Re: All-in-one touch screen computers
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 ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: All-in-one touch screen computers
Mark Dúlcey wrote: 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). A tablet flavor would be better than a phone version. I did think of MeeGo (yes, Intel is still apparently plugging away at it after Nokia's departure), as it is intended to target a wide variety of screen sizes. But Android particularly, and MeeGo both provide such a scaled down Linux, that your library of applications would be significantly impacted. While it'd be nice to have a few flagship applications that take advantage of the touchscreen, the computer should still be a fully usable desktop for traditional applications. I'm thinking something like the Ubuntu Netbook remix would be closer. Perhaps it'll get touch capabilities now that the netbook market is migrating to tablets. Ian Stokes-Rees wrote: It seems generic mouse-like input devices (track point, touch pad, mouse, trackball) all provide relative cursor movement signals. 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. Ah, good point. My recollection was that touch screens looked like a mouse to the OS, but I glossed over the issue of whether they require a custom driver, or simply have a standard USB HID API. Multi-touch complicates things further. That I did wonder about, but I figured it would still be worth while even if the OS only supported single-touch initially. 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). That's too bad. Good to know. I'll have to see if I can track down a forum somewhere that relates to Linux support on these machines to see how it is progressing. I guess in the mean time one can just ignore the touch screen and use it like a large screen portable. It's not like you would forgo having a mouse, anyway. -Tom -- Tom Metro Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA Enterprise solutions through open source. Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/ ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: All-in-one touch screen computers
On 5/9/2011 9:45 PM, Tom Metro wrote: I see there are a bunch of All-in-one touch screen computers on the market now. HP seemed to lead this trend, but now Dell, Gateway, Asus, and MSI have similar models. Structurally they're like a laptop built-in to a large screen, plus touch navigation. Potentially a good fit for someone who wants a semi-portable machine, but with a bigger screen than is practical for a laptop. Probably a good family computer. I'm wondering how well the touch screens are supported by Linux. Presumably it'll just look like a mouse to the OS, so it shouldn't be anything out of the ordinary. But are there any distributions that are well tuned for (big) touch screen navigation? 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. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
