>> Would installing Linux on such a machine take away most of the advantage >> to the touch screen? (These machines typically come bundled with things >> like photo viewing apps and the like that are purposely designed for >> touch screen interaction.) >> >> Anyone tried Linux on one of these? > I can't imagine that current Linux distros would work well, as they have > no touch screen UI. What might work would be a port of one of the > variants of Linux designed for mobile phones (Android, or maybe even > MeeGo if anybody is still working on that). Eventually we'll probably > see somebody do a Linux window manager designed for desktop touch > screens but I haven't heard of one yet.
Sadly I think it is more complicated than that. It seems "generic" mouse-like input devices (track point, touch pad, mouse, trackball) all provide relative cursor movement signals. The computer keeps track of where the pointer is, and the input device gives details on which way to move it, how far, and any "button" events (button down, button up, button number). It seems like existing "absolute position" pointing devices (wacom tablets are the only thing I can think of other than touch screens) have quite a different input that requires custom drivers and provides custom input signals. Multi-touch complicates things further. The long-and-short of it is that you can't go out and buy a nice 24" HP multi-touch LCD (like I did), plug it into your Mac (like I did), or Linux machine, plug in the USB cable, and hope it will show up as a standard mouse. So while I think those all-in-one touch screen HPs look great, don't think of OS X or Linux on them yet. Hopefully someone will write a driver for them soon (it isn't as if the screen touch signals are a secret). Ian
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