Add touchpad gesture support

[xgui4]

Describe the feature

I will love for XLibre to support trackpad gesture on laptop as without it, it make Linux way worse on laptop.

It should be implemented because

The lack of proper touchpad gesture is one of the reason i use Wayland more.

What are the alternatives?

A plugin to enabled trackpad support

Additional context

No response

Extra fields

• I have checked the existing issues
• I have read the Contributing Guidelines
• I'd like to work on this issue

[dec05eba]

X11 already supports that and so does xlibre and xf86-input-libinput. If kde/gnome doesn't then it's an issue with them that should be reported there. It has been supported for years.

[xgui4]

X11 already supports that and so does xlibre and xf86-input-libinput. If kde/gnome doesn't then it's an issue with them that should be reported there. It has been supported for years.

on wayland it is out of the box, on xorg my trackpad cant zoom in and zoom out, only scroll, and kde and gnome are woke, they will not want x11 support even for xorg only, they have decided that wayland is the future for some reason.

[dec05eba]

on wayland it is out of the box, on xorg my trackpad cant zoom in and zoom out, only scroll, and kde and gnome are woke, they will not want x11 support even for xorg only, they have decided that wayland is the future for some reason.

Right, but it's not an issue with xlibre itself nor the x11 protocol. You could open a discussion here: https://github.com/orgs/X11Libre/discussions to discuss if kde/gnome should be forked to add support for more x11 features, or fork it yourself and add support for that.

[xgui4]

on wayland it is out of the box, on xorg my trackpad cant zoom in and zoom out, only scroll, and kde and gnome are woke, they will not want x11 support even for xorg only, they have decided that wayland is the future for some reason.

Right, but it's not an issue with xlibre itself nor the x11 protocol. You could open a discussion here: https://github.com/orgs/X11Libre/discussions to discuss if kde/gnome should be forked to add support for more x11 features, or fork it yourself and add support for that.

i dont have the knowledge or time to do a fork and it will be way too overwheleming and could lead to burnout or other mental health issue

[bmacho]

Are gestures working for you? Can you just run an xserver, a browser, and expect pinch zoom working? It does, on Windows and on GNOME/Wayland. I don't know what part does GNOME play in it, but arguably xserver should do that, and not the DE.

[dec05eba]

Are gestures working for you? Can you just run an xserver, a browser, and expect pinch zoom working? It does, on Windows and on GNOME/Wayland. I don't know what part does GNOME play in it, but arguably xserver should do that, and not the DE.

The X server (xlibre) reports pinch gesture to the application, so it already does that. It's of course the applications job to listen to that event. This is the case on windows and wayland as well where it works the same way.

[xgui4]

Are gestures working for you? Can you just run an xserver, a browser, and expect pinch zoom working? It does, on Windows and on GNOME/Wayland. I don't know what part does GNOME play in it, but arguably xserver should do that, and not the DE.

The X server (xlibre) reports pinch gesture to the application, so it already does that. It's of course the applications job to listen to that event. This is the case on windows and wayland as well where it works the same way.

from my experience, my trackpad work out of the box with wayland but not on x11 and i cant found the setting for touchpad gesture on x11 kde

[xgui4]

see this issue : https://discuss.kde.org/t/touchpad-gestures-on-x11/15844

[dec05eba]

see this issue : https://discuss.kde.org/t/touchpad-gestures-on-x11/15844

As the answer states kde devs have to implement it in KDE. Create a discussion thread instead of issue here, the X server already supports gestures as I stated multiple times.

[GermanAizek]

X11 already supports that and so does xlibre and xf86-input-libinput.

Touchpad tapping is off by default, although it would be convenient on laptops to always have tapping on.

Each time you install a new system, you have to configure it.

Resources:

https://blog.cavelab.dev/2024/11/laptop-touchpad-tapping/
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/337008/activate-tap-to-click-on-touchpad

[dec05eba]

X11 already supports that and so does xlibre and xf86-input-libinput.

Touchpad tapping is off by default, although it would be convenient on laptops to always have tapping on.

Each time you install a new system, you have to configure it.

Resources:

https://blog.cavelab.dev/2024/11/laptop-touchpad-tapping/ https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/337008/activate-tap-to-click-on-touchpad

That's not gestures. But if you want it to be enabled by default then create an issue in xf86-input-libinput https://github.com/X11Libre/xf86-input-libinput instead.

[bmacho]

The X server (xlibre) reports pinch gesture to the application, so it already does that. It's of course the applications job to listen to that event. This is the case on windows and wayland as well where it works the same way.

It's somewhat hard to believe. I haven't tried it recently, but last time I did, it just didn't work. Google "firefox gestures linux x11" agrees me that it does not work ootb, and it needs tweaking. It should work ootb, xserver should send the gestures to firefox.

edit: nvm this I definitely should test it first

[dec05eba]

The X server (xlibre) reports pinch gesture to the application, so it already does that. It's of course the applications job to listen to that event. This is the case on windows and wayland as well where it works the same way.

It's somewhat hard to believe. I haven't tried it recently, but last time I did, it just didn't work. Google "firefox gestures linux x11" agrees me that it does not work ootb, and it needs tweaking. It should work ootb, xserver should send the gestures to firefox.

It does send gestures to the application: https://github.com/X11Libre/xf86-input-libinput/blob/master/src/xf86libinput.c#L2073

[callmetango]

This issue will be moved to X11Libre Ideas · Discussions · GitHub since XLibre already provides everything needed and it is up to the desktop environments to implement it.

[bmacho]

Why aren't KDE and GNOME supporting gestures? And how can they even avoid them, don't they have an event-->action database that users can modify? Also aren't qt and gtk abstracting away the differences between X and wayland in the cases they both support something?

I personally don't use gestures for window management, but I know that some people do, 3fingers down brings up a window switcher menu. That's all the gestures, or are there more?

[callmetango]

Thank you for your contribution! We currently restructured the "Ideas" discussions and accordingly this discussion will be moved to the X11Libre 4 Good Ideas For Later category.

[bmacho]

So.. anyone can confirm that Pinch Zoom in browsers Just Works for them? I've tried some live distributions, and they don't have pinch zoom in Firefox/Chromium with X11/X.org, at least Linux Mint, Puppy Linux and GhostBSD.

While I'll most likely settle on Wayland, I wonder if gestures are indeed supposed to just work already, and it's just some bug in my touchpad/gpu driver, misconfiguration by distributions, or something else. Linux Mint Cinnamon has pinch gestures for window management, but not for firefox/chromium.

I have a Ventoy USB that I can just drop an iso and boot it, anyone knows a distribution with x11 desktop that is supposed to work?

[ChocodeerZyNX]

Its not a bug, its a feature.

Im gonna take a wild guess and say that inside your firefox's about:support, MOZ_USE_XINPUT2 is set to 0, or doesnt exist at all.
This is the default for firefox-based browsers on most linux distros I think.

You can simply do export MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1 in your shell's rc file or ~/.xinitrc or ~/.xprofile
Then restart the browser (or the x session if not working) and gesture support including pinch zoom will be enabled by default, as well as smooth scrolling, kinetic scrolling and backward or forward history using swipe.

I have been doing this for the past few years, tested on Xorg X11 and now Xlibre, did not encounter any problems. So this is not an X11 problem.

I cant comment on Chromium as I do not use one, but I believe there should be a similar option.

Found a reddit thread with same issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/72mfv8/psa_for_firefox_users_set_moz_use_xinput21_to/

[xgui4]

ok , but still that is not user friendly at all, having to do some code just to use a basic feature is still very stupid ...

[smj-cc]

Im gonna take a wild guess and say that inside your firefox's about:support, MOZ_USE_XINPUT2 is set to 0, or doesnt exist at all. This is the default for firefox-based browsers on most linux distros I think.

You can simply do export MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1 in your shell's rc file or ~/.xinitrc or ~/.xprofile Then restart the browser (or the x session if not working) and gesture support including pinch zoom will be enabled by default, as well as smooth scrolling, kinetic scrolling and backward or forward history using swipe.

Does this have to be an environment variable, or can it also be set in about:config?

[bmacho]

Whoa, thank you! I checked it, and it works. I don't agree that it's a feature and not a bug, IMO it should work OOTB, just as it does on windows and on wayland.

I (or someone else maybe) need to write a LOT of bug reports to basically every distros, at least ubuntu/arch, I haven't tested the rest. Also if Firefox has a legitimate reason to need this flag, even if they are just too lazy to test something themselves (???) then it's a bug/missing feature in Xlibre.

BTW I've asked this question on superuser.com, if you need the points you can answer it there too, if not I'll self-answer it

[ChocodeerZyNX]

Does this have to be an environment variable, or can it also be set in about:config?

It is considered by default an environment variable under about:support, and I did a quick search in about:config but found nothing seemingly related to enabling xinput2. So I believe this maybe the only approach for now, but Im happy to be proven wrong.

I don't agree that it's a feature and not a bug,

I agree, I was moreso speaking in a joking manner.

BTW I've asked this question on superuser.com, if you need the points you can answer it there too, if not I'll self-answer it

Im not a user of that site. Feel free to do whatever you wish with this answer.