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Massimo B. Veteran
Joined: 09 Feb 2005 Posts: 1766 Location: PB, Germany
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Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2015 7:29 am Post subject: WM, Desktop Environment optimized for touch screens |
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Hi,
I'm looking for a desktop optimized for desktops for 2 purposes:
One is a All-in-one PC with a touch screen that I like to use as touch control only for internet browsing and media-player/server (DLNA) but with a fixed location. There I thought about XBMC.
The other is a replacement for a Android Tablet (Asus Transformer) with hardware keyboard. I wonder if some Linux could have better touch support than Android itself, but I would prefer my own Gentoo. I know there are Linux sandbox solutions on Android itself, but not native Linux. _________________ HP ZBook Power 15.6" G8 i7-11800H|HP EliteDesk 800G1 i7-4790|HP Compaq Pro 6300 i7-3770 |
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eccerr0r Watchman
Joined: 01 Jul 2004 Posts: 9677 Location: almost Mile High in the USA
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Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2015 4:10 pm Post subject: |
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Linux/X11 toolkits were never really designed for touch, and are basically awful...
That being said I have been trying to install Gentoo on a tablet. I ended up trying Gnome3 as I found some of the mouse gestures kind of awkward like scrolling around the activities page. My guess was right, it's a lot more pleasant to use with a touch screen. But that was just one aspect.
However most of the rest of the applications in X11 just aren't very good with a touch screen. It's hard to 'click' on stuff, etc. and the drivers don't always work as expected. The soft keyboard also pops up whenever I enable it and select a text field but is clunky as it covers the screen. It's a start, at least for Gnome 3.12. I still haven't gotten multitouch working but heard that Gnome had started some of those too.
Don't know. For real work I think I still need the keyboard and mouse... It was no wonder why Google decided to redo everything much to legacy's chagrin. _________________ Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
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Massimo B. Veteran
Joined: 09 Feb 2005 Posts: 1766 Location: PB, Germany
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Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2015 5:32 pm Post subject: |
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As for XBMC only this should be fine with touch control I could imagine.
xorg also has some support for more than one mouse-pointer I read, there are also some window manager with that ability.
I heard about some Ubuntu on Android-devices, what is that using as window manager? _________________ HP ZBook Power 15.6" G8 i7-11800H|HP EliteDesk 800G1 i7-4790|HP Compaq Pro 6300 i7-3770 |
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eccerr0r Watchman
Joined: 01 Jul 2004 Posts: 9677 Location: almost Mile High in the USA
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Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2015 7:41 pm Post subject: |
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Yes, just recently, X11 does support multitouch, but the applications/toolkits themselves need to be adapted to it.
Also there may be alternative gestures that aren't clear... I suppose most people are now used to 1-finger scrolling but on a PC trackpads, two finger scrolling is the norm.
One thing that was kind of annoying on the tablet was when I tried to use Firefox. When I tried 1-finger scrolling it treated it like a click-and-drag. Well of course... There's an addon to "fix" this but it's one of these things that was never meant to be for X.
I heard Chromium/Chrome works with 1-finger scrolling in X however. _________________ Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
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Massimo B. Veteran
Joined: 09 Feb 2005 Posts: 1766 Location: PB, Germany
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Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2015 6:40 am Post subject: |
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I see, that scrolling issue is one of the differences for touch pads and touch screens. Thinking of the pointer as a mouse or trackpad, moving means moving the pointer to a location without clicking. But on a touch screen, I can point any location without moving there. I guess it could be a job of the xserver itself, using a pointer device in 2 different modes that is mouse-mode or touchscreen-mode.
Thinking of the pointer as a mouse one could get used to a touch screen. But today being used to the behaviour of common touch screens on Android, the difference could be even more annoying. _________________ HP ZBook Power 15.6" G8 i7-11800H|HP EliteDesk 800G1 i7-4790|HP Compaq Pro 6300 i7-3770 |
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