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Comment by zingar | Hacker News Reader

I don’t see anyone in these replies really addressing the touchpad. Would love to hear from people who have used macbooks if they have found a Linux machine that matches the Apple trackpad.

“Never tried a MacBook, my Linux machine trackpad always worked perfectly” is the usual response I get when I press for a response… but without trying Apple (on this one thing) you’ll never understand until you’ve experienced the downgrade.

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Around 2018 I used a Mac at work and a Dell XPS at home and I had zero issues with the trackpad on the Dell. It was a bit smaller than the Mac's, but I actually preferred that because it was so large I'd sometimes move the mouse accidentally. Back then I thought PCs had finally caught up with Mac trackpads, but was extremely disappointed when the next XPS had one of those trackpads that is just integrated with the laptop cover (it's like a touchscreen instead of a pad inside a cut-off, if that makes sense). My guess is they changed for the aesthetics, but it was so bad that I returned it. I haven't used a good trackpad on a Linux PC since that Dell.

I switched from mac to linux for my personal dev machine 5-6 years ago but kept using macbooks at work until recently. The keyboard and trackpad are slightly better on macs in my experience, but the difference is small enough that I never think about it.

One caveat is that I've never been a power user of trackpad gestures, so if that's central to your workflow I can't say how the platforms compare.

Overall I'm immensly happy about dropping Apple for Linux, it was definitely the right decision. The initial migration takes a bit to work out but the beautiful thing with Linux is that if you don't like something enough you can usually find a way to change or fix it; with Apple you're left screaming into the void.

only slightly better? really?

> but without trying Apple (on this one thing) you’ll never understand until you’ve experienced the downgrade.

I don't doubt you find something special about the macOS trackpad experience, but I've used a Mac every day at work for 3 years and I genuinely don't feel any more or less fond of its trackpad than I do the one on my Framework laptop running Linux. They're both trackpads that do trackpad things. Shrug.

Thank you, this is the sort of response I need to take framework seriously. I asked because had genuinely never found anyone who could make an honest comparison (I used Linux in pre macOS days but that was a decade ago).

Do you use a mouse most of the time? That’s the other variable I wonder about. When I used Linux I found it normal to plug in a mouse whenever possible, but when I switched to macOS and got used to the trackpad I stopped using a mouse or keyboard, even if I’m plugged into a bigger screen.

On my Framework, I only use the trackpad, don't have a mouse for it. My work mac laptop lives on a desk so I mostly use a mouse for it, but also use the trackpad plenty when I head to a conference room for meetings etc.

One thing you might've missed in the last decade, is Linux relatively recently gained a new click mode that works like macOS does. One finger left click, two finger right click, two finger scrolling, etc.

Since it's Linux, it is very configurable and may not be enabled by default depending on your distro.

https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/clickpad...

https://smarttech101.com/libinput-fix-your-linux-touchpad-us...

However, more user friendly distros will hopefully(!) do that configuration for you or present a nice UI to enable it.

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