Ask HN: Linux laptop with good multi-touch trackpad

6 points by true_tuna 6y ago ↗ HN

I’m running a couple Linux machines (a Lenovo X1 and an otherwise nice Dell with an abysmal trackpad) but I’ve never gotten a good multitouch trackpad working. I suspect the trackpad hardware I’m working with is limited since no amount of tweaking is working for me. Has anyone gotten a good trackpad working under any flavor of Linux on any hardware (except Apple, I’m trying to get away from their hardware monopoly)

5 comments

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muddi900 6y ago ↗

The lenovo has a decent trackpad. At least mine does, and works great for me with the windows driver. I am guessing no one has written any decent drivers for them on Linux.

true_tuna 6y ago ↗

There’s an active project to make good trackpad drivers for Linux. I suspect I could get better performance from the x1 given some work. I’ll focus on that one. The dell latitude 7250 I suspect just has a crap trackpad.

tony 6y ago ↗

There may be more avenues left to try with your current hardware, before you make a choice:

Check to makes sure you're running a distro with recent enough Xorg/linux kernel (but not so bleeding edge stuff like libinput-gestures isn't supported). Also if you use integrated graphics, life may be easier since you can pick between Wayland and Xorg to find which DM supports inputs best in your case.

Xorg drivers: https://github.com/p2rkw/xf86-input-mtrack

libinput: https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/index.ht...

libinput-gestures: https://github.com/bulletmark/libinput-gestures (example: https://gist.github.com/SkyBehind/d664448838d065428eded7eb6d...)

Gnome extension with some gesture edgecases: 3-finger swiping to different windows like macOS: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1253/extended-gesture...

Also if you really like trackpads and want a consistent experience, you can get a logitech t650 / apple magic trackpad and share your configuration for libinput/etc. across machines.

Edit: I reread and noticed you're trying to stay away from apple hardware. You could try logitech's trackpad, but apple magic trackpad may be better a la carte. If you did I'd recommend using via USB w/ bluetooth off to avert pairing headaches

true_tuna 6y ago ↗

Thanks, that’s good advice. I’m ok with an external apple Magic Trackpad. As long as I can bring my own device so to speak.

karmakaze 6y ago ↗

Curious, do you really mean multitouch, or just a trackpad with two finger gestures? I only use the latter.

I got a Surface Go with the intention of running Linux on it but Firefox and WSL/bash works well enough for me. And it has a decent trackpad. The Surface Pros can run Linux with varying degrees of success and is what I'll be looking at when I move away from Mac as they're lighter than competing laptops.