Hey I am thinking of a project out lined in another topic and part of it is the possibility of a touch screen, the idea is a small ultra portable desktop power aio/tablet.
So I had found this previously while looking for odd screens. A 10.1 inch 1920x1200 IPS screen with 10 point capacitive touch input too. I have still to find out the windows compatibility but it have seen surface and other touch things for windows that give me some faith it will work there.
But what about Linux? I know android and all that but desktop Linux touch support? Does it exist, is it basic point and click, swipes, quick typing, gestures? What's the scope.
Gnome has really good touch support as of 3.14, as it now includes multi-touch gestures. The onscreen keyboard still isn't perfect but it's usable. At this point I prefer using Gnome over Windows 8.1 or 10 or pretty much anything else on my hybrid laptop.
I haven't had as good success with any other DE - they just have basic point and click functionality.
I don't know if there is any particular distro that has a succinct environment for touchscreen - I'm using Manjaro Gnome (dev) right now.
It sounds like a massive amount of touchscreen support for KDE (anything beyond basic point and click) is pending Wayland implementation, because X11 is difficult to work with for this particular use case.
My other inputs are also quite strange. A Steam Controller substituting for a mouse and a wired or Bluetooth keyboard. I am wondering do these things like touch and wireless inputs work at boot Like the password screens, or do I have to wait for the os and drivers.
So it is tied to the desk top environment and not a separate input thing. So if I had the likes of openbox and i3 there is no suite for touch keyboards and mouse input and such. It has also been a long time since I used Linux so I am beginner again.
Yes and no... Manjaro BSPWM's maintainer was trying to get some touchscreen support built in - looks like he was using libinput-gestures to do this. I don't know how easy it is to implement this, though.
As for bootloaders, I don't know. I highly doubt GRUB would have anything. rEFInd would be the best bet.
Also if you're looking about browsers, anything Chromium-based will work great. They have momentum swipes and everything. I use Vivaldi personally and it works out of the box with the touchscreen. Firefox historically has not worked with touchscreen.
I'm living with a touch laptop (lenovo yoga 500) for about a year and thought i would share my experience. I also use gnome as a (de) and i quite like its touch friendliness although it is obviously nowhere near win10. The touchscreen worked out of the box from the login screen onwards and even during live sessions or installation.
yes me to, dualbooting would therefore be really difficult.
Gnome is in my opinion most touch friendly DE and some tinkering and the necessary Plug-ins touch navigation is pretty intuitive and shouldn't be a problem.
I belive you could get Android to run in a vm or so to have the best of both worlds. Which would make it really awesome.
Display scaling is a real bitch if round numbers (1x, 2x, 3x) don't fit your ppi. 14inch 1080p it the absolute maximum for 1x so for your 10inch display you would have to go to 2x and live with the
Touch works fine for Linux. however don't expect to use GNOME 3.22 or just a GNU / Linux desktop as a tablet. it's just not happening. it's still not there yet. the touch keyboard is bad. and you would have to set your desktop scaling a bit big for your fingers.
Oh no touch would not be a primary input but more an added bonus if possible. So it is not hinging on it and not an every day tablet either. This is more a super tiny desktop. Used stationary and in short bursts, just able to go in a bag and portable.
@yoYoyo thanks for the feedback. Sounds good enough for me.
antergos arch touch k/b and touch functions are fine. i havent had any issues. if you are running soley on tablet, i dont see an issue. considering most tablet work isnt complex
Damn I would love a full width (especially with a 10 inch screen) and other options for layout or even colour. Maybe in time, this is experimental stuff at this time in PC so I am asking a lot of it.
Yeah, the on screen keyboard could use a ton of improvement. Keep in mind this is on a 16:9 screen though. It'll probably be a little bit better with the 16:10 screen you'll have. 4:3 would be ideal. It's a static size regardless.
I wonder how much of a pain it would be to make modifications... This is why why have open source, after all :p
I use a 4:3 on my main PC all ready but unfortunately no touch version. I am still not 100% sure I will use a touch screen in the build if it even goes ahead. I use the iPad screen after seeing the old Wendel video about it. went to the same guys and everything. There are cheaper iPad screen solutions now but this is still killer. So 4:3 at 2048x1536 and bump the scaling.
But touch the best I have seen is the 10 inch in the frame and mountable or a 15.6 inch 1080p panel but not in any frame just the raw panel, like my iPad screen. Fine at home but will break the screen instantly on the go unprotected.
This is why why have open source, after all :p
This is what I figured, either it was being worked on, had all ready been done, could be cobbled together or would be soon. Just did not know how far.
The rEFInd bootloader has support for touchscreen as far as the EFI goes. It's shaky, but it's probably as much as you could get. It doesn't work on mine but it's whatever.
# Enable touch screen support. If active, this feature enables use of
# touch screen controls (as on tablets). Note, however, that not all
# tablets' EFIs provide the necessary underlying support, so this
# feature may not work for you. If it does work, you should be able
# to launch an OS or tool by touching it. In a submenu, touching
# anywhere launches the currently-selection item; there is, at present,
# no way to select a specific submenu item.
