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Comment by londons_explore | Hacker News Reader

From a technical approach, is it even possible?

How many touchpads expose the raw touch data (ie. A bitmap of capacitance data) necessary to replicate macos gestures? Things like palm detection absolutely require that.

Is the project worth it if it only works on one model of hardware?

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Microsoft "enforces" nowadays a generic touchpad interface they call Precision Touchpad. When your notebook has one of these, the Windows generic driver kicks in and the experience is MUCH better. I never owned a MacBook but I never again will accept a Windows laptop without a precision Touchpad.

So, I have good hope that Linux users will enjoy this experience also one day. Microsoft forces the vendors in it.

I have an HP laptop that supports the Precision Touchpad drivers, but it takes considerable effort to use them. By default, Synaptics drivers will be downloaded by Windows Update and override the Windows built-in drivers. It doesn't make much difference to the cursor motion that I have noticed, but the Synaptics configuration UI is just as bad as it was 20+ years ago and doesn't seem to offer the same range of options as the Windows settings page it disables.

This download is strange. Because synaptics was the role model for th e interface. Probably HP messed this up.

Yeah. It's worth noting that Microsoft's Precision Touchpad enforcement happened ~8 years after the Mac's (multitouch) Touchpad arrived.

True. Comparable to other Microsoft driver projects a colossal failure. But nevertheless, it gains momentum the last two years.

Newer models certainly do. We're working on a surface driver that exposes raw heatmap data https://github.com/qzed/touch-detection-prototype/blob/maste...

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