Fedora 22's X.Org Input Stack Might Use Libinput

The input X.Org drivers currently used by Fedora might by replaced with just the xf86-input-libinput DDX driver for Fedora 22. This input driver relies upon libinput that was originally designed for Wayland/Weston but can be retrofitted just fine as a standalone input driver for the X.Org Server.

X.Org has multiple input drivers now depending upon the device, but with all of the work going into Wayland and its libinput stack, that's reaching parity to the X.Org drivers. As such, it'd be easier to just maintain xf86-input-libinput as one X.Org input driver to rule them all rather than having to deal with and maintain the existing selection of drivers.

As of the libinput release earlier this month, it's close to nearing parity with the X.Org input stack. With this proposed Fedora 22 change, besides just having everything default to using libinput, Fedora control panel applets and other code would need to be fitted to just rely upon the libinput interfaces rather than the existing drivers like synaptics.

This system-wide change for Fedora 22 has yet to be approved by FESCo but you can learn more via this Fedora Wiki page. Hopefully libinput will happen for Fedora 22 and other Linux distributions will follow as it will ensure this input stack geared for Wayland is ready for prime-time and has been fully vetted by the time Wayland is deployed by default on the Linux desktop. It's also technically possible that Ubuntu's Mir could end up using libinput too.