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"Linux Touchpad like Macbook" Update: 2023 Progress on Smooth Scrolling
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this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
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Linux
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Perfectly replicating a Mac trackpad on a Linux system might be the final push for me to switch. Once those gestures are part of your flow, they are almost impossible to live without. It is one of the primary things Apple has ever gotten consistently right.
It's great to see how different people priorities are! For me this is one of the least interesting features ever, I have never used a laptop with a trackpad to do any (meaningful) work. That said, I am really glad if people with different priorities will get the chance to have their preferred flow in Linux!
I don’t usually like trackpads on other machines, but the gestures to switch desktops, zoom, change pages, and everything else that Apple builds in become so ingrained in your muscles that they save an enormous amount of navigational time. There really is no comparison. It is one of the essential features that keeps me from fully switching to Linux for every device in my home.
They always make them out of materials that feel luxurious to touch, which is another bit of computing philosophy I’ve adopted from them—if it touches my body, it should be extremely high quality. This goes for trackpads, mice, keyboards, clothes, and furniture.
Even if you don’t use their machines, it is worth checking out a demo of their gestures just to make you reconsider what a trackpad should be.
Oh no, I get it, I do have a work-issued macbook pro which I am currently not using in favour of a Linux machine. The main reason for me is ergonomics. My laptopt is closed in a vertical stand, and I cannot imagine myself moving the hands so much do to stuff. I do basically everything what the trackpad does with i3 keybindings, which I find not only faster, but also allow me to reduce movement of my arms and ultimately limiting wrist/arms stress.
Obviously I completely agree that if one has or prefers to work with trackpads, apple ones are honestly great.
If you're allowed to install it on your work computer, asahi Linux is my current daily driver and it works really well. Being able to use asahi-bless lets you switch back to the Mac without having to go to recovery. It's a really great project.
Oh no, I work for a financial company and unfortunately we are extremely limited in what we can run. That's the reason why I am hanging to my Linux box for as long as I can, not even Yabai is allowed on Mac. I follow the project on Mastodon though, it's really cool.
If you haven’t already and you want an interesting weekend project, get a shooting timer and check how fast your hotkeys actually are compared to the mouse.
Back in 2009 someone told me, a 12 year Linux user at that point with a huge memory of key bindings, about plan 9 and their research into efficiency and speed of using key bindings over a mouse. I couldn’t believe it, they found that there was no appreciable speed benefit of using keys over a mouse.
When I say I couldn’t believe it I’m speaking literally. I wasn’t able to comprehend how what felt so slow to me could not be beaten by what felt so instantaneous! So I got a shot timer and tried it on my own.
A shot timer is a stopwatch that waits a short but random number of seconds before beeping then counts up until the requisite number of bangs have happened or some other thing that makes it stop. They were designed for shooting (as you might imagine) where you want the person to start in some state of readiness and time how long it takes for them to get on target and shoot without being able to “count” themselves in.
Keys were slightly (fractions of a second) faster for things I had designed my workflow around and used all the time like changing desktops, opening terminals, moving stuff between desktops.
Mouse was faster than opening a terminal and typing the name of a program to launch it, and moving files around was faster with the mouse almost all the time. A combination of mouse and “universal” keybindings (ctrl-c,v,x,z) made it faster all the time.
Across flux/blackbox, xvwm, windows and osx, the box window managers were fastest with keys, mostly because you can’t do much with a mouse in em at least the way I was running, xvwm, windows and osx were either dead even on average or faster with a mouse.
It’s a fun thing to try if you’re ever wondering how much time you’re actually saving.
Hey, that's actually a very nice project, and to be honest, I can kinda imagine that the saving is minimal if there at all, in terms of time. Partially, I think this is also due to the fact that we are talking about super small amounts of time anyway! Moving files around I think it's totally fast with a mouse, and in general I still do it like that. For me speed is really a secondary thing, it's about ergonomics and limiting my movements. Chances are, I am already writing on the keyboard when I want to do something, so it might not be faster to switch to browser with mod+2 and back to terminal with mod+1, but it's less movement to find the mouse, rotate the shoulder (my split kb is open at shoulder width) etc. Also I think I would argue that requires less focus because it's inherently more mechanic as an action compared to find a button and click, or dragging and dropping something. Either way, it's for sure something interesting to look at!
Next time I’m around the family for awhile I wanna repeat it with a blood pressure monitor. I always feel more intense when using keyboard shortcuts, the question is if I’m also running a higher blood pressure when using them.
I could check with my fitness tracker, it has a "stress level". Might not be super accurate though.
Conversely I'd find taking my hands from the keyboard to change workspaces for instance to be clunky and awkward. That's why I use keyboard first, TrackPoint second, trackpad or mouse distant third.
PSH. They dont even know up from down.
It’s designed like pushing paper towards you or away from you—I actually find it more natural. Imagine the screen is a long piece of paper continuing down to your hand and you’ll see what I mean. Push away to push the screen up, pull towards yourself to pull the screen down.
Plus, if you don’t like it, it is easily customized in the trackpad preferences.