There are more than 2 desktop environments for Linux you've tried if my guess is right (since you've tried Ubuntu). Imo KDE is light years ahead than Windows but requires to set it up for your taste.

Can KDE do something about touchpad support whist the underlying X and kernel support for the hardware is absolute rubbish? It was a while ago I used KDE, but from what I can remember there was no option to fine tune touchpad behaviour.

I like that under Linux you have a freedom of choice when it comes to window managers. KDE, Gnome2-3, XFCE, Cinnamon, you name it. It's awesome to have so many tools for one problem.

Hell, I even liked Unity. I think it was a very clean and easy to use wmanager.

But no matter how fancy-ass the wrapping is, if the problem is underneath it.

KDE does have to configuration in its system settings, but it obviously only relies on the standard X/kernel drivers and is only a convenience GUI for setting these options.

As I found it out the hard way, xinput is pretty bare and does not support the settings required to make the touchpad usable on an XPS 9343, for example. The settings for minimum and maximum acceleration are missing (and so these options are greyed out on the KDE GUI). They are defaulted to MIN and MAX respectively.

Solution: install Synaptics, open KDE panel, set both acceleration settings to a low value, enjoy.

I feel your pain.

Ubuntu Desktop was my preferred go to distro not too long ago. Using 16.10 was nice and I managed to get the touchpad working in a reasonable way with xinput.

Then 18 came along and everything went to hell. All the properties changed and some even disappeared. And of course the ones missing were the ones I actually needed to make my touchpad work in a way that it was comfortable to use.

After that I just jumped ship. I didn't wanted to spend another week to figure out everything again.

I happily choose Linux when it comes to servers and other non-desktop related work, but I am very disappointed how it lacks user friendliness and ease of use. 10-20 years back I would have said, that laptops are a niche platform and that's why it has a hard time supporting hardware. But it's 2018 and laptops are becoming mainstream in everyday use. Not being able to support the primary pointing hardware on a platform so popular is a death sentence.

And don't get me started on discrete GPUs...

Reading this thread makes me wonder if I live in the same universe as HN.

I'm amazed at the level of exquisiteness of the requirements of the HN crowd. I mean, I've been using computers all my life and used almost every Linux, Windows and OS X systems.

I do get that Macbook touchpads are god-tier and unrivaled so far by other hardware manufacturers. That being said, I rather have my old Lenovo x220 with an external mouse. No touchpad is as good as a decent external mouse (decent != expensive, mine is $30).

If you want to see an abysmal differences between touchpads, compare a Macbook one with the Lenovo's X220 touchpad. The X220 is the worst touchpad I've ever used, but it is still my main computer and I love it.

People talk about Mac's build quality, when I think they should be referring to its industrial design, which I get is very appealing to the senses. Now, the X220 has serious build quality. You couln't break it if you wanted to, and if you do break it, almost every part is < $100 on eBay and easy to repair.

My point is the following, and as other commenter said; I think people choose Macs before they like it better, it suits their image and are willing to pay their pricetag. I know people need to justify their choices as if Macs are the only objective solution that fits their use cases, but I find this hard to believe.

I understand that everyone has its valid reasons behinds every choice they make, but what bothers me (I know it shouldn't but who cares) is when that people bash on Linux and other hardware manufacturers just because they don't LIKE that OS/computer. I don't LIKE macOS/Macs and I don't them, that doesn't mean they are not good systems. I just CHOOSE to not use them because MY reasons.

Nowadays most systems offer more than acceptable user experiences out of the box, whether its a Linux/Windows/macOS box on whatever hardware. The thing is that people get really picky and justify their decisions by diminishing other manufacturers/systems. I believe people are afraid to say "I bought a Mac because I like them! f* you!"

First of all, when there is a manufacturer who can create something decent as a macbook touchpad, then others can do the same. Especially when you are at a price point that is identical to a Macbook's. There is no excuse to cut corners on such a simple thing like a stupid touchpad.

Second, nobody here is a Macbook fanboy just because their touchpads, but there is a reason why we praise them. From my part I am not a fanboy. I absolutely hate Apple and what it has become. But credit is due for the small things they get right. And the touchpad is one of them. The last good series of their pro line was the 2015 one, which I use at work. That is the best and you can see that as other manufacturers tried to copy it in every way. Not so much with the new models.

Third, most of the touchpads on Linux are bad not because the hardware itself is bad, but because bad support and drivers that apparently nobody wants to fix. My current laptop has a fantastic touchpad under Windows, but under Linux is absolute shit and there is not much you can do about it.

Can the touchpad be still used? Yes, of course, but I hate it. It makes me work slower and makes me annoyed, just the simple fact that under Windows that touchpad is awesome and I can't use it the same way under Linux. That simple fact kills it.

So to sum it up. It's not about Apple, it's not about what OS you like to use. It's not about peoples choice. It's about Linux being shit with touchpads on laptops whether it's old or new, or from another dimension.

So you are completely missing the point here.

I agree that this is not the core issue in this post, and we shouldn't turn this into the classic Mac vs. non Mac that leads nowhere, more so when there is a guy/girl who actually volunteered to fix the driver issues.

I reacted to the comments bashing Linux and such, because I cannot relate to the level of discomfort that people express with their non-apple touchpad. I mean, I use Linux and I use those same shitty touchpads, but I do my work just fine and don't stress about it. I mean, if you think your touchpad is shitty you should try the Lenovo x220 one, it's terrible lol.

What I wanted to understand is what are the uses cases of users like you, where you get to the point of hating a touchpad and make you work slower. Maybe the way I use the mouse it's pretty basic and I need to up my game with multi-gesture magic. But all I need from a mouse is: interaction with my desktop environment, scrolling, copying and pasting text, some basic image editing, and using the office suites which require a lot of mousing. And I can do that with almost every mouse/touchpad.

Well my grief with the touchpad was really when it came to frontend work. or even just scrolling through lines of code was a pain as it was too sensitive in every way. This kind of behaviour makes any kind of interaction a pain. Not that you can't live with it, but just knowing that the same hardware performs hundred times better on another OS...

The tipping point for me was more about the absolute lack of user friendliness when it comes to setting it up. I've spent days to understand xinput, find the properties that I need to change (with non-existent documentation) and then spend time on finding the best values for them. And then upgrading distribution version negated all the effort I've put into it, by changing a lot of things and was back to square one.

As I wrote in a previous reply on this thread, the touchpad was the final straw in a long uphill battle. A lot of grief came from the lack of user friendly configuration of anything within the system. And when you start editing configuration files and reading forums on a regular basis, that makes one realise that he/she is spending more time on making life easier then actually living it. And this is with one of the most user friendly distributions, or so do they say.

Anyway, I was very disappointed and still am. It's been 18-19 years since I've been introduced to Linux and used it on many occasions, but some things don't seem to change, or take a long period of time to change. I understand it comes from the Open Source-ness of the whole thing, where people take their own time and energy to make something better for free.

For the most part I've been reasonably happy with Linux touchpads (maybe I'm too accepting of less than a perfect experience?) except for one area: Palm rejection.

When you have a giant touchpad it's absolutely necessary to have good working palm rejection, and I've seen far too many laptops completely fail to have palm rejection in Ubuntu. Sometimes you can get it working again by twiddling the mouse driver (enable/disable xinput for example), but sometimes it just plain never works. I've been all over StackExchange and similar places but on some laptops none of the proposed solutions work. I've opened bug reports, but it's hard for developers to fix it when they can't replicate the problem. Sometimes you only get half functionality, like the cursor won't move but it will still click, moving your text cursor to random places when the palm lightly brushes the touchpad and it registers as a click.

On some laptops I just have to pack in a mouse and disable the touchpad entirely. That's not an acceptable solution. I'm really hoping that Ubuntu 18 avoids some of this nonsense.

For me Ubuntu 18 was worse then 16.10. A lot of properties I used to fine tune the touchpad with xinput were gone or changed.

Was very disappointed. So if you haven't made the change yet, then you might want to stay on whatever you're on for the time being.

People choose a Macbook because they can walk into an Apple store and walk out with a quality product. Compared to the average PC a macbook has:

  * Better display
  * Faster hard drive
  * Better battery life
  * God-tier touchpad :)
  * Premium build quality and materials
  * Better sound
  * Better resale value
  * An Apple store nearby where they can get factory support

Sure there are laptops which are superior in certain aspects if you are willing to do some research or are very knowledgable in tech. If the average person walks into Best Buy and limits their options just to Lenovo and a device with the word "Yoga" in the name, they may walk out with an X1 Yoga, X380 Yoga, L380 Yoga, Yoga 260, Yoga 11e Chromebook, Yoga 920, Yoga 730, Yoga 720, or Yoga 710. I couldn't tell you the difference between most of these and I spent a long time researching convertible laptops.

Most of the regular (as in non-tech) people I know even though they like Macs (because they are beautiful) don't buy them (even if they have the money) because they don't think they're worth it. The people that do buy them are the ones that already bought into the Mac eco system, mainly because of the iPhone.

About the technical aspects you listed, I think most of them are debatable. But I do believe that none of them are the driving factors that explain why people but these computers.

What I don't understand is why we, technical people, are afraid to admit that we are also vulnerable to the extremely effective marketing campaigns of Apple.

You wanna talk about quality? I spilled a full cup of hot tea TWICE on my lenovo, and nothing happened. It turned off because it has a circuit that closes when it gets wet (to protect itself) but other than letting it dry, the computer is working just fine (I don't put sugar in my tea :) ). I dare you to try that in your new Macbook!

I don't think anyone will deny that Apple has effective marketing. But they also deliver a product that is above average in almost all factors, except for repairability. For PCs you need to research quite a bit and select the right configurations.

It seems you favor repairability over all other factors: display quality, touchpad, HD speed, battery life, weight, a physical store for support, etc. I used to repair laptops over a decade ago and at that time I would also put repairability at the top of my list. That was a time with failure prone mechanical hard drives, CD-drives, and chassis made of cheap plastic. Most laptops even back then survived water or tea spills fine though they didn't fare so well with soda, coffee, and urine. Perhaps that history is what's driving your personal bias. These days machines are more reliable and I personally would prefer a smaller and lighter machine even if the tradeoff is repairability.

It's the same for Android vs iOS as well. With Android you have so many options that it's overwhelming, with an iPhone you'll have a product that is better than most Android phones and you don't have to worry about the chance of choice.

For a lot of people that's comforting.

> No touchpad is as good as a decent external mouse (decent != expensive, mine is $30).

Funny, on both my work and home mac desktops, I use the Magic Touchpad as my primary input device even while sitting at a desk. So I suppose I disagree with this statement.

Yes, I think using one of those instead of an external mouse is a good idea. In my case I find a regular mouse more comfortable than ANY touchpad.

What about precision? do you think that the touchpad is more precise than a good mouse on a good mousepad? I'm not asking you if YOU are more "productive" using a touchpad, I'm asking you if you think that if we compare a proficient regular mouse user vs a proficient Mac touchpad user we'll notice a significant difference that'll make us think that Mac touchpads are the way to go?

I don't think so. I think the factor that weighs more is user preference, heavily influenced by marketing.

In certain ways touchpads can be more precise. With a good mouse with very high DPI, movement will be better, but when it comes to stuff like, pinch zoom, or fine scrolling, then touchpads are much better.

Also with gestures you have way more stuff you can do with a touchpad then just moving a mouse and clicking stuff.

And let's not forget the smaller travel distance of your hand when you go from keyboard to touchpad, as when you go from keyboard to mouse, or back.

I have a Logitech MX Anywhere 2. I love that mouse. It is fantastic and when I'm working on my home laptop I use it every day, if I'm in desktop mode that is. And I prefer it over the touchpad.

But when I work on the 'work' Macbook Pro (2015), then I use the touchpad all the way. It's just so much better and intuitive compared to using a regular mouse.

The touch pad just has more dimensions, 1 finger touch, 2 finger touch, dragging with some fingers touched, pinching, etc. Precision is better than with a mouse, because you don't have to move the mouse, just your finger.

I would never want to use a mouse again! Yes, for me an Apple touchpad is way superior to a mouse. If you don't get that, that's fine. We all have our blindspots.

Good point, the multi-dimension thing is something that I haven't even consider when thinking about this. I'm sure there are some benefits to the workflow if you take advantange of the multi-touch gestures. In that aspect, a regular mouse can't compete (don't care about super sophisticated gamer mouses).

> heavily influenced by marketing.

Whose marketing? Apple doesn't push the Magic Trackpad over the Magic Mouse. If you buy an iMac online, the mouse is their pre-selected input accessory.

Agreed, I have nice "gaming" mice with perfect sensors but nothing can do horizontal scrolling to expand/collapse audio files in Logic.

Same with rotating in Preview and easy smooth zooming on webpages.

Where do you work that you have room to use a mouse?

Coffee shops, planes, trains, passenger seat in a car, literally on my lap in waiting rooms or transit terminals, etc. This is where I use my laptop, and I don't have room for a mouse in these places.

Most of the time in a desk, I do travel a lot though. And when I'm using my laptop on my lap, I use the clitoris-like trackpoint, which I think it's terrible but I can work just fine with it.

I also have a Dell XPS and the touchpad is decent, I can work fine with it.

As I said, I'm not questioning the fact that Macs touchpads are superior, but I'm curious as to what are your use cases that make you think that you really need that superb touchpad? are you a graphic designer?

I need tracking of some sort, and my workflows tend to be mouse-heavy. I don't personally have a hard requirement for the Macbook touchpad, but the pad is a huge part of my interaction with a laptop and I hate using the clitmouse. I will never ever voluntarily run windows so my options are Linux, BSD, or Mac.

BSD is horribly performant on any laptop hardware I've tried, so that's a no-go.

Linux touchpad support is a dumpster fire of bad drivers and missing config options.

Mac is therefore the only real choice.

At some point you just get sick of dist-upgrade breaking palm rejection and no fix being available for months.

I put the mouse on my touchpad. Works well rnough

A desk

One baffling design decision Canonical made for 18 is defaulting some touchpads (ones without separate buttons) to "two finger click for right click", even though so many touchpads have a clicky area and even lines printed on the touchpad for right click.

That's not the baffling part though, the baffling part is that they didn't put an option in the control panel to return the old behavior. You have to spin up dconf and find the right bit to twiddle to get the old behavior back. How is this user friendly?

This is like 14 when they hid menu items by default (and replace them with absolutely nothing at all) causing newbies to be very confused as to how to use their apps. It only took a few times of very confused users being totally lost because they forgot they had to move their mouse up to the top to make the menu items reappear before I tracked down the dconf setting to turn it back on. It wasn't until 16 that they exposed that in the control panel, but even then it defaulted to "uselessly hide".

It's a GNOME change, not a Canonical one: http://who-t.blogspot.com/2018/04/gnome-328-uses-clickfinger...

Canonical had the final word on it. They could have reverted the default to the old behavior if they wanted.

> Server is the only linux worth running

Also:

> Linux is the only server worth running

:P

What did you think of Elementary OS?