As a loooooong time mac user recently using Linux as a daily driver again, it’s pretty bad. I would compare it to voice recognition: the difference between “90% there” and “95% there” is quite vast.
In addition to multi finger gestures, the biggest gaps for me are general handling of inertia, scrolling smoothness, ignoring accidental touches, fine grained pointer accuracy, and handling of alt-clicks(two finger right click, three finger middle-click, etc).
Again, it works, and is usable, but it feels like it was finished before the bar was raised on the trackpad User Experience.
For various reasons I've had to alternate between 2017 macbook pro and linux thinkpads - using only one or the other for a few months at a time (mac for 3 months, then thinkpad 3 months).
I didn't know there was a "trackpad meme" - but to me the thinkpad is fine, but unquestionably more frustrating than the mac. I've tried to tweak things but never made it feel good.
I even set up a camera at one point to try and figure out what was causing my frustrations. Looking at the footage I noticed even though the thinkpad felt slower (or a bit "sluggish"?) I would still often slightly over-shoot my target.
I can't figure out exactly why it's different but it sure feels like some sort of black magic on the macs part.
Even when I worked with a laptop alone, not my preference, I would always use an external mouse with my Linux machines. Sure, the trackpad technically worked, but the frustrations just slowly piled up to the point where carrying a mouse around was superior.
I hear you. While I wanted to use the trackpad on my X1 Carbon + Fedora , and really was good enough, I got frustrated on the "nudges" and "slides" I was experiencing while trying to hit very exact targets.
Then I got back to my MX2 Anywhere and it felt like a mile away.
It depends on the trackpad. I think part of the issue is that Linux doesn’t have much calibration beyond what the firmware on the trackpad is reporting.
The other issue is that PC laptops tend to have much smaller trackpads for whatever reason, allowing for less room for fine adjustments after swiping.
My old Asus UX305 feels as good as a Mac, the trackpad is large, the scrolling has momentum and feels good, etc.
On the other hand, my HP Envy trackpad is terrible, the palm detection doesn’t work well, the trackpad itself is too small to aim properly, the acceleration is pretty high and hard to aim. It almost seems like the team responsible for the design of the laptop never considered what it would be like to use such a small trackpad.
The hardware itself can certainly be a factor, but I don’t believe it’s the main issue as I run Linux on plenty of Apple hardware and it’s the same outcome.
In addition to multi finger gestures, the biggest gaps for me are general handling of inertia, scrolling smoothness, ignoring accidental touches, fine grained pointer accuracy, and handling of alt-clicks(two finger right click, three finger middle-click, etc).
Again, it works, and is usable, but it feels like it was finished before the bar was raised on the trackpad User Experience.