Navigation swiping (2-finger) without holding 'alt' in X11? [support][linux][debian] (lemm.ee)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by Nimrod@lemm.ee to c/firefox@lemmy.ml

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I recently installed Debian 12 using Xfce on my SUPER old chromebook to extend its life. Everything has been really nice so far. But I use the chromebook for browsing 90% of the time, so I like to have everything as easily operated as possible, and I am used to being able to navigate forward and back in the browser using two finger swipe gestures.
After some googling, I saw that the support for this just got added in Wayland environments. That implies that it already existed in X11 environments? After a while, I found that if you hold 'alt' you can use the swipe gestures. It defeats the purpose of gestures if you have to use both hands, so I was hoping there was a way to get this functionality back.

(Mozilla Firefox version = 115.6.0esr)

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[-] Urist@lemmy.ml 3 points 10 months ago

Use libinput-gestures or... Wayland.

[-] Nimrod@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago

It looks like libinput-gestures is similar to touchegg/touché in the sense that it only adds support for 3 or 4 finger gestures. It looks like 2 finger gestures are supposed to be supported by your DE or are app specific.

Thanks for the reply!

[-] Urist@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago

I suppose, but a three finger swipe still only needs one hand (I think it is the same on macbooks) so should work fine.

[-] Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

That implies that it already existed in X11 environments?

Not necessarily. Especially in the gestures department, those tend to be Wayland exclusive and is probably why you need to press Alt on X11. I think applications pretty much only get scroll wheel events on X11, while on Wayland they get proper touch events so it's possible to also implement pinch to zoom and the other usual ones.

Both Gnome and KDE only support 3-4 finger gestures on Wayland as well, like 3 fingers up for overview in Gnome just like macOS.

I would expect Wayland to work great on a Chromebook, I'd recommend giving it a try.

[-] Nimrod@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago

I would love to run gnome/wayland, but my Chromebook is about a decade old, and it was a cheapo from the start. It only has 2GB ram, so I’m running as light as I can. Unless there is a way to put wayland on xfce, I might be stuck. I appreciate the reply!

this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024

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