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Regardless of how you tweak it (except perhaps if you have the exact make and model of touchpad the developers used), it feels like you’re either trying to push the cursor through mud or else chasing Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde on the final level of PacMan and just can’t keep up.
#Synaptics usb touchpad linux windows
As many people that switched from xf86-input-synaptics to xf86-input-libinput can attest (or anyone that’s tried libinput on a laptop after using Windows or macOS): it’s horrible. While it’s true that libinput comes with out-of-the-box gesture support, it’s unfortunately a gigantic step back in terms of the actual touchpad experience. Unlike previous projects, libinput and its accompanying xf86-input-libinput X11 integration, promised native support for touchpads and multi-touch gestures, touting its superior abstraction as the reason why it could provide a better multi-touch experience where its predecessors couldn’t. Then came Wayland with its “let’s rewrite everything” approach and brought with it libinput, as yet another replacement abstraction for all input devices.
#Synaptics usb touchpad linux driver
Along the way to no longer being a Synaptics-only PS/2 touchpad driver, xf86-input-synaptics started to use the evdev Linux kernel input driver, which also gave birth to the more generic input/mouse/touchpad xf86-input-evdev driver that used the same kernel abstraction, which most distributions now use because it featured some (limited) multi-touch gesture support and was viewed as the way forward. First there was xf86-input-synaptics, initially written to specifically target Synaptics touchpads but later updated with support for many different devices – for the longest time this was both the best and the only way of getting Linux to recognize and support the most common trackpads. The state of Linux multi-touch input in 2020 An easy example: in 2020, you’d think there would be an easy answer to getting a trackpad/touchpad up and running with support for multi-touch gestures at least on par with the experience on Windows and macOS – after all, it’s been 12 years since Apple made multi-touch popular with 2008 MacBook Air. Perhaps one of the biggest difficulties in setting up a Linux system for desktop/home use is the fragmentation of the ecosystem, with many different options claiming to get you from point a to somewhere in the vicinity of point b, each with their subtle differences (and at least a few “gotchas” along the way).