Synaptics Gesture Suite Ported To Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Synaptics Gesture Suite Ported To Linux

On Friday we were briefed by Synaptics that they would be "announcing much-desired capabilities for notebook PCs running Linux and other open source operating systems", which we found out to mean that they were bringing their Synaptics Gesture Suite software to Linux. Today this announcement has now been made in the form of a press release...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=ODE2Mg

[Craig73]

Phoronix: Synaptics Gesture Suite Ported To Linux

On Friday we were briefed by Synaptics that they would be "announcing much-desired capabilities for notebook PCs running Linux and other open source operating systems", which we found out to mean that they were bringing their Synaptics Gesture Suite software to Linux. Today this announcement has now been made in the form of a press release...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=ODE2Mg

It's good to see a major hardware manufacturer take interest in the Linux space; while I'm sure there will be reactions around source availability, I still see this as a step forward.

[bugmenot]

god. damn it. why not open source?

closed source == bad out of the box experience.


i really hope that smart guys reverse engineer the thing and provide an open source solution.

it shouldn't be that hard for synaptics to provide a simple open source driver. then they could save the money for writing such silly promotion texts.

why can't they understand that most linux users prefer open source drivers directly from the linux kernel which is almost always a garant for a good OOTB experience.

[curaga]

Umm, but what does it do? The quoted ad text hardly mentions that..

[myxal]

Umm, but what does it do? The quoted ad text hardly mentions that..

Much ado about nothing, really. The product page (linked from TFA) list features, half of which are already present in the synaptics driver (not all of them are taken advantage of by default or configurable from a GUI, such as the two-finger scrolling, circular scrolling, etc). The features were previously unavailable to Windows users AFAICT, evidence the number of sites documenting how to hack-on the two-finger scroll in Windows.

I suppose the rotate/pinch are actually new, but until apps start using them, it's not a big loss.

[aaaantoine]

A pinch zoom gesture might be handy.

[rob2687]

The two finger scroll has been in the Synaptics Windows driver for like a year or more now.

It sucks compared to the Linux driver though. In my experience it hardly ever responds when I do the two finger scroll gesture. On Ubuntu it works like a charm.

[droidhacker]

I hate gestures.
They are the reason why touch-sensitive devices behave randomly.
put your finger on the touchpad in the wrong direction and your browser thinks you hit the BACK button.

Really useless and interferes with your ability to make use of pointer devices by injecting unpredictable behaviors.

[Ragas]

I hate gestures.
They are the reason why touch-sensitive devices behave randomly.
put your finger on the touchpad in the wrong direction and your browser thinks you hit the BACK button.

Really useless and interferes with your ability to make use of pointer devices by injecting unpredictable behaviors.

I think it would be useful to have a button or a specific point on the touchpad like the upper left corner, wich will, if pressed, activate gestures.

[droidhacker]

I think it would be useful to have a button or a specific point on the touchpad like the upper left corner, wich will, if pressed, activate gestures.

And then you'll be turning it on and off without realizing it....
kinda like the compiz corner gestures -- reach for the X to close a program and it ends up launching expo or some other stupid thing that gets in the way.