Hi, On Thu, Dec 18, 2014 at 09:14:44AM -0500, Forest Bond wrote: > On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 08:24:24PM -0500, Anthony Carrico wrote: > > On 12/17/2014 05:50 PM, Forest Bond wrote: > > > I'm wondering what sort of issues you are running into? > > > > Unfortunately, I haven't been keeping notes. I assumed some WM would > > just work, but apparently Linux is lagging in this area, or my config is > > just bad, or my Arch-fu is lacking. > > > > I'm going to grab that computer... I actually had a bunch of things > > running on different virtual terminals. Not to pick on KDE, but it looks > > like plasma-next happens to be up front, so I'll just play around a little: > > > > [...] > > Okay, yeah, sounds like you are facing what I would say are the expected > problems (i.e. as opposed to driver issues, calibration issues, etc.). > > Most current-generation desktop user interfaces are not designed with touch > input in mind so e.g. buttons are too small/close to the edge of the screen, > right click is required to access critical features, etc. > > Also, handling common touch gestures (drag panning, pinch zooming) requires > each > application to implement support. This is subject to the usual problems of > the > open-source world -- immature and fragmented supporting infrastructure, from > the > kernel, to the X server, to the libraries/toolkits. > > As usual, the burden of sorting this out for users ultimately falls on the > distros, who are for the most part not well equipped to face the challenge. > So > your experience will vary a bit from one distro to the next. Ubuntu did do a > lot of work to try and be touch friendly as far back as 12.04, but to say this > effort was a success on the desktop would be a stretch. > > I haven't tested newer versions much but I would not guess the situation is a > ton better. You would probably have a much better experience if you installed > the tablet version but that is not a process that is geared toward end users > (not that you are a typical end user but expect it to be a lot of work) and > if I > had to guess there's probably a good chance your hardware would not all be > supported (this is only speculation, I haven't really played with it). > > So long story short, I would say in the next few years the Wayland transition > will make this situation a lot better, but as usual, by the time it's working > you'll be using features that have been common on proprietary OS's for 5 or 10 > years already, and it will still be buggy. ;) > > Of course most of this is based on a 2012 era understanding of touch support > on > Linux. Maybe there is an imminent miracle that I am unaware of.
I should probably have summarized this a bit better. My recommendation is that if you want a good experience on a tablet (or tablet-like device) you shoud use an OS designed for tablets. :) Thanks, Forest -- Forest Bond http://www.forestbond.com/ http://www.rapidrollout.com/
