
Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing? - macco
https://williambharding.com/blog/technology/linux-touchpad-like-a-macbook-goal-worth-pursuing/
======
101km
I have been using 12" MacBooks since they came out because I live out of a
backpack and travel a lot.

I cannot find anything comparable in terms of size/weight/battery and build
quality. Especially the trackpad, nothing is remotely close. Otherwise I'd get
that and put Arch on it.

People complain Apple is expensive, not so sure. The TCO may actually be less
because of the high resale value. It is also more convenient.

More than once when faced with crossing an annoying border (TSA, sigh) I'd
sell the Macbook at my origin and simply pickup a new one at the destination.
Thirty minutes in-and-out of the Apple store, they all seem to have
exceptionally fast wifi, and setup handled via a curl-to-bash of mine gets me
_exactly_ back to where I started, down to the sessions..

Since my points of origin usually have higher Apple prices due to
currency/taxes, I end up accidentally eking out a profit after months of use
per machine.

If you can't be arsed with the above consider this: Their retail global
presence is getting to be quite complete, even coming to Samsung land (Seoul,
behold:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt4ldH5vQCQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt4ldH5vQCQ))
and Tel Aviv finally along with some others. Most big airport hub cities will
have an Apple store close by.

Stuff gets broken or stolen and yet with this setup I'm generally never 24
hours away from my exact laptop setup...

There is no alternative. I feel trapped.

~~~
pizza234
I had a Thinkpad x200s, and all in all, nothing came/comes close to it
(tolerating the slightly thicker build, which is inevitable for highly
serviceable machines).

I've been an MBA user as well, for reference. I use the mousepad little to
none though. Possibly (but I'm not sure, since I haven't tried) IBM had such
capillary distribution to support the quite bizarre use case of selling and
repurchasing a new machine every few months.

Sadly, the line is over, and this type of build is obsolete nowadays.

~~~
KozmoNau7
X220i here, and even though modern browsers and applications do tax its CPU
(leading to shorter battery life), I still get at least 5 hours out of a new
(and inexpensive) 9-cell battery. Build quality is simply second to none, the
hinges are still perfectly tight with no slop, even after 7 years.

~~~
davidandgoliath
x1 (gen c5) is amazing as well. After almost a decade as a macbook user, i'm
impressed by it & back to linux! :)

~~~
pimeys
I have one of those from work and running NixOS in it, everything works
perfectly and I love the machine.

Btw if thinking of a X1C for Linux use, I'd skip the latest for now due to
them changing how the sleep works and it having issues even with Windows
(losing battery while sleeping). The fifth model is great though, if you're
not looking for the 8th gen CPU and HDR screen.

~~~
davidandgoliath
C6 definitely has too many drawbacks, but, I'd love to have the little camera
cover. I'll have to 3d print one...

------
peterburkimsher
I'll volunteer 2 months full-time development for free, with a few conditions.

\- I'm looking for a job in New Zealand, Australia, or Canada. Not Seattle
(sorry Bill). I'd stop job hunting to work on this, so someone else will have
to find me a job.

\- I'd develop for the MacBook Pro 2014, because that's my hardware. Only one
Linux distro (probably Ubuntu).

\- Weekly check-in emails (maybe twice a week). A plan set out at the
beginning with the deliverables for each week.

Am I qualified? No idea. Currently I work at OSE, a microSD card manufacturer
in Taiwan, where I've bit-banged control systems protocols and done big data
analysis. The closest side project I did to this is KeyMouSerial, which logs
keyboard & mouse movements on my laptop, sends them to an Arduino, which
behaves like a keyboard for a Raspberry Pi.

I'm disillusioned with Apple now, and wanting to hop to Linux. I also want to
port iTunes and AppleScript, though I think there's less demand for those two.

~~~
rayiner
I hate to be negative, but what makes you think you can do in two months what
Microsoft has failed to do in several years (Microsoft's Precision Touchpad is
still a ways away from a Mac touchpad).

~~~
yunyu
Really? Outside of the lack of force touch, I haven't found the Surface
touchpads to be any worse than Macbook ones in terms of accuracy.

~~~
rayiner
I haven’t spent much time with the Surface touchpad. On my X1C, which has the
Precision touhpad driver, little things are off. E.g. moving the cursor with
one finger while others are resting on the touchpad will hiccup a bit.

------
MrLeftHand
One of the main reasons I stopped using Linux is the touchpad! It is horrible
out of the box experience and the insult to injury is the lack of no good user
interface to even set anything. You have to screw around with libinput or
xinput with zero documentation on both parts and hope you will hit a sweet
spot eventually and hope that any future updates won't break it.

I am way past of the tinkerer phase where I would enjoy spending a week on
trying to make something work under Linux just so I can feel better. Or the
patience where I waited for 1.5 years just to have proper support for the AGP
slot on my motherboard.

I want a Linux system that works out of the box and has no problems with
standard features like a touchpad.

Under Windows 10 the new precision drivers are fantastic, very close to Mac
comfort. Whoever creates something similar under Linux deserves a Nobel Prize
and a monument.

~~~
mkirklions
We are all talking about desktop?

Ubuntu desktop is annoying IMO. Server is the only linux worth running.
Windows has a superior desktop experience.

Ive made serious attempts to use linux desktops since ubuntu 7 and the
annoyance factor of getting things to 'work' and the hostile community is
really offputting.

~~~
MrLeftHand
I feel your pain.

Ubuntu Desktop was my preferred go to distro not too long ago. Using 16.10 was
nice and I managed to get the touchpad working in a reasonable way with
xinput.

Then 18 came along and everything went to hell. All the properties changed and
some even disappeared. And of course the ones missing were the ones I actually
needed to make my touchpad work in a way that it was comfortable to use.

After that I just jumped ship. I didn't wanted to spend another week to figure
out everything again.

I happily choose Linux when it comes to servers and other non-desktop related
work, but I am very disappointed how it lacks user friendliness and ease of
use. 10-20 years back I would have said, that laptops are a niche platform and
that's why it has a hard time supporting hardware. But it's 2018 and laptops
are becoming mainstream in everyday use. Not being able to support the primary
pointing hardware on a platform so popular is a death sentence.

And don't get me started on discrete GPUs...

~~~
trash_panda
Reading this thread makes me wonder if I live in the same universe as HN.

I'm amazed at the level of exquisiteness of the requirements of the HN crowd.
I mean, I've been using computers all my life and used almost every Linux,
Windows and OS X systems.

I do get that Macbook touchpads are god-tier and unrivaled so far by other
hardware manufacturers. That being said, I rather have my old Lenovo x220 with
an external mouse. No touchpad is as good as a decent external mouse (decent
!= expensive, mine is $30).

If you want to see an abysmal differences between touchpads, compare a Macbook
one with the Lenovo's X220 touchpad. The X220 is the worst touchpad I've ever
used, but it is still my main computer and I love it.

People talk about Mac's build quality, when I think they should be referring
to its industrial design, which I get is very appealing to the senses. Now,
the X220 has serious build quality. You couln't break it if you wanted to, and
if you do break it, almost every part is < $100 on eBay and easy to repair.

My point is the following, and as other commenter said; I think people choose
Macs before they like it better, it suits their image and are willing to pay
their pricetag. I know people need to justify their choices as if Macs are the
only objective solution that fits their use cases, but I find this hard to
believe.

I understand that everyone has its valid reasons behinds every choice they
make, but what bothers me (I know it shouldn't but who cares) is when that
people bash on Linux and other hardware manufacturers just because they don't
LIKE that OS/computer. I don't LIKE macOS/Macs and I don't them, that doesn't
mean they are not good systems. I just CHOOSE to not use them because MY
reasons.

Nowadays most systems offer more than acceptable user experiences out of the
box, whether its a Linux/Windows/macOS box on whatever hardware. The thing is
that people get really picky and justify their decisions by diminishing other
manufacturers/systems. I believe people are afraid to say "I bought a Mac
because I like them! f* you!"

~~~
na85
Where do you work that you have room to use a mouse?

Coffee shops, planes, trains, passenger seat in a car, literally on my lap in
waiting rooms or transit terminals, etc. This is where I use my laptop, and I
don't have room for a mouse in these places.

~~~
trash_panda
Most of the time in a desk, I do travel a lot though. And when I'm using my
laptop on my lap, I use the clitoris-like trackpoint, which I think it's
terrible but I can work just fine with it.

I also have a Dell XPS and the touchpad is decent, I can work fine with it.

As I said, I'm not questioning the fact that Macs touchpads are superior, but
I'm curious as to what are your use cases that make you think that you really
need that superb touchpad? are you a graphic designer?

~~~
na85
I need tracking of some sort, and my workflows tend to be mouse-heavy. I don't
personally have a hard requirement for the Macbook touchpad, but the pad is a
huge part of my interaction with a laptop and I hate using the clitmouse. I
will never ever voluntarily run windows so my options are Linux, BSD, or Mac.

BSD is horribly performant on any laptop hardware I've tried, so that's a no-
go.

Linux touchpad support is a dumpster fire of bad drivers and missing config
options.

Mac is therefore the only real choice.

At some point you just get sick of dist-upgrade breaking palm rejection and no
fix being available for months.

------
maggit
Yes, please do! I've spent some time researching this as well, and to me it
seems like the author has missed one thing; the Mac touchpad hardware is _so
much better_ than other touchpad hardware. (As I understand it, the
competition is barred from making similar touchpads due to patents)

I have been running Linux on MacBook Pros for many years, and the touchpad is
a constant source of disappointment. For the effort to be worthwhile to me,
the goal would have to include getting Apple's touchpads working excellently
in Linux.

I would definitely participate in crowdfunding this effort. (Kickstarter or
otherwise)

~~~
madeofpalk
_> As I understand it, the competition is barred from making similar touchpads
due to patents_

I'm unwilling to believe that Apple discovered the one and only way to make
good Trackpad hardware.

~~~
IshKebab
Have you used an Apple trackpad though? Because they genuinely are light years
ahead of the competition. Why wouldn't they patent everything around that?

~~~
collyw
What do they do that is different? I had a Mac from 2013 with Ubuntu
installed. I didn't notice anything different other than a lack of way to
emulate a third button.

~~~
syspec
this whole thread is about getting the MacOS feel in linux when on mac
hardeare becsuse it is not as good when hsed on linux.

so what you tried is what this thread is trying to fix

~~~
collyw
So what is different? You still didn't answer that. Every time I tried a mac
the scroll was upside down and it annoyed me. Now windows seems to have
adopted that.

------
sabarasaba
I used to care a lot about this kind of things about two years ago when I
switched from mac to linux. But to be honest, you just kind of get used to it
after a while and its not really that much of a deal breaker anymore. I spend
most of my time in terminals, and I use i3wm so most of my workflow doesnt
involve using the touchpad at all. The only use case i have for it is when
using chrome, but even so theres vimium and similar things to help you
navigate around without leaving your keyboard.

~~~
de_watcher
I've read the blog post and the comments, nobody says what are the features
they're talking about. I've only understood the "cursor nudge".

------
opdahl
If someone could actually make this, I would gladly pay an annual subscription
to access it. Almost the only reason I'm still buying MacBooks is because of
the touchpad, and if I could get that on Linux I probably would just switch to
a normal PC.

~~~
mkirklions
Who is on this website?

I thought these were mostly programmers, but I cannot picture a programmer
using a touchpad instead of a mouse.

~~~
rahoulb
Really?

Why not?

Why would you use a mouse if you're on a laptop? Especially a macbook, where
the trackpad is fantastic to use and offers gestures which give you features
you don't get with a mouse.

~~~
megaman22
Gestures are awful... They're nonstandard between boxes, and often flaky as
all hell. One of the first things I disable on a new OS install.

Why wouldn't you use a mouse, and get better precision, a standard form-
factor, and universally solid drivers? Besides, you can take your mouse and
plug it into any machine you need to work on.

~~~
lucideer
> _Why wouldn 't you use a mouse, and get better precision, a standard form-
> factor, and universally solid drivers?_

Most non-Mac-users do. Mac users don't, because they have a touchpad with
better precision, a standard form factor and solid drivers. Hence this post.
Why should I need to carry a peripheral everywhere for functionality my laptop
purportedly has integrated?

One could counter-argue that touchpad is inherently worse than a mouse, but I
think you'll find Apple have roundly disproven that. There's a reason the
Magic Trackpad exists (though I've never owned one, demand seems to be there).

------
wbharding
Original blog poster here (hi!). I'm pleased to find this motherlode of
detail-oriented perfectionists here on HN and in my blog comments. This
affirms my original question of whether it's a goal worth pursuing. Step one
complete.

Step two will be for me to sift through the offers and figure out how they can
be pieced together into a plan of action. It seems unrealistic to expect that
we could raise more than... $20k?... from detail-oriented perfectionists, so I
still need to figure out how best to constrain the scope of the goals enough
to get this done with scarce resources (unless someone at Microsoft wants to
kick in $1m in exchange for the affection of several thousand developers? :D)

It doesn't help that my day job is running a company in the process of
launching two new products -- this has a tendency to gobble up available
evenings and weekends and I wouldn't recommend it. But I've added it to my
todo list to puzzle out how to combine these dev resources into a plan. It's
plausible that the current libinput developer could be swayed by this
outpouring to help me build a viable plan to build a modern Linux touchpad
driver. I'll start there.

Look for an updated blog post with progress in the next couple months. And who
knows, maybe I won't still be using this 10 year old hardware in another year?

~~~
jcrben
I hope you look into updating libinput first.
[https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput](https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput)

Let's not add more not invented here without at least doing some solid good
faith effort to join the existing efforts.

------
batteryhorse
I've wanted to do this as well. I came to the conclusion that you'll need to
bypass the X windows input system and read the device directly, none of the
current solutions (like libinput, mtrack, or synaptics) would work
satisfactorily. And integrating it with Gtk or Qt will never work well because
of the structure imposed by those frameworks (Cocoa/ObjC is a much more
flexible framework)

I was able to write a prototype version of things like a tableview or image
viewer that gets input directly from the touchpad device (that draws straight
to an OpenGL texture or pixmap). The problem is that you'll never be able to
integrate this with Gtk and Qt, it just doesn't fit together. And working
within those two frameworks is kind of hell. Generally, gestures are not
discrete, you can go halfway through a gesture and change your mind, but
you'll still get graphical feedback from the UI. That's part of the joy of
using the touchpad. But it's just easier to write it from scratch than to add
it to Gtk or Qt.

For me personally, it's not a huge problem because I generally avoid Gtk and
Qt apps if at all possible and make my own UI's, but I don't see it gaining
widespread adoption so I don't know if it's worth the effort.

~~~
ProZsolt
Can you show your solution?

------
micheljansen
The touchpad experience of the Mac is where vertical integration really
shines. The touchpad is so good precisely because there are not hundreds of
hardware variants to support. Just the one that Apple used in their past X
years of MacBooks (so never more than a hand-full). And they make their own OS
and drivers.

Doing this for all laptops Linux could possibly run on is almost impossible.
It’s a shame that touchpad (or laptop) vendors do not see good drivers as a
competitive advantage. Sounds like a lot of people would buy a laptop just for
its touchpad (though probably not enough to justify investment from
manufacturers, so it seems).

~~~
tbrock
There cannot be THAT many different touch pads or drivers for them out there
that this is impossible. I bet there are only three or four types of main
brands at most which probably all come from the same factory in China.

It’s not like every time a new pc laptop comes out the dell and HP folks say:
“Yee haw! Roll up yer sleeves boys, it’s time to write another touchpad
driver!” That’s just insanity.

~~~
fbender
Not knowing how any of this works, I think best would be having a driver that
translates the raw signals into an intermediate, near-native form, i.e.
basically provide a standard range X-Y-Z vector (z for Pointer intensity) with
good enough (very high) resolution per touch point. Single-Touch devices will
only ever get one touch point, those that have no concept of intensity will
have a constant or binary Z value. Those measuring pointer-size can set the
Z-value accordingly (that‘s how I think intensity is measured anyway).

Then allow per-device configs with (basically) calibration curves. Allow for
different kinds of curves (discrete value interpolation, Bezier, you name it).
This enables the driver to support a lot of different devices. Bonus points if
the driver can tell the firmware about the calibrations (I‘d bet quite a few
touchpads have their own logic built-in).

Also the driver must support some curve and noise dampening as well as
progressive acceleration (basically inflating calibrated numbers with higher
speed of moving touch points and rapid succession of the same gesture) and
thus also understand some „higher level“ gesture logic, e.g. to properly
support the right feeling for touchpad scrolling as Macs do.

------
nneonneo
It would be great to know why the Linux drivers aren’t as good as the Mac
touchpad drivers. I have little experience with Linux input drivers, but
significant experience with the Android touch input stack (including a fair
bit of experience hacking the Synaptics touchscreen drivers). Is it a matter
of (1) the drivers themselves failing to provide good raw data (finger
positions, update rate, positional accuracy, etc.)? (2) A matter of the
drivers/userspace stack not decoding motions into useful gestures accurately?
(3) Or a lack of support from normal applications or the window server for
touch gestures and touch inputs?

In kernel space there’s definitely a lot we could crib from Android to get
started quickly - since that’s the low-hanging fruit I wonder if anyone’s
already done it. The userspace stuff is a totally different affair...

~~~
dmix
I've customized Linux for touchpads on a couple laptops now (note: Macbooks
are terrible choices for using linux on, using Thinkpad/Dell XPS is 100x
easier driver wise). The current drivers support about 90% of what Macbook's
can do in my experience. As the OP said in the article, it's "good enough",
just not perfect.

The last 10% of any implementation is where the most difficulty lies. I'm
happy to see the author not just accepting good enough, as Desktop Linux has
really been evolving past that point in recent years to be a legitimate
contender for daily/progressional use. Gnome and other desktop software has
come a long way.

~~~
jolmg
As someone who's never used a Mac, what's that remaining 10%? What am I
missing out on?

OP says he needs to "to click in the bottom right corner to effect a right
click" when using synaptics, but I've always just tapped 3 fingers to do right
clicks.

------
isostatic
Am I the only one who prefers the nipples on thinkpads?

~~~
lokedhs
No, but you are probably in the minority.

I have one on the Dell laptop I'm using (which also has a touchpad). Once in a
while I try to use it, but I find it almost impossible control with any kind
of precision. Changing the sensitivity doesn't help much.

I first tried that device on the first Thinkpads that had it, back in the 90's
or whenever it was. I have always had the same reaction to it.

How do you use it? Is this just a matter of getting used to it, and if it is,
how long does it take?

~~~
chx
The Dell ones are vastly inferior to the ThinkPad ones. While I do not know
the ones in the 20, the last ten or so years I worked solely with TrackPoint
first under Linux now under Windows 10. Under Windows 10, there's a Mouse tab
in Control Panel, there's a sensitivity slider and I found it's best to have
it just one notch below fastest. The default makes me feel I am wrestling with
my laptop.

~~~
lokedhs
I see. I haven't tried the Thinkpads since before they were sold to Lenovo, so
perhaps they are superior.

I am in the market for a new laptop, so perhaps I should give them a chance.
Not really for the pointers, but they do seem to be fine laptops overall.

~~~
Rovanion
Yeah. I got a Dell for my day job and unfortunately the nipple is entirely
unusable. I miss my ThinkPad :/

~~~
tie_
Same here. I had big hopes for Dell's nipple, but it's hardly usable and I
tend to prefer the touchpad.

On my own Lenovo, I use the nipple exclusively, and touchpad is disabled
completely. I had played Quake vs other human players with the nipple and won,
and I find it vastly superior to any kind of touchpad.

------
dvirsky
I have an Apple Magic Trackpad 2 attached to my Linux workstation, and
configured using synaptics and a custom kernel driver. The experience is
almost good, but not quite there.

The most annoying thing is scroll zoom in some apps (mostly Chrome), that
makes hitting ctrl while the trackpad is "coasting", result in zooming to
oblivion. I've sort of solved it with a chrome extension that disabled scroll
zooming.

But in general it just doesn't feel as smooth and took a lot of time tinkering
with to get to reasonable results.

I'll gladly contribute a bit to a kickstarter or something.

------
sammoth
I tried a MacBook touchpad in the Apple store and I didn't get what the fuss
was about. It has that annoying feature where when you click the cursor
freezes for some period of time, which stops you clicking on multiple things
in quick succession. It didn't feel any more precise to me in terms of
pointing. I realise it has gesture support that works in close harmony with OS
features, but just in terms of pointing and clicking it was nothing special.

~~~
Froyoh
It's so responsive and smooth, especially double-finger scrolling

~~~
brandonsometig
HP Chromebooks are exactly the same. It's all down to the driver.

------
haspok
Instead of starting a new project from scratch, why not reanimate synaptics
and fix the annoying bugs? Are there licensing issues? Is it not open source?
Or is there some underlying technical problem that makes this hard/unfeasible?

------
emsy
Usually when people set me up for high expectations, I end up getting
disappointed. In the case of the Macbook touchpad, my expecations were
actually exceeded. I use Bootcamp a lot for some of my projects, and the
touchpad support in Windows is so bad, I can't wait to go back to Mac Os
(other than that, I'm pretty much OS agnostic).

~~~
harrygeez
There's now a 3rd party precision touchpad driver that works surprisingly well
for MacBooks. Unfortunately it's CPU-bound and high CPU load can cause the
touchpad to be unresponsive. Setting CPU affinity to high partially mitigates
the problem though

[https://github.com/imbushuo/mac-precision-
touchpad](https://github.com/imbushuo/mac-precision-touchpad)

------
paulsmal
It's been a year now I've switched from mac to linux. Using libinput-
gestures[0] was quite nice, but eventually I changed by workflow to use
keyboard shortcuts more.

[0] [https://github.com/bulletmark/libinput-
gestures](https://github.com/bulletmark/libinput-gestures)

~~~
rhodysurf
I took the work from that project and turned it into a Gnome Extension to
allow for some (super basic) tweaking of trackpad gestures through a GUI.
[https://github.com/mpiannucci/gnome-shell-extended-
gestures](https://github.com/mpiannucci/gnome-shell-extended-gestures)

Its super basic and doesnt have all the features I want it to yet cuz of time.
It works well enough though and doesnt need to do any work on the actual
drivers to function.

------
fotcorn
Is the touchpad driver in the macOS kernel? If yes, the kernel itself is open
source, would it be crazy to try to extract the driver from there and make it
Linux compatible?

Other question: When are you actually using the touchpad? I use my notebook
99% of the time with a screen + keyboard/mouse.

Next question: Can we get to the level of a Macbook touchpad only with
software? Is there no magic sauce inside the hardware itself? How does the
touchpad feel when installing Windows or Linux on the Mac?

~~~
harrygeez
AFAIK macbook's keyboard and touchpad has a dedicated chip to handle user
interactions and is possibly part of the firmware. This explains why it works
on Apple EFI level and it works smoothly even on high CPU load.

~~~
peterburkimsher
I salvaged a 2010-model MacBook Pro trackpad, soldered on some USB wires, and
made it external. I was actually more interested in the keyboard, but
discovered that I needed both because the USB controller is on the trackpad.

[https://hawkwood.com/archives/743](https://hawkwood.com/archives/743)

Here's a closeup of the chips:

[https://hawkwood.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/09/IMG_3578.JPG](https://hawkwood.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/09/IMG_3578.JPG)

CY8C24794: Converts SPI to USB. [1]

SST 25WF020: 2 MBit serial flash memory. [2]

BCM5974: Multi-touch controller. [2]

TI CD3238: Driving IC. [3]

[1] [https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/333175-macbook-
pros-...](https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/333175-macbook-pros-touch-
pad-as-a-replacement-for-a-normal-touch-pad-on-a-hackintosh/)

[2]
[https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/07/29/teardown_of_apple...](https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/07/29/teardown_of_apples_magic_trackpad_reveals_tightly_packed_thin_design)

[3] [https://www.semisrael.com/blogs/technology/ti-touch-
screen-c...](https://www.semisrael.com/blogs/technology/ti-touch-screen-
controller-replaces-five-chips-from-original-iphone)

------
sz4kerto
Interesting that touchpad problems affect _many_ users, it's been a source of
pain and complaints for many years and the community can't throw together e.g.
$100k to pay a dev to develop a good enough driver.

------
rrrazdan
I would pay good money for this and other improvements to make Linux even come
close to Mac (HiDPI support, simple set of utilities, etc)

------
ToFab123
Microsoft did it and wrote a driver that makes a PC touchpad just as amazing
as the one you find on a MacBook. There is a world as different between using
that driver and the standard synaptics driver most laptops ships with. For
sure you want the same on a Linux box.

~~~
oaiey
This is a missing detail here. Microsoft created around the Win8 timeline a
specification for what they call "Precision Touchpad". The surface and e.g.
the Dell precision use it. The vendors jumped it as well, but industry like
always is super slow adopting.

The key is to support that spec.

------
H1Supreme
Maybe I'm not as sensitive to the differences, but after using Macbooks since
2009, I recently picked up a 13" Dell Inspiron 7000. I put Ubuntu (Mate) on it
first thing, and was actually surprised how well the trackpad worked. I was
fully prepared for it to be horrible, but it's really not.

Maybe I got lucky with this purchase? Maybe the driver isn't so bad? I don't
know. I have experienced awful trackpads from other models, so I'm not immune
to the effects of a bad one. But, this has been smooth sailing so far.

------
p3llin0r3
I have a System76 Galago Pro with 32 gigs of ram and an i7 processor.

Works GREAT, fan of the keyboard and everything.

The case is kinda shit, but it doesn't really bother me that much. I'm not
obsessed with having a designer laptop that looks beautiful, just something to
slam around and run programs on. Additionally, having a ton of ports to plug
things into has been very welcome after migrating off of the touchpad macbook
pros.

Linux desktop is nice because of the great docker support, and honestly it
tends to work quite well for pretty much everything I throw at it. Multi-
monitor support is great, it works fine with my 4k monitor. I was AMAZED when
I plugged my usb-c headphones into the usb-c port and heard sound come out.

I tend to just travel with a ball mouse because I have really severe
hyperhidrosis which renders basically all track-pads, even Apples', completely
unusable, and uncomfortable to boot. Moisture + friction is not a great combo.

I admit that I'm a bit of a weirdo and this set-up would be sub-optimal for a
lot of people due to support for various adobe products. But I'm happy with
the setup.

If I could go back in time I would probably get a Surface laptop and set my
home computer up as a server, and automate sending work to it, because I'm a
big fan of indie video games and would enjoy being able to play games on my
laptop.

------
mschuster91
What I find the biggest advantage is the hardware (as another poster here
does), but not only due to its superior capabilities in gesture recognition.

I have yet to find a non-Macbook touchpad which is:

\- decently sized: all Windows/Linux laptops I have encountered have
_ridiculously_ small touchpads, some not even a quarter of a Macbook touchpad
in size. I have huge hands, tiny touchpads are awful when two fingers are
wider than the touchpad.

\- decent material: AFAIK, Apple is the _only_ manufacturer using a glass
overlay on the touchpad. The Windows scene exclusively uses plastic, which
gets greasy after a couple of months for me. For the keyboards it's similar,
Apple simply uses a material that does not get greasy...

\- decent layouting: MBP touchpads are nearly flush with the casing, which
means one can use its full surface area including the edges. Windows touchpads
all are recessed, worst I had was 5mm - as evidenced by the grease-free
borders I lost about 25% of the already small touchpad.

~~~
vinay427
None of your points apply to various newer Windows laptops or even laptops
from years ago, such as my T450s. However, the smoothness still isn't up to
par with a modern MacBook. I use the TrackPoint anyway, but the trackpad seems
decent.

~~~
mschuster91
Of course it's anecdata, but it's still valid when I go through the local
electronics supermarkets. Plastic everywhere, nothing comparable with a
MacBook (no matter if on touchpad, keyboard or casing).

~~~
vinay427
I strongly prefer the quality plastic exterior with fiberglass and carbon
fiber construction of my ThinkPad. It feels far sturdier than a MacBook Pro
which flexes quite a bit (yes, I've had one before), it doesn't heat up like
the MacBook and warm my lap, and it's far more resistant to scratches and
general wear and tear in my experience. The build quality of the MacBook
hinges really throws me off as well. They're actually sturdy-feeling metal on
my laptop, while Apple seems to cheap out where metal is actually useful. Just
some thoughts to consider. :)

~~~
mschuster91
> it doesn't heat up like the MacBook and warm my lap

Yeah, but then a Macbook is inaudible under normal webbrowsing load. A typical
Windows machine will be audibly loud even when doing literally nothing, much
less gaming or other CPU/GPU intensive tasks. Touchpad aside, I'm not going
back to Windows unless I can find a laptop that is quieter than a cat meowing
for food.

As for the hinges, I have the exact opposite - no matter if Asus, Clevo or
Compal, it's always the hinges which break in less than a year. With Macbooks,
no problem in 3 years...

------
setzer22
This is something I've been wanting for a long time and I'd definitely donate
money to support such a project!

------
oldgun
I'm actually very interested in all the input devices for Linux. I feel like
Desktop Linux is not as good on user input devices, compared to MacOS/Windows,
e.g. touch screen, hand gesture, stylus support, and of course touchpad.

Would like to see them all improved. If there's such an initiative I'll
definitely donate.

------
curioussavage
I am in the same boat as the author. This is why own machine is a chromebook
too. Gallium OS (the distro with chromebook fixes) uses the driver from
chromeos and it is way better.

I would donate at least $100 towards this and would contribute if possible.

Maybe a more technical paper on the history and current state of things would
be nice too.

~~~
appleiigs
Chromebook trackpad is great. Closest to Macbook experience I’ve had.

------
HeadsUpHigh
Absolutely no. I never liked the macbook touchpad. I tried using it a couple
times. It really felt like they had to shoehorn every action into a gesture to
the point where a lot of them felt extremely cumbersome. For example it took
me a few tries until I managed to tile windows.

I'm using a regular non-luxury laptop. I'm mostly using it with a mouse
because the trackpad goes off every now and then( it's a hardware issue). But
when it works it's fine. Cursor tracking is good with no artificial accel etc(
meaning it goes exactly where I ask it to go), two finger scrolling works...
The only complain is that pinch to zoom doesn't work and that the default
button arrangement is a bit cumbersome.

~~~
dilap
I think you're definitely a special case. For me the MacBook touchpad is my
favorite input method, better than even a mouse -- because it's very precise,
and the gestures are very handy!

Generally, most people are very fond of mac touchpads.

So, I'd say from a linux strategic perspective, or the perspectie of the
greater good, the answer is yes!

~~~
pmontra
I'm another special case. The only good thing of the mac touchpad is pinch to
zoom integrated into many applications. I really don't want gestures.
Scrolling and moving the pointer on my HP laptops always worked really well.
Maybe it's a HP thing. However I remeber that the same touchpad worked much
better with Ubuntu 8.04 than with Windows XP. Two finger scrolling instead of
scrolling along the edge, among the other things.

I disable clicking on the touchpad and I use the 3 hardware buttons because
they're much better at being buttons and how would I middle click and paste
with a touchpad? Plus maybe the cursor nudge from the article. No, the
touchpad won't sell me a Mac.

~~~
dilap
Someone needs to make a "touchpad olympics" so we can see who is really more
nimble ;-)

But yeah, these things can definitely be pretty personal. Also, you get used
to one thing and it can be very jarring to use something else.

But man I've never used any PC that even felt _close_ to me. And I used to use
PC notebooks -- switching to mac was immediately a "holy shit, I'm not
plugging in a mouse anymore" moment for me. I've used a couple HP notebooks
but nothing recently. Maybe it's gotten better...

------
shaan7
I've worked with a 2013 MBP 15" for 4 years and then switched to XPS 13 +
Kubuntu. The touchpad is butter smooth - be it taps, clicks, or two finger
scrolling (and three finger gestures thanks to comfortable-swipe).

Any XPS 13 (9360) users around who feel the same?

~~~
k_
Dell E7440 here with arch linux. I had never been a touchpad user before, but
now it's been 10 months since I used a mouse. I even began to play mouse games
with it and it's mostly fine too.

------
newscracker
When I switched to Linux (because the Mac was old enough not to get updates
from Apple), the thing I missed most was support for the external Magic
Trackpad (the first version with the removable batteries). I searched around
and found some solutions, but they were all outdated and/or abandoned, and
none of them could get me all the features and gestures that Apple supported
natively since about 8-9 years ago.

Though Linux drivers have improved a lot over time, there are still some areas
like this that don't get attention. Not that there isn't a large enough user
base, but for many other reasons. I would gladly support a crowd funded
project by reliable people on such things.

------
maaaats
I don't think the trackpad is uniquely good on MacBooks. What I miss after
switching however is BetterTouchTool. That supercharged what was a trackpad
basically only used for scroll and single/right clicks to something awesome.

------
sneak
It would also be amazing to have a linux distro that has excellent, first-
class support for recent Apple computers. No such thing has existed for years.
It’s terrible that we are all trusting closed-source FileVault.

I would donate to such an effort.

------
ChuckMcM
I agree that the trackpad on the macbook pro is the gold standard, but the
author needs to effectively define the requirements in terms of something
testable. Otherwise they will be stuck in a bikeshedding world where everyone
is arguing.

This doesn't require any coding expertise, but it does require the ability to
write requirements in a way that more than one person can interpret them
correctly.

------
rconti
"but the Touchbar Era has taught me that it sucks to have my user experience
tied to the whims of a singleminded hardware company."

He's negative on Apple, sure, but this should really read as "it sucks to have
my user experience tied to the whims of a company". And that makes a better
OSS tagline anyway.

------
dbg31415
I'd be happy if Macs running Windows via Bootcamp had their touchpads work
anywhere close to how they work under MacOS... identical hardware, but the
software just falls short. Microsoft has a lot of money... makes me think this
isn't a simple issue to solve.

------
deltron3030
Are the Linux touchpad drivers developed apart, or together with other input
methods, like touch (e.g. KDE Plasma)?

How is the state of touch on desktop Linux, does it work fluidly? If yes, the
drivers that handle touch might be usable to improve touchpad performance.

------
jnmandal
I would absolutely fund and support this project. It should be done.
Personally I am fine with my touchpad experience right now on arch but it can
be improved and it should be. These are the offerings we need to make linux
more mainstream.

------
Sholmesy
I have this on one of my "Todos", as its my biggest frustration. I must be
underestimating just how much it takes to do this, because no one gets close
to Apple in my opinion.

------
scandox
I'd certainly contribute to a fund to raise money for a way of making the
internet easily browse-able using the keyboard.

Then I would not need a pointing or scrolling device at ALL.

Which would be heaven.

~~~
ealhad
Have you tried Vimium[0]?

It brings vim-like shortcuts to your browser. Despite what the Readme says, I
find it perfectly usable on Firefox.

[0]: [https://github.com/philc/vimium](https://github.com/philc/vimium)

~~~
scandox
Thanks I will try that out though my Emacs-hands may get confused.

~~~
scandox
I think maybe this is the problem I would pay $100,000 to solve / improve?

[https://imgur.com/a/7axkPSW](https://imgur.com/a/7axkPSW)

~~~
qeng-ho
Switch to using numbers for the quick links and you can type the text of the
link to narrow down the search for the quick link.

~~~
scandox
And I also just realised how link filtering works by typing the first letter
to only see some. So that is pretty swift also. Thanks for this.

------
hajile
Has there been any consideration of the driver Google uses for the pixelbook?
The touch experience is at least as good as a macbook and I think it's
superior.

------
matt4077
It‘s insane to see how the author is unwilling to give the touch bar a chance,
even after they themselves gives exhaustive proof of Apple’s expertise in UI.

------
rataata_jr
I care! We need this.

------
hathym
How about make your smartphone a smart touchpad? I will use it right aways,
maybe even buy a dedicated cheap smartphone just for that

------
scarejunba
Use bountysource. I'll chip on a bit of you do that. That's how neovim got
started and that worked out well

------
nkkollaw
Yes, definitely.

Depending on the distribution, touchpads on Linux are between unusable and
bad.

False touches are expecially annoying while you're typing a paper and you palm
touches the border of the touchpad.

I often disable the touchpad completely, or at least while a key is being
pressed, with a few milliseconds delay.

------
secure
I would very much appreciate MacBook-level touchpad support in Linux.

------
znpy
In this post: problems I didn't know existed.

------
bengale
I wonder when he switches back in a year whether the time will feel like a
worthwhile investment or just happy to have really showed them and their Touch
Bar.

------
naibafo
Yes, please!

------
sonnyblarney
The touchpad on my macbook pro is just such an amazing feature, so intuitive.
So 'just right' ... and consider that it's a primary form of interface.

Everybody should be doing this yesterday, it's one of the most obviously good
things going.

~~~
isostatic
> The touchpad on my macbook pro is just such an amazing feature, so
> intuitive. So 'just right'

Do you find the original scrolling mechanism, or the reversed scrolling
mechanism, to be "just right"?

~~~
sneak
The original one _is_ the reversed one. Fingers go up, content goes down.
That’s wrong as anyone who has used a phone or tablet can tell you.

They fixed it, so now it is indeed “just right”.

~~~
isostatic
Depends if you think you're moving the document, or moving the viewport.
Touchscreen behaviour is touching the document and moving it up, while your
view remains the same. Traditional scroll behavior is that you're moving the
view of your document down while the document itself doesn't move.

Either way, one method is "the original one", the other method is the
opposite, or reversed, from the original method.

~~~
madeofpalk
I don't really care either way - it's a setting so you can use what you
prefer.

But the default Apple 'moving the document' setting is extremely consistent
with the rest of the trackpad. When you use one finger you move the cursor,
not the viewport relative to the cursor. Why would it be different with two
fingers?

~~~
cesarb
Traditional scrolling is consistent with the arrow keys, that is, moving your
fingers down on the scroll wheel or the trackpad moves in the same direction
as pressing the down arrow in the keyboard. (The arrow keys traditionally move
a text cursor through the document, and the scrolling happens when it hits an
edge; this is why they content scrolls in the opposite direction.)

------
ahartmetz
A cheap mouse allows finer and faster control than the best touchpad that
currently exists, so... I plug in a mouse. (Don't believe me? Play an FPS game
with touchpad against a mouse user.)

That said, Synaptics touchpad support on Linux is bad. In my case, it's the
touchpad on a Thinkpad T440s. It can run in a legacy/standard protocol mode or
a "modern" protocol mode. Linux supposedly supports the latter (where palm
detection should work) since a few years, but I don't see it being used or
palm detection working.

~~~
nottorp
Item 1: It's undeniable that the mouse is more precise, but it tethers you to
a desk. One with enough space for a mouse. Not always feasible.

Item 2: You're mentioning Thinkpads. Try a touchpad on OS X, then come back.
The difference is enormous. You can actually use the GUI without a mouse and
without being annoyed, it's the only laptop/OS combination where that works.

~~~
bluecalm
Every time I use my gf's Mac I am instantly annoyed by the touchpad. Yeah,
it's better than the one on my Thinkpad but there I use the nipple which is
faster, more precise and quicker to reach also I can scroll around using a
button under my thump + nipple. Mac lacking page-up/page-down keys is annoying
if you need to do a lot of scrolling/coming back to keyboard/scrolling.

~~~
stiGGG
You get page-up / page-down behaviour with option+up / option+down shortcuts
on Macbook keyboard.

Also important:

begin document = cmd+up

end document = cmd+down

begin of line = cmd+left

end of line = cmd+right

