Ubuntu Tried Adding Synaptics Support Back To GNOME's Mutter

[Vistaus]

You are all wrong. The trackpoint is the input device to rule them all.






/S

That is so true! My current laptop (Dell) is dying and I do miss the trackpoint I had on my Thinkpad 5 years or so ago (I first got a different laptop and then this Dell) so when this one really does die, I'll most likely switch back to a new Thinkpad. Also, the keyboard on Thinkpads is usually very good (with the exception of the crappy Edge series).

[Awesomeness]

libinput is missing a lot of configuration options compared to the Synaptics driver, but I've never used any of those configuration options so libinput works fine for me on both X and Wayland. No complaining. My trackpad's fast and precise.

libinput itself has many options but relies on other software further up in the stack to expose them, eg. Gnome doesn't allow to disable horizontal scrolling but libinput itself does offer it.

[Jumbotron]

You are all wrong. The trackpoint is the input device to rule them all.






/S

Hey...Hey....I LOVED the trackpoint on the Thinkpads !

[microcode]

Hopefully they can also address their issues in libinput, or at least express them in a structured manner. Obviously libinput is where it's at, moving forward. For now of course, they can keep their downstream patches.

[ElectricPrism]

IIRC libinput taking over on wacoms a year ago caused a lot of headache for me. The precision for drawing tiny circles, straight lines, and wobbly issues were drastically different than evdev, I am unsure if the problem lay in libinput or wacom's driver but it basically rendered thousands of dollars of equipment useless until we could figure out how to hack the configuration file and disable libinput for handling the tablet input.

I can see that Gnome doesn't want to maintain this burden for what 3-5 years extra so I can see that they are letting canonical shoulder this burden without them & mainline.

It's the kind of thing where sometimes it matters and when it does it probably matters a whole lot.

[Delgarde]

I can see that Gnome doesn't want to maintain this burden for what 3-5 years extra so I can see that they are letting canonical shoulder this burden without them & mainline.

Yeah, I remember reading a series of blog posts from one of the libinput developers a while back. He was trying to replicate the "feel" of the synaptics driver, but was running up against the fact that *nobody* understood how the synaptics code worked... the "feel" that users wanted was the result of some quite complex interaction between a lot of different bits of logic...

[M@GOid]

Hey...Hey....I LOVED the trackpoint on the Thinkpads !

To be honest, I said that sarcastically but actually I find them a good input method. It is surprisingly accurate. And if I wasn't so settled on years of touchpad use, the trackpoint definitely would be a viable mouse substitute for me.

[brrrrttttt]

dos1 : I always found touchpads to be slower to use than a mouse. I'm wondering why you are using them often. Do you find them quicker? Do you do lots of work on the move where carrying/using/unpacking a mouse would be inconvenient?

Previously they were a little cumbersome in Linux and Windows, but I've always found them to be superb with Apple hardware + macOS and all their out-of-box gestures. libinput is moving in the right direction to catch up.

[cybertraveler]

Previously they were a little cumbersome in Linux and Windows, but I've always found them to be superb with Apple hardware + macOS and all their out-of-box gestures. libinput is moving in the right direction to catch up.

Are the Apple touchpads better than your typical Windows laptop touchpads, also?

[brrrrttttt]

Are the Apple touchpads better than your typical Windows laptop touchpads, also?

Yes, that's a big part of the equation too.