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Comment by mikekchar | Hacker News Reader

It's funny... I have never touched a MacBook. I'm actually very happy with the Linux touchpad drivers. I went to the article hoping to get a clear idea what the author likes about the MacBook drivers that are absent in the Linux drivers... But he doesn't say. Instead there was a poll asking me what I thought was wrong (which is nothing)... The parts about multi-touch were interesting because I really like the way multi-touch works in the current driver. So I think I'm missing something.

So for those of you frustrated with the Linux touchpad driver... what is the problem? Or is it just that it's not the same (which is a completely valid complaint, IMHO)?

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I dislike Macs quite badly and go through a lot of hoops in the hopes of not being forced to use a Mac when I start a new job. I hate the keyboard. I hate the touchbar. I hate the MacOS in general. Despite this though, there is one thing I praise a lot and among all peers, and that is its trackpad.

The trackpad is extremely responsive. The "click but it's not a clickpad" feature they have is perfect.

Combine that with the responsive, intuitive and really great gestures that aren't event based, but rather they are smooth gestures that can be turned back and undone. Compared to something like libinput-gestures which captures the gesture and then triggers a shortcut of some sort at the very end.

I find it hard to explain. The trackpad doesn't feel like it's in the way. It feels part of you once you understand and get used to the gestures.

From using Linux on my MacBook, I remember poor palm rejection being one frustration. Also, I think multi-touch - such as scrolling with two fingers - didn't work.

Just all round it wasn't very pleasant to work with. Perhaps if you have been using trackpads on Linux all your life, you are used to moving your hands away from the trackpad when not in use -- and so accidental presses are maybe never an issue for you.

I've only ever used a MB once or twice; usually little more than trolling someone who's left their machine unlocked in the office, but I did find the touchpad intuitive.

As an exclusively Linux user, my only real issue with touch pads is palm rejection, I feel like it has never worked so I end up in all sorts of awkward hand positions trying not to tap it by accident.

As a 6ft4in male (with the large hands to go with it) it becomes painful when trying to do this for any period on my XPS 13. On the XPS 15 it's easier because there are large enough spaces either side of the touchpad to rest my palms.

I have repetitive strain injuries, so I simply cannot use Linux. The way I have to twist my wrists so the touchpad doesn’t mistakenly register a palm print is obnoxious and pain inducing.

It sounds to me like the Linux macbook drivers are worse than the drivers for other hardware. Which is a problem, but on the other hand I don't see a reason anyone would buy Apple's overpriced hardware and put up with glued-in batteries, soldered on SSDs, display cables that disconnect if you open the screen too much, crappy keyboards, thermal throttling, etc., if they weren't married to Mac OS.

Plus, with how the T2 chip is going you might not even be able to boot Linux on a Macbook in a few years.

I use a MacBook most of the time and incidentally Linux/Windows systems, and IMO the problem is not the Linux touchpad drivers are bad as such, but the way the system as a whole reacts to its input.

Since macOS uses GPU-backed windows all interaction animations run highly responsive at 60fps. Scrolling through a webpage or navigating to another windows with 'expose' or just swiping between workspaces is really instantaneous. Also, try swiping 'back' in Safari and you immediately see the current page moving a bit out of the way, exposing the previous page. If you decide you don't want to go back you just let go of the trackpad and the action reverts.

Applications implementing their own rendering (Firefox/Chrome and other non-native toolkits) do not have that quality consistently.

Same hardware with Linux or Windows 10 feels completely different. Windows profits from GPU optimisations, but the UI situation is a mess. Every Linux distribution's GUI (X11 _and_ Wayland) I've worked with has even more noticeable lag between user input and output.

Most likely its cursor acceleration. macOS dynamically adjusts the cursor movements based on the user swipe speed which makes it feel both precise and fast. Last time I used Linux on my MBP, libinput was more... linear.

I remember when I switched from MacOS to Linux and the mouse drove me crazy. I don’t know what has changed but I’m totally comfortable with it now. I do tend to feel like the mouse is an awkward tool. Maybe some MacOS like improvements could help with this. I hope they find a good dev and some funding for this project!

I think this was the first discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17547817

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