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Author Topic: What's a good Linux distro for a multi-touch capable laptop?  (Read 4146 times)

superboyac

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I'm about to order the Hp Touchsmart tm2t.  I was curious about putting a nice Linux distro on it.  But I'd really LOVE to find one that has excellent support for multi-touch screens.  Is there anything like that out there?  If not a distro itself, perhaps a software that is compatible with a good distro.  Thanks.

zridling

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Re: What's a good Linux distro for a multi-touch capable laptop?
« Reply #1 on: September 01, 2010, 10:42 AM »
Next month in Ubuntu's 10.10 version should have this capability. I don't expect HP to share any drivers for that new laptop, however. Also, several Android notebooks will include this, too.

http://news.cnet.com..._3-20013760-264.html

superboyac

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Re: What's a good Linux distro for a multi-touch capable laptop?
« Reply #2 on: September 01, 2010, 11:01 AM »
Next month in Ubuntu's 10.10 version should have this capability. I don't expect HP to share any drivers for that new laptop, however. Also, several Android notebooks will include this, too.

http://news.cnet.com..._3-20013760-264.html
Argh!  I need drivers from hp to make it work?!  That's never going to happen.  How come I was able to install linux on my regular pc without getting any extra drivers?

Deozaan

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Re: What's a good Linux distro for a multi-touch capable laptop?
« Reply #3 on: September 04, 2010, 06:10 PM »
A regular PC doesn't need special multi-touch drivers.

I know that Ubuntu 9.10 worked great on an old tablet PC I put it on, so 10.10 might work without a hitch on your multi-touch capable device. Then again, it might not. :-\

EDIT: It seems as though multi-touch may have been in Linux for some time now. Commenter lkm32 in the article Zaine linked says:

... multitouch has been available in Linux from at least 2007 (yes even before windows) and synaptics touchpad multi-touch from even before that. It was integrated into the kernel before Windows 7 was ever released and always had much more extensibility.

I know the title could be misleading but if you actually read the article you would find that Canonical (company behind Ubuntu) was simply making a new multitouch software interface (as in new way to make the user experience better) and to set standards.
« Last Edit: September 04, 2010, 06:16 PM by Deozaan »

zridling

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Re: What's a good Linux distro for a multi-touch capable laptop?
« Reply #4 on: September 06, 2010, 06:17 PM »
Thanks for reading the article and comments for more info, Deozaan:Thmbsup: