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Comment by ahartmetz | Hacker News Reader

A cheap mouse allows finer and faster control than the best touchpad that currently exists, so... I plug in a mouse. (Don't believe me? Play an FPS game with touchpad against a mouse user.)

That said, Synaptics touchpad support on Linux is bad. In my case, it's the touchpad on a Thinkpad T440s. It can run in a legacy/standard protocol mode or a "modern" protocol mode. Linux supposedly supports the latter (where palm detection should work) since a few years, but I don't see it being used or palm detection working.

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There's no need for this pointless one-upping. Nobody who uses touchpad will say it's more precise/faster than a mouse. And when did anyone proclaim touchpad is great for games?

I love the touchpad because it feels better and natural to me, and gestures make doing tasks like switching between desktops feel great, like I'm literally sliding papers on my desk. Lastly, not having to bring another device with me everywhere makes it a no brainer for me.

The macbook touchpad is so good that after a few months of practice, I routinely used to top the leaderboard in cod4 hardcore free for all using double tap to aim down the sight, shoot with index finger and aim with middle finger. I even got good at quickscoping with the Barrett 50 Cal, again using only the macbook touchpad. Even mile high club on veteran was not out of reach

I would love to watch a split-screen video of this, CoD screen and your finger gestures during play.

Item 1: It's undeniable that the mouse is more precise, but it tethers you to a desk. One with enough space for a mouse. Not always feasible.

Item 2: You're mentioning Thinkpads. Try a touchpad on OS X, then come back. The difference is enormous. You can actually use the GUI without a mouse and without being annoyed, it's the only laptop/OS combination where that works.

Every time I use my gf's Mac I am instantly annoyed by the touchpad. Yeah, it's better than the one on my Thinkpad but there I use the nipple which is faster, more precise and quicker to reach also I can scroll around using a button under my thump + nipple. Mac lacking page-up/page-down keys is annoying if you need to do a lot of scrolling/coming back to keyboard/scrolling.

You get page-up / page-down behaviour with option+up / option+down shortcuts on Macbook keyboard.

Also important:

begin document = cmd+up

end document = cmd+down

begin of line = cmd+left

end of line = cmd+right

> Item 2: You're mentioning Thinkpads. Try a touchpad on OS X, then come back. The difference is enormous. You can actually use the GUI without a mouse and without being annoyed, it's the only laptop/OS combination where that works.

Firstly, there is a difference in feel between touchpads on different macbooks. I loved the one on my old Air, whereas the current touchpads on Pros don't really feel right to me. Maybe that's why I am not disappointed by Thinkpads? Drivers are not as good, but calling Lenovo's touchpads unusable would be an exaggeration.

Not sure what model ThinkPad you had, but I was on a MBP 2013 and just recently transitioned to a ThinkPad T480 running Ubuntu. The trackpad is actually really nice on the T480 and I didn't have to do any special driver install to get that working. Scrolling is slightly smoother on the MBP, but honestly that is not a huge deal. (I think this is mostly due to the material of the T480 trackpad having more grip that anything else)

For sure the materials used on the MBP are of higher quality and if I had one complaint it would be that smudging on the T480 trackpad is noticeable where it is not on the MBP. With that said, if you are running a modern distro that has proper driver support then I think the trackpad on the T480 works really well and you will not find the difference to be "enormous".

> but I don't see it being used or palm detection working

Where did you look? Some of that stuff needs to be enabled manually via the synaptics CLI or via xorg.conf, e.g. on my system: https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration/blob/fec4e0...

IIRC I looked basically everywhere. I certainly did try to enable palm detection. The attempt I best remember was using some special synaptics settings GUIs (IIRC one standalone app and KDE synaptics settings). I touched xorg.conf for another purpose, configuring left / mid / right button zones. Right now, the T440s trackpad is configured for clicks and two-finger scrolling only because having movement enabled is a major nuisance without palm detection.

I'll try your configuration soon, too.

The quality of the touchpad combined with the gesture support is a very good experience. The touchpad is very precise (obviously not as precise, but I don’t need that for work), and there’s nothing I struggle to do at all when I’m working with it. If I’m not at my desk with my extra monitors, then I prefer the touchpad. Especially if I’m working across multiple documents/windows where I can swipe between workspaces very easily.

The trackpad has more functionality than the mouse. Trackpad will never be more precise.

There are very few applications which require the speed and precision of FPS games. Mostly, just FPS games. And I don't want to have to carry around another thing that could possibly get lost and take up space in my bag.

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