My Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition trackpad is great. I really don't think you can apply this kind of blanket statement to all non-Macbook trackpads.
I know the GP's post is grammatically phrased as an opinion, but I think a lot of its points are more preference-based than implied
Linux UIs tend to encourage much heavier use of keyboard shortcuts, which in some sense makes up for it.
It might also be the storage. Especially the delay when entering a git directory hints at slow storage. I had exactly the sand symptoms when booting an otherwise good server from an USB drive.
That's a myth. It's just macOS that has well-integrated touchpad gesture support across the whole UI stack, unlike any other OS so far. The only real thing Apple touchpads differ from others in hardware is pressure sensing and haptic feedback, but unless you really need silent clicking I'd say it's just a gimmick (I own a Magic Trackpad 2 precisely because of silent haptic feedback feature).
That said, Pinebook Pro's touchpad actually is very bad.
Looks like the culprit is the CPU/SoC: Rockchip RK3399. The specs for it do look decent on paper [1] but I guess it's simply too slow and not suited for laptops due to a small cache. It looks like a mobile phone SoC.
>The screen size and resolution scream for fractional scaling but Manjaro does not seem to provide it. Scale of 1 is a bit too small and 2 is way too big. The screen is matte, which is totally awesome, but unfortunately the colors are a bit muted and for some reason it seems a bit fuzzy. This may be because I have not used a sub-retina level laptop displays in years.
Screen is a deal-breaker for me. I stare at screens for hours on end and if it's not something in the same class as a retina screen on a Macbook or iMac, I just ditch it quickly. As for fuzzy screen and muted colors, well, that's the fault of the matte layer on the LCD panel. It's purpose is to diffuse light and minimize reflections. Personally I don't like to make that trade-off and prefer glass surfaces on my screens. I'll make a shade and make sacrifices as to how I orient myself to enjoy crisp text and proper colors in photos/video.
As for scaling, only Cinnamon DE does it right. I've tried almost all DEs over the past 6 months or so and Cinnamon's new fractional scaling and HiDPI support is the best by far. [2]
>The trackpad's motion detector is rubbish at slow speeds.
None of the non-Macbook trackpads are great. There's a project that's working on a good Linux trackpad driver but it's far in the future. Don't bank on it in the short-term. [3]
[1] http://rockchip.wikidot.com/rk3399
[2] https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/02/cinnamon-desktop-fractio...
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23235609