The trackpad in my laptop (Synaptics branded) has never had trouble like that in my experience.

Then again, I'm pretty sure Synaptics has wrist detection built into the firmware of the trackpad itself. I suppose Apple and Windows do this in software for models that don't support this and that's why it's going wrong.

I'm not saying that people don't use Linux on laptops by the way, I meant that the overlap between people who run Linux and use a MBP isn't very large (because Linux on Apple can be anything from annoying to install to near impossible).

But, as far as I know, Apple still releases the source code for Darwin, right? So shouldn't it be possible to port the trackpad functionality from there? Or did Apple hide the trackpad driver in a closed source blob?

> I'm not saying that people don't use Linux on laptops by the way, I meant that the overlap between people who run Linux and use a MBP isn't very large (because Linux on Apple can be anything from annoying to install to near impossible).

Maybe I'm in the tiny minority here, but I much prefer the way touchpad handling on Linux behaves compared to both Windows and macOS. At least on sway, it feels more 'accurate' than either of those two - you move your finger and the cursor actually goes to where you want it.

> But, as far as I know, Apple still releases the source code for Darwin, right? So shouldn't it be possible to port the trackpad functionality from there?

Unfortunately not! I worked on reverse engineering a driver for the SPI touchpad found in newer (but not too new) Macbooks and based most of it on packet captures from Windows' Event Log [1]

[1] https://github.com/cb22/macbook12-spi-driver/issues/3#issuec...

> In Linux, wrists keep triggering touch events as you type. Screens start scrolling, focus goes to random things, and everyone swears. You end up having to hold your hands right over the keyboard in a very unnatural way to avoid accidental mouse interaction.

I have this problem as well. The Synaptics driver seems to have some palm detection logic but it does nothing. Perhaps my trackpad has no support for it.

> They swap recipes for how to disable the touchpad completely.

Sadly the surface I usually place my laptop on doesn't have space for a mouse...

> In Linux, wrists keep triggering touch events as you type. Screens start scrolling, focus goes to random things, and everyone swears. You end up having to hold your hands right over the keyboard in a very unnatural way to avoid accidental mouse interaction. […] Linux simply doesn’t cope with hands near the touchpad.

Enable the option to sleep the touchpad when the user starts typing.

I recently discovered after reinstalling Linux Mint on my Dell XPS (that shipped with Ubuntu) that is not an option "out of the box". On my previous interest I used to have that option. Now I'm not sure where it's gone so I do (very sadly) only have the option to "disable touchpad when mouse is connected." Please help!

`kcmshell5 kcm_touchpad` → 4th tab

> In Linux, wrists keep triggering touch events as you type.

In KDE: system settings -> input devices -> touchpad -> disable while typing. (this is enabled by default)

In Gnome: I'm not using it, but apparently https://askubuntu.com/questions/923060/how-to-disable-touchp...

Yeah, but then you've got an arbitrary pause before you can use it again.

Which laptop are you using? This has never been an issue to me, and I've used Linux exclusively for years. I'm on a Thinkpad T480s.

I have exactly the same laptop and don't have any issue with the touchpad either and never really understood what's wrong with non Mac touchpad. Maybe it's just a cheap laptop vs expensive laptop thing than Mac vs Linux.

Macbook Pro's trackpad is _HUGE_. It's just about half the width of a 15" macbook pro.

"mbp" = MacBook Pro

At least KDE offers the option to disable the touchpad while typing. I'd expect other desktop environments to do the same. Isn't that what you're looking for?

hear hear, i'm on dell xps 9370 with Ubuntu and I've been having the same issues since the beginning. Yes, I also learned to hover my hands further above the keyboard to compensate. It's not very ergonomic.

It's a bit better when i disable touch click, but then i have to physically click the touchpad which is harder on the fingers as well !

But palm detection is a feature of the touchpad, linux drivers do support it and can be enabled/disabled easily.