Libinput 1.13 Is Coming But High-Resolution Scrolling & Dell Totem Support Delayed

Libinput is fairly mature at this stage for offering a unified input handling library for use on both X.Org and Wayland Linux desktops. Libinput has largely reached a feature plateau with new releases no longer coming out so often and no glaring gaps in support. With it already being a half-year since the last major release, libinput 1.13 is now being buttoned up for release and available today is the first release candidate.

Libinput 1.13 isn't that exciting of a release particularly since maintainer Peter Hutterer of Red Hat decided to delay the high resolution scrolling support. The Linux 5.0 kernel brought the much anticipated high resolution scrolling support for various Logitech/Microsoft mice to improve the scroll-wheel experience. Besides the kernel support, there is also the user-space support that needs updating. Peter decided to delay this functionality now until Libinput 1.14 to give it more time to bake.

Also delayed to Libinput 1.14 is the "Totem" support for the Dell Canvas input device.

With the Dell Canvas Totem and high-resolution scrolling not part of Libinput 1.13, this forthcoming update is less exciting but there is at least touch arbitration improvements for tablets, various input device quirks are added from different laptop touchpads/trackpoints to other quirky hardware. There is also a wide range of other fixes and code improvements with Hutterer himself having landed more than one hundred changes.

The complete list of changes and hardware quirks for Libinput 1.13 can be found via this morning's RC1 announcement.