote:
| The FOSS community depends on contributions from GPU
| vendors to have their products supported on Linux in a
| reasonable timeframe. As long as the contributions are
| released under a FOSS license, the vendors are part of the
| FOSS community.
|
| Intel provides excellent Linux support for its GPUs through
| open source drivers,[1] and is about to launch a line of
| dedicated GPUs in early 2022 with the same level of
| support.
|
| AMD has provided good support for essential GPU features
| through its open source Linux driver since 2015,[2] but
| compute features such as full OpenCL support (for most AMD
| models) are still locked in its proprietary drivers.[3]
|
| Nvidia's open source Linux driver contributions are
| minimal, and they've earned a bad reputation for that. The
| reverse-engineered open source Nouveau driver is an
| incredible effort, but falls behind Nvidia's proprietary
| driver in performance and feature support.[4] This is what
| happens when the hardware vendor doesn't cooperate with the
| FOSS community.
|
| [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Intel_graphics
|
| [2] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/AMDGPU
|
| [3] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/AMDGPU_PRO
|
| [4] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Nouveau
| dTal wrote:
| >thumbnails in the file picker!
|
| Use a decent desktop environment, like Plasma :)
|
| Gnome's file picker is notoriously, offensively bad - to the
| point that it makes me completely lose trust that any thought
| has been put into the human factors of the rest of the
| system. Plasma, on the other hand, continues to surprise with
| its thoughtful and accommodating design choices.
|
| Life is too short, and brainpower too limited, to justify
| wasting either on frustrating software.
| belltaco wrote:
| >Life is too short, and brainpower too limited, to justify
| wasting either on frustrating software.
|
| This is exactly why I switched from Linux to Windows and
| never looked back.
| sneak wrote:
| No amount of good UX can justify the tools constantly
| spying on you.
|
| The Windows UX these days is also horribly jankful in
| other ways, too.
|
| I feel like Windows 2000 made a stronger case for
| "switching to Windows and never looking back" than
| Win7-11.
| pjerem wrote:
| Windows 7 was actually pretty clean. It was basically
| Windows XP with a nice look & feel. Also the last Windows
| without bloat everywhere (ok, IE)
|
| But yeah, 2000 was somehow the apogee.
|
| Plasma is pretty nice nowadays but I sometimes miss the
| simpler times of KDE 3.5
| [deleted]
| fsflover wrote:
| For me, it's vice versa: this is why I switched to Linux,
| because it gets out of my way.
| boudin wrote:
| Exact opposite from me. I just cannot use windows
| anymore. Windows 10 feels like windows xp with adwares
| pre-installed.
| selfhifive wrote:
| Unfortunately RAM is quite limited too. The idle windows
| memory consumption is horrifying.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| I'm gonna go wild and crazy and assume you work with IT
| in some way since you're on HN.
|
| How on earth does idle RAM consumption matter to you when
| a GB of RAM is cheaper than a beer?
|
| I'm not a Windows fan, I don't let Windows control any
| hardware other than a GPU on any of my systems but i do
| run it in a VM for gaming. I just don't see the problem,
| more RAM usage could even be better for performance. It's
| a useless metric.
| depressedpanda wrote:
| I can't stand KDE/Plasma for what many would consider a
| silly reason: I want Confirm/OK/Next actions to be in the
| lower right side of dialogs, and Cancel/Back in the lower
| left.
|
| I have a vague memory of this being configurable a long
| time ago (maybe KDE 3), but this setting disappearing in
| later versions.
|
| Is it possible to change this in later versions of KDE?
| artursapek wrote:
| > after decades we're still fighting for 2% of the
| marketshare
|
| I was using desktop linux for several years and recently
| switched back to a Mac because of the massive hardware
| improvements Apple made with its M1 chip.
|
| As much as I loved Linux, it's no longer just a software UX
| thing. The battery life and speed of the new Macs beats any
| Linux machine I could have bought for a comparable price.
| vwoolf wrote:
| _From what I see the proprietary operating systems are in
| decline now_
|
| [Citation needed]
|
| If anything, one of the world's most-used OSes, which could
| have gone more open, did the opposite:
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on...
|
| Yes, I approve of e.g. https://puri.sm, but they're so far
| behind.
| p12tic wrote:
| Hi, I'm the developer behind this effort. I can answer any
| questions you have.
| notesinthefield wrote:
| How does this differ from what Fedora is shipping in Gnome?
| Touchpad gestures, sans acceleration are flawless.
| cryo wrote:
| Just want to thank the developers behind this and joined as
| GitHub sponsor. Happy to see this also enters the Qt framework.
| jwatt wrote:
| Thanks for your work on this!
|
| Your report says Firefox gestures are working on Wayland, and
| two finger swiping left/right appears to be configured in the
| Firefox prefs to go back/forward in history:
| browser.gesture.swipe.left = Browser:BackOrBackDuplicate
| browser.gesture.swipe.right = Browser:ForwardOrForwardDuplicate
|
| However, Firefox doesn't respond to these gestures. Do you know
| what's up with that? (I'm on Fedora 35, if that's relevant.)
| Two finger scrolling up/down works just fine.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Is there binaries I can install or do I need to compile
| something? I have no idea where the code is.
| p12tic wrote:
| In short - there are no binaries and it's relatively hard to
| compile these manually, so I recommend to wait until the
| Linux distributions picks these projects up. This usually
| takes around 6 to 12 months.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Holy cow, that was a LOL from hell. Are you serious? 6-12
| months is the biggest tease. "Here's this really cool
| thing, but maybe, if you're lucky, you'll be able to use it
| in a year or so." That's the quarter super glued to the
| floor kind of frustrating.
| jwatt wrote:
| It's not super glued to the floor. It's on a train, on
| its way to your station. How far away your station is
| from the train entirely depends on the length of the
| release cycle of your Linux distribution, and is
| completely outwith the control of this developer. That's
| how Linux distros work. If you want it sooner you can
| always use a rolling release, such as Manjaro.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| The new X server is already in Debian experimental [0],
| with a bit of luck it trickles down to unstable just in
| time for Ubuntu to pick it up for the 22.04 release.
|
| If you are running Arch you already have it [1].
|
| [0] https://packages.debian.org/experimental/xorg-server-
| source [1]
| https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/xorg-server/
| azinman2 wrote:
| > Bill believes that the biggest opportunity to improve Linux
| touchpads is to adapt their acceleration curve to better match
| the profile of a macOS touchpad. How do you feel about the
| acceleration and precision that your Linux touchpad offers?
|
| Is this work only going to be for touchpads? I personally hate
| the X11 curves with mice and vastly prefer Apple's. It seems to
| be hard coded last I checked and not easily modifiable (there
| are two parameters now but it's still a very different curve).
| If trackpad curves also benefited mice (particularly those of
| us who use Apple's Magic Mouse on Linux), that'd be amazing!
|
| Thank you for your efforts to improve these ergonomics -- it's
| thankless and hard work but benefits many.
| p12tic wrote:
| For now we only focus on touchpads. I think that if we're
| successful in delivering touchpad improvements then we will
| gain credibility and trust that could be useful when working
| on other input devices.
| jez wrote:
| Just want to echo the above sentiment--mouse-based
| acceleration curves are in need of just as much love as
| touch pads, and I'd love to see both!
| k1rcher wrote:
| Very interesting. I'm running PopOS on my framework, running
| Wayland-- the touchpad gestures is very good. But still not up to
| par with MacBook. I'm extremely curious as to how this compares.
|
| I think it's both PopOS's gestures as well as the hardware (the
| framework touchpad is quite good!) that has resulted in such a
| fantastic experience, at least compared to other laptop touchpads
| I've used. Definitely the closest to MacBook gestures I've
| experienced.
|
| I'm working on getting an eGPU setup going so I can properly run
| X instead of Wayland, and am very excited to try this out.
|
| (Please correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is Wayland
| if you're running integrated graphics, X if you have a GPU)
| izoow wrote:
| I always found touchpads on Linux to be quite okay, mice on the
| other hand... For example, I find scrolling with mice in most
| browsers on Linux unbearably slow compared to other systems, and
| there's no option to speed it up, and overall a lack of
| customization options when it comes to mice. I'm starting to
| wonder whether Linux developers don't use mice, or if there's
| something wrong with me or my setup, because I rarely hear about
| it. And as stupid as it sounds, being able to scroll properly is
| probably the #1 thing keeping me off Linux desktop right now.
| proxycon wrote:
| personally i've got a logitech mx master mouse, it has the
| logitech hyperscroll technology. Quite wonderfull to use on
| linux.
| aetherspawn wrote:
| A lot of apps don't interact well with Hyperscroll at all,
| and when it sends the "1 pixel" scroll event continuously
| every 10ms, they'll either keep scrolling for days after the
| wheel stops spinning or scroll like 1000 lines when you only
| moved it half a rotation.
| sandreas wrote:
| I wonder, why nobody is mentioning two-finger scrolling (also
| inertial scrolling or kinetic scrolling).
|
| Interesting fact: Ubuntu and Fedora have a fully working
| implementation for this - although scrolling is way too fast,
| while other distros don't have this. KDE distros also don't have
| this, even if KDE Wayland is used.
|
| Can anyone tell my, why on Ubuntu and Fedora this works for EVERY
| app, whereas in other distros using GNOME 40 or 41 (e.g. Arch) it
| is only working on SOME or NONE of the apps...? Is there a patch
| for libinput or MUTTER, that is not in the official GNOME repos?
| tuldia wrote:
| Nice! Thanks for the hard work everyone involved! I have nothing
| to complain, things just works for me so far, but great to see
| improvements in the pipe! :D
| disabled wrote:
| I have my Ubuntu 18.04 looking like MacOS. The only thing
| limiting it from really feeling like a Mac is the touchpad.
|
| You can see it here: https://ibb.co/H7khM7h
|
| A good guide for starting out is here:
| https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-macos-theme-on-ubuntu...
| [deleted]
| marcodiego wrote:
| My girlfriend uses a MacBook and likes it. She bought a cheap
| windows all-in-one desktop and simply couldn't use windows. I
| made the effort during one weekend to make it look and behave
| like MacOS as much as I could.
|
| Appearance-wise it is very very close. I got some gnome
| extensions to mimic the behavior quite closely too. In terms of
| software, it is still missing MSO and some magic apple
| integration to their other products. Otherwise, she is now a
| happy linux user on the desktop.
| andrewmackrodt wrote:
| There's more to macOS than look of the desktop, notably the
| universal menu and full screen mode opens to a new workspace. I
| find the latter a big productivity boost when working on an
| undocked laptop as the gestures to switch workspace or windows
| between an application are so well integrated.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Universal menu is built into KDE and can be added to GNOME
| with minimal hassle (though the devs might try to shank you
| for it). Dynamic workspaces are also a pretty bog-standard
| feature for desktop environments, so if that's all that MacOS
| means to you then it might be worth taking another look.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| KDE global menu is nice in theory but too many apps
| disregard it entirely which makes things awkward. Might be
| ok if you can restrict your app selection to Qt only but
| that's very difficult to do for most of us.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I mean, the majority of apps I use on a regular basis
| support it. Chromium, Discord, Konsole, Dolphin,
| Mailspring, VS Code... the list goes on, and it's not
| just limited to QT applications. If your only holdout as
| a Mac user is the global menu, I think you'll be
| perfectly contented with what KDE offers.
| monsieurbanana wrote:
| As another data point, one of the worst things on osx for me
| is their window management, specially that full screen mode
| creates a new workspace. I switch workspaces with command + a
| number, and that breakes it.
| nullwarp wrote:
| Same for me, I find WM absolutely infuriating to use.
|
| I have to download a 3rd party application to be able to
| alt-tab between windows (I will have a few firefox windows
| open at a time at least)
|
| Often times i'll do the three finger swipe up thing and
| I'll have like 50 desktops for some reason, and you can
| only delete them one at a time.
|
| And why does the dock keep the icon of every app I open and
| close.
|
| I just don't get it, and I'm glad i3/sway exists.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| WTF does the green button do? I still don't know.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Yellow has always been minimize, did you mean green? The
| green button's function used to be roughly "resize window
| to fit content" which makes sense because Mac desktops
| have never been built for maximizing windows, but it
| depended on developers to let the system know what a
| program window's ideal size was and cross platform devs
| never did, so they changed its primary function to full
| screening the window and putting it in its own virtual
| desktop.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Yes, green. Very inconsistent button.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| For me one killer feature is how MacOS treats every text
| field equally. I can use the Emacs style Ctrl-A/E/K/etc
| shortcut keys _anywhere_ I enter text and it works[1]! To me
| it 's deeply ironic that this is a feature in MacOS but not
| Linux (unless you count the terminal).
|
| [1] With the exception of websites and SPAs that rebind these
| keys to something else. I really don't like sites that do
| this.
| codezero wrote:
| Does Ubuntu sleep/wake easily with a lid close (maintaining
| runtime state), and avoid weird battery drain issues?
|
| To me, that's the killer feature of macOS. I am usually
| connected w/ a mouse and keyboard, the touchpad is great on the
| go, but nothing really substitutes the ability to turn it off
| and on again without thinking twice.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Laptop kernel driver issue. Newest 5.17 doesn't 5.16 does on
| my laptop, but most laptops I have had that flawlessly
| function.
| josteink wrote:
| 121 sponsors is pitiful.
|
| Consider me in, and I hope everyone in here who honestly wants
| this to happen considers sponsoring too.
| gowld wrote:
| $60/yr for an unfinished touchpad driver is high.
| null4bl3 wrote:
| That sounds awesome. I remember trying to create a setup using
| touchegg some years ago, with very little luck
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| How do I install it?
| mdoms wrote:
| There are some extremely confusing instructions here (these are
| the only installation instructions linked anywhere from the
| main website):
| https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Libinput#Installation
|
| Linux will NEVER be a mainstream desktop platform as long as
| end users have to answer questions like "am I 'under Wayland'?"
| or "what does 'under Wayland' mean?" or "why does the
| alternative to 'under Wayland' seem to be 'for Xorg' (whatever
| that is)?" or "how do I 'install the xf86-input-libinput
| package' and why does it have such a weird name?"
| zamadatix wrote:
| On a normal distro it's just part of the default install, not
| something you have to even know exists. Arch just doesn't
| have a "default install", it's "build your own" distro
| focused on power users that like to control things at that
| level.
| mdoms wrote:
| Literally just read this exchange in this very thread. I
| wish you "linux is easy" folks could agree on something for
| once.
|
| > > People have been saying this for the last 20 years and
| I've yet to build a linux workstation that isn't at least
| 20-30% more time consuming to configure, maintain and tweak
| than a Mac and sometimes a lot more time than that.
|
| > Bootup archlinux image, type in archinstall, make sure to
| select gnome... It's that easy.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Eh, I don't even consider myself in the "Linux is easy"
| group but I wouldn't pull up the word of a negative karma
| fresh single comment account that was created after the
| conversation started as gospel for the validation an
| entire group of people on HN are inconsistent.
|
| It just happens you don't need to do anything special to
| install this on any traditional distro that ships with a
| default GUI install option. Regardless of your views on
| the viability of Linux overall these changes to libinput
| are really as zero effort as it can get on any OS, just
| wait for the update to push.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| This looks old, is it the same? It looks like its only for
| wayland too, uhhh fuck... I didn't know if it was merged
| already or I need to edit a config, or uhh maybe is it a
| kernel flag? I love linux, this sounds like normie stuff to
| the usual user buts its probably very alien to anyone who
| never used it.
| p12tic wrote:
| You need to wait up to a year for the distributions to pick up
| the code into their default installs. Installing bleeding edge
| window managers, widget toolkits and similar software yourself
| is more difficult than it's worth for a normal user.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| It would be lovely if Firefox supported the two-finger
| back/forward swipe.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Nice, I recently replaced my mac book pro with a cheap Samsung
| laptop (emergency replacement, the mac died and the new ones are
| unobtainable currently).
|
| I installed Manjaro on it and it was a relatively OK experience
| getting that going. I had some issues with the sound that took
| some "maybe this will work" style copy paste of all sorts of
| magical cli incantations to get working. But I kind of knew what
| I was getting into so I'm not disappointed by that. The important
| thing is that I have a functioning laptop with all my developer
| toys running.
|
| However, the touchpad support is so awful that I ordered a mouse.
| I never needed one of those with any macbook I've ever owned. It
| seems it's impossible to configure the touchpad in a sane way
| without ending up with piles of custom scripts. E.g. the
| scrolling speed is way off and I constantly have my single clicks
| interpreted as middle clicks, which does such fun things as close
| the browser tab instead of opening it. Simple tasks such as
| selecting text are made hard because the mechanical pressure
| needed for the clicks actually tends to move the cursor by enough
| that you basically mis-click. I briefly used the touchpad under
| windows before I wiped the disk. So, I know the same touch pad
| can behave a lot more reasonable given better software.
|
| So, any improvements in this area are very welcome!
| zekica wrote:
| Cheap laptops have generally crappy touchpads. I have one (on a
| Lenovo ThinkBook) that has 5 finger multi-touch and it works
| completely fine with Gnome 40+ gestures. The only thing
| bothering me is a lack of consistent inertial two-finger
| scrolling. Never had left clicks misinterpreted as middle
| clicks.
| MayeulC wrote:
| I'm left wondering -- isn't this a toolkit/library issue?
|
| I am a bit afraid of seeing gestures handled differently in
| multiple programs, like inertial scrolling, or pinch-to-zoom
| speed. At least gestures are always detected by libinput AFAIK,
| so there's that.
|
| But instead of implementing this in every application, wouldn't
| it be nicer to implement the common part in a library and link
| that library to all app that require/want touch handling? This
| would provide homogeneous behavior, and would allow sharing
| configuration files.
| p12tic wrote:
| Most applications will use either Gtk or Qt widget libraries,
| so a lot of similarity of how applications behave already
| exists.
|
| I don't think it's possible to make Gtk and Qt themselves
| behave identically at this point. For example Qt is a
| commercial project and an effort that would break backwards
| compatibility is not worth it. Gtk on the other hand has strong
| opinions about how things should work, so it would be hard to
| change that too.
| mgaunard wrote:
| Why do touchpads exist? First thing I do is disable them.
|
| Do power users (which tend to use Linux) really use those things?
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| They're not that bad if they have decent wrist detection. I'd
| rather use a proper keyboard and mouse of course, but my laptop
| is quite comfortable to use with a touch pad (on Linux).
|
| Although I don't buy into the whole gesture stuff. I just want
| the basics.
| stjo wrote:
| Let me explain my downvote:
|
| 1) Obviously such efforts will help non-power users as well. A
| lot of people use touchpads.
|
| 2) Yes, power users also use touchpad. Duh.
| mgaunard wrote:
| Touchpads get in the way of using the keyboard reliably,
| which is your primary source of input.
|
| They also provide inputs that are themselves unreliable and
| inaccurate. You're better off controlling the cursor with a
| trackpoint which also means you don't need to move your hands
| off the keyboard.
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