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Comment by Peaker | Hacker News Reader

My XPS 13 9350 came with Windows 10. The trackpad was awful. I installed Ubuntu on it, and the trackpad is great now.

That's very odd, especially as Windows' trackpad support is so very far ahead of what Linux has. That said, scrolling and zooming is dependent on the app... Legacy apps and those which do their own non-native (non-DManip) scrolling aren't going to feel as good. Sadly last I checked Chrome was still pretty bad for touch and trackpad scrolling on Windows, but that's Google'a fault.

I ditched the I2C driver that ships with Windows 10 on my XPS 13 9350 and installed the Synaptics Analog Driver, the difference is night and day.

I still prefer to use Ubuntu (I think it defaults to the Analog driver), but I need Windows sometimes.

This is what i'm planning on. It'll be another ~year or so before i care, but i hope to find a very highend laptop that compares with Apple MacbookPro quality. Great keyboard, touchpad and very high PPI monitor. Then, put linux on it.

This Apple announcement really lost me. Luckily i don't care about the OS (i dislike it, infact), i just want really nice hardware because i use this laptop for ~10h a day.

I have never understood how Synaptics touchpads can suck so bad running on the vendors own drivers but are amazing running on drivers probably reversed engineers by some guy over a weekend in his basement.

Oh, if you can, stick to trackpads without custom drivers ("Precision Touch Pads" in Windows). Surface trackpads all fall into this bucket.

XPS 13 is a MS precision touchpad. I agree with GP, it sucks in Windows. Under Linux it's much better.

Better how? You definitely get way better scrolling and zooming under Windows.

No massive deadzone when moving your finger a small amount, pointer doesn't freeze for ages after a click, it's actually possible to middle click (with 3 fingers). Scrolling is exactly the same as far as I can tell, though you are right that zooming doesn't seem to be supported by any application as far as I can tell. Honestly the accuracy of pointing just feels much better too even when not clicking but that's quite hard to quantify.

Is there a 15" XPS that works with Linux? I'd like a larger display.

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