Comment by akdev1l
21 hours ago
There is a whole section on touchscreen annoyances from the Linux Surface project: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Installa...
> Any gesture functionality is dependent on the software you are running. This includes both, the application (e.g. Firefox) and the desktop environment (e.g. GNOME). The driver can only provide a set of input coordinates to the applications. By default, the system will behave as if you've clicked at the point of a single touch, or mouse-button dragged when you single-finger drag.
I love Linux but no need to embellish the current state imo
I am glad that it is working really well for you though
> There is a whole section on touchscreen annoyances from the Linux Surface project
Taking a quick look, all of the things they list are basically reiterating what I've already said vis-a-vis Wayland:
> The driver can only provide a set of input coordinates to the applications. By default, the system will behave as if you've clicked at the point of a single touch, or mouse-button dragged when you single-finger drag.
Yeah no. All of this depends on everything up to the application.
A gtk2 application will have no support for anything. A GTK3 application running on xwayland will have poorer support as well. And anyway most applications just treat the touchscreen as an invisible pointer as it says there.
Just to give an example of some basic thing that doesn’t work reliably: you can’t reliably use a long press gesture. In most apps that will be equivalent to holding the left click (aka does nothing but a long click). On iOS you will get a contextual menu to select/format text or whatever. (You can find a real report of this issue here: https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/s/crLHZhHkuM - “how do I right click using the touchscreen?” from barely 6 months ago)
Your claim that this is an equivalent experience to an iPad is just false.
I’ve been around long enough to remember setting up TouchEgg, the situation is better now but still not equivalent at all.
Anyway originally I wanted to reply to provide balance to your take so casual readers wouldn’t install Linux on their tablets and expect iPadOS. I think that has been sufficiently achieved by this comment chain, readers can choose which side to take :-)
Cheers!
This is helpful :)
To go back to the app-by-app comment, I do know that there are like ubuntu tablet and touch setups.
Are there any browsers already setup to be more touch native, or specific browser builds that are more touch native already?
1 reply →
I remember TouchEgg too, I did use x11 for a few years. The experience back then was not comparable to an iPad, but the modern Wayland session is.
If you're going to fight over edge-case consistency, then at least be consistent. People build iPad apps with horrible custom widgets that block context menus too. They run "real" software in QEMU and iTerm that truly has no support for any of their default HIDs. Linux has more software to support, by nature it's going to have the larger number of inconsistent experiences. I don't think that's a fair basis of comparison, though.
Strictly speaking, I think KDE and GNOME's Wayland stacks are the closest equivalent to the Quartz Compositor on the market. I don't really know any other stack that comes close.