Replacing synaptics with libinput

BrummieJim · l33t Joined: 22 Jul 2005 Posts: 683

Hi,
I'm having lots of problems with random clicking when typing. I saw thiis on an Arch site and they recommend moving to libinput.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchpad_Synaptics#Disable_touchpad_while_typing

Is this as simple as changing make.conf INPUT_DEVICES synaptics option to libinput? Has anyone done this and noticed an improvement?

Thanks,
James

fpemud · Guru Joined: 15 Feb 2012 Posts: 349

i'm interested in this too.
unfortunately this arch wiki page doesnot say any detail on this

xaviermiller · Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2016 9:12 am Post subject:

Hi!,

You can also start syndaemon, which can disable your touchpad while you are typing.
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BrummieJim · l33t Joined: 22 Jul 2005 Posts: 683

That's the approach I took, I wrote a script with the syndaemon command in it, and had kde execute it. Not entirely successful, so I'd like to start down the libinput route if anyone has any ideas?

Thanks
James

gruftie · Apprentice Joined: 24 Sep 2002 Posts: 184

I want to switch to libinput too, so I removed the "synaptics" USE flag and added "libinput" instead.
Also I set INPUT_DEVICES="libinput" in make.conf. But somehow this leads to:

irafiral · n00b Joined: 31 Jan 2005 Posts: 29 Location: Germany

add
x11-base/xorg-drivers -input_devices_libinput
to
/etc/portage/profile/package.use.mask

gruftie · Apprentice Joined: 24 Sep 2002 Posts: 184

@irafiral,

thanks, that did it

bandreabis · Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2016 5:13 pm Post subject:

Works it better than synaptics?
Better than syndaemon?

Many thanks for your answer.
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Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

libinput seems to handle pointer movement much better than synaptics - the pointer doesn't jump around at all when doing a multi-finger tap.

The downside is it doesn't recognize the TapButton{1..3} options, and it doesn't have multi-finger (middle/right click) drag support.

I wouldn't recommend it for touchpads until they fix those bugs, for other input it works fine.

Rayan · n00b Joined: 01 Jul 2012 Posts: 5

haarp · Guru Joined: 31 Oct 2007 Posts: 535

Libinput mostly works well for me, much better than synaptics at least. This is on a Thinkpad W530.

Tapping did have a noticeable delay, so I changed #define DEFAULT_TAP_MOVE_THRESHOLD TP_MM_TO_DPI_NORMALIZED(3) to 1.

Three-finger tapping works, but isn't very reliable.

There exist gestures for it - https://github.com/bulletmark/libinput-gestures - But I couldn't get it to recognize any of them. I'm unsure why. Evidently my touchpad supports three fingers, but not for swishing motions? Anyone have success with that?

Rayan · n00b Joined: 01 Jul 2012 Posts: 5

Maffblaster · Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 10:43 pm Post subject:

Nice work, Rayan. I have taken the liberty to improve the formatting for the article. Glad you created it; feel free to create more articles like this in the future. They are very helpful for newcomers to Gentoo.

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Libinput
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khayyam · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 7:44 am Post subject:

@all

as a newb I'd like to thank developers, and upstream, for making this work with systemd-udev ... linux rocks!

best ... khay

Rayan · n00b Joined: 01 Jul 2012 Posts: 5

saboya · Guru Joined: 28 Nov 2006 Posts: 552 Location: Brazil

Transitioning was really simple for me. I recommend using the latest libinput version in the tree, even if's unstable. There are big improvements each new version.

Apollo_Futurae · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2017 11:45 am Post subject:

After the switch to libinput, my multiseat setup regressed to exhibit an old problem, where some keyboard presses have unwanted behaviour. In particular, sometimes my Ctrl-C will kill the other seat's X server

.

I guess this is because libinput doesn't recognise the GrabDevice option, which I set in xorg.conf.d for evdev. I've looked at the libinput man page, but couldn't find anything relevant. What could be the libinput equivalent of this setting?

Fitzcarraldo · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2017 1:29 pm Post subject:

I don't use libinput myself, but noted this comment about it by asturm in another thread:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8033362.html#8033362