This release will finally add support for the Apple Magic Trackpad 2
Why aren't these things a driver?
Windows used to have a really bad reputation for stability. I'm sure a lot of this was windows's fault, but a lot of this was bad third-party drivers that crashed.
You might remember that nvidea does have a driver for Linux. The approach they took isn't really supported, which is one of the reasons why graphics drivers are always such a nightmare under Linux.
I’ve had to install wifi drivers for a Windows machine before. Hunting for the right driver, downloading it and transferring it from my phone was quite a pain, as opposed to the wifi just working on Linux.
One of the reasons proprietary drivers are a nightmare. Intel works flawlessly (though obviously with different trade offs).
It really is propriety drivers that's the problem
These days I use AMD, and I just haven't had to think about it. Before this I had Nvidea, and even there the open drivers were fine until I wanted to play games.
Kernel DRI drivers, yeah sure. Xorg's xf86-video-intel is a buggy pile of shit that hasn't seen a stable release in 5 years.
Currently the best you get on linux with intel is modesetting driver with glamor for 2daccel. Or use wayland, I guess...
On the contrary, windows GPU(WDDM) drivers are restartable and can handle crashes even without restarting the user graphical apps. This've been so since at least windows 7.
edit: s/WDM/WDDM/
The kernel drm/gpu side is all about mode setting and managing resources.
Linux, unlike the Windows kernel (which is also not a microkernel), does not have a stable kernel API for drivers. This means that drivers that live outside the tree have to play catch-up to every change that the kernel devs make.
When a driver is in-kernel, the person that made the changes fixes the driver as part of their change.
So Linux really encourages drivers to become open-source and submit for inclusion in the mainline kernel, just to avoid the maintenance hassle.
True. I would just add a few notes for non Linux users.
- Drivers are bundled with the kernel but they're loaded dynamically when requested, ie supporting more devices doesn't make the kernel any bigger or slower. The Linux kernel from mostly static in the beginning became more and more modular and today save for developers or early adopters kernel rebuilds are very rare among users. Embedded cards aside, I don't recall having rebuilt a single kernel since 2.6 on normal PCs.
- Having drivers bundled in the kernel solves the problem of that piece of old hardware we lost the drivers disk and the manufacturer's site resolves to nowhere because they're no longer in business. Caring about older hardware seems of no importance in the desktop PC business, but not uncommon in the industrial world where one happily trades 100x speed loss in exchange of 10x reliability gain and there's still a lot of old perfectly functioning iron out there.
- Drivers are brand-free. Unless specified, they support the chipset, not the hardware brand and they definitely don't bundle other junk themselves, which is one of the plagues in the Windows ecosystem where 5 cards by 5 different manufacturers but using the same chipset all come with their set of drivers and associated ton of rubbish because the vendors fight to splatter their name on your desktop. Under Linux if you have 5 cards by 5 manufacturers you need one small driver and all software interfacing to standard device drivers can use all 5 cards. There's no such thing as "one card, one driver, one software". (Big exception for expensive niche proprietary hardware of course).
External modules (on the fs) wont, but we're talking about the bundled ones, right?
--smaller without crapware
--just empirically true:
tv@tv:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5 28G 11G 17G 39% /
this is my bloated as fuck ubuntu media machine. could be much smaller if it mattered, but that's pretty small already, no?
anyone remember damn small linux? I used to have that on a 128MB (yes MB) flash drive found in a desk at work. but bytes are cheap...
Speaking of small distros, I gave a try at both DietPI and TinyCoreLinux on virtual machines and was amazed at how good they perform.
https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/tab/linux-device-driver-mod...
Yes this is a stupid design. They do it because it means they don't have to worry about backwards compatibility or API stability at all, which is a nice thing to not have to worry about. But it comes at the cost of bad hardware support in Linux (and difficult-to-update Android phones).
You could've just used DKMS and use the kernel module in 4.18 and such [1] (unless you run Fedora who have the driver baked in the kernel; then you gotta recompile your own kernel...).
Heck, you could've used the Apple Magic Trackpad 2 on previous kernels. It's just that the multitouch wouldn't work. Which is the great thing about the device.
FWIW, the device doesn't work out of the box with Windows either.
[1] https://github.com/robotrovsky/Linux-Magic-Trackpad-2-Driver
The fact that there is no stable ABI is a sort of downside but also benefit of this model. The ABI can always be improved, but it will often be at the cost of breaking so-called out of tree drivers (Nvidia proprietary, VMware's networking and VM monitor drivers, etc.)
That said, there are still a few bad actors who refuse to do this, notably Nvidia.
This ensures it will remain maintained, and allows the developers to evolve subsystems in an incompatible way and update drivers accordingly.
The syscall interface is always maintained however. As Linus would say, “never break userspace”.
The only side who's losing here is the end customer.
Nobody expects that. Once drivers are in the mainline, the OEMs don't have to do any work to keep them from getting broken when Linux devs decide to do the kind of refactoring and systemic improvements that are impossible on Windows. All Android OEMs have to do is git pull, make, and send the new OS image off to the same QA processes any other update needs before deployment.
But back to the topic, it is rather interesting how hard trackpads are to replicate on other systems with the same level of quality as Apple's own trackpads under macOS. I suspect that's why one of the recent Windows 10 updates brought in consistent APIs for trackpads and multi-touch gestures.
If Microsoft are only just getting around to it now, I've my doubts there'd be any consistency on the matter over in Linux land. Not so much for lack of trying, but in a land of multiple desktop environments each with their own ways of doing things, the uncertainty of whether we keep improving X or focus everything on Wayland … well, I doubt the using the Magic Trackpad 2 under Linux would be all too pleasant.
That's just as subjective as the regular mice. Personally I find their touchpads miserable to use compared to the competition.
PC notebooks still ship with tiny, unresponsive things that make two-finger scrolling a mess and multi-touch gestures drop — apparently input, the one thing one does all the time with a computer, is the place to cheap out on.
On the external front, I've got a brand new wireless Logitech multi-touch trackpad right next to me whose responsiveness still doesn't hold a candle to what I was using on a PowerBook G4 back in 2004.
Then again, it's really hard to compare. Like I say, the hardware isn't what does the magic, it's the software. macOS has had multi-touch trackpad support done right since one of the later versions of 10.4, so we're talking something like 2006 or 2007. Microsoft doesn't seem to have taken the whole thing all that seriously until relatively recently with last year's Precision Trackpad hardware spec and APIs, and I suspect that's because as soon as Microsoft started doing their own Surface hardware, they realised (better late than never) that you can't rely on third parties to get this stuff right, so we'll see what comes of that.
Exactly those. I'd take them over Apple's sirupy mess any day.
defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling 1
You will need to logout and login after applying it though.
Well, a macbook is also the biggest device it will work well on. It doesn't scale well to large monitors nor multi-display setups, in my opinion.
I feel the old ball type was superior in this regard, you could rely on momentum and just give it a flick for large and quick movements.
Not as beginner friendly though.
> I feel the old ball type was superior in this regard, you could rely on momentum and just give it a flick for large and quick movements
That's exactly how the pointer works on macOS, both for traditional mouses and trackpads. That's what makes the Magic Trackpad work for a large screen for; I can do a little flick to move the pointer across the screen — and I can do it with just a finger, not my whole wrist/arm.
(Unfortunately, Firefox doesn't parse the kinetic scroll events yet: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1213601 ← someone please fix)
It takes some getting used to, but if you set the ball up so that a 180° rotation corresponds to the cursor travelling the width of the screen it seems to work well.
Disable acceleration on a trackball – whatever your use.
[1] https://www.kensington.com/p/products/control/trackballs/exp...
https://www.kensington.com/p/products/control/trackballs/Sli...
Very useful undersold feature.
> Why Apple is the only company
making these is beyond me.
I ask because like the parent poster I love the Trackpad 2 on macOS but I hate most other trackpads when using them with Windows/Linux. Meanwhile I also hate using most mice I've tried on macOS including the Apple ones but am fine with mice on Windows/Linux.
I imagine there are probably tracking speed and acceleration settings that would make the unpleasant combinations work better but I usually give up after making a few simple tweaks.
I wasted a lot of time tweaking low level Synaptics parameters in the config flies when trying to make the Magic Trackpad work well for me on Linux and I think I've exhausted my lifetime supply of patience for excessive pointer setting adjustments.
I don’t see why Dell, Lenovo, etc. can’t provide a laptop with a trackpad that works well under Linux.
Maybe it’s better on Windows I don’t know but the XPS 13 trackpad is, if I’m being genenerous, not great.
I've heard good things about vertical mouses: they're supposed to keep the lower arm from being rotated unnaturally, and the hand position seems to be more relaxed. But I still have doubts about pressing the thing, as that seems to be the root of RSI.
In my experience, staying away from computers altogether works much better for the hands than any devices I've tried, which is not good news for a computer geek.
What kind of dragging operations are you talking about? Drag and drop operations and box selection are no more difficult on a Mac trackpad than with a mouse, and running out of trackpad area was pretty rare even on the pre-Touchbar generation before they almost doubled the size of their trackpads. Drawing might be harder, but neither device is at all good at that task; that's what Wacom is for.