Skip to content
You must be logged in to sponsor gitclear

Become a sponsor to GitClear

@gitclear

GitClear

gitclear
United States of America

Since 2018, GitClear CEO/Developer Bill Harding has been hatching plans to improve the satisfaction experienced by users of Linux touchpads. Bill's odyssey began in 2018 with the blog post "Linux touchpad like a Macbook: Goal worth pursuing?" continued with "Linux touchpad like a Macbook: progress and a call for help" and most recently, "Linux touchpad like a Macbook Pro, May 2020 update."

With more than 1,000 Hacker News upvotes accumulated on the above blogs during the past couple years, there's little doubt that today's Linux touchpad experience leaves much to be desired when compared to other OSes. The challenge is figuring out what to do about it, and how to get it done. After surveying the best existing Linux touchpad drivers, it was concluded that no option is significantly better than the Linux default (libinput) in terms of support and availability. Libinput's maintainer, Peter Hutterer, has been sympathetic and cooperative throughout our interactions, but there is only so much time in a day for him to improve the Linux touchpad, and working on this driver is only one aspect of his job.

This project exists to pick up the slack where the base libinput falls short. One of the most difficult challenges the libinput team faces is "how to know when this touchpad experience is satisfying to users?" Open source is great when it comes to identifying bugs, submitting fixes, and requesting features. It's less great when tasked with getting a product to feel easy or pleasant to use.

For this project to deliver an open source experience that feels like a Macbook, we need the help of Linux touchpad users. That's why we launched the Linux touchpad poll to aggregate feedback from across the Linux community. We will use this poll as the source of truth moving forward to help prioritize which libinput issues to address first.

For more details about this project, including the timeline of expected releases, please check out our GH Sponsors announcement blog post.

Current sponsors 42

@sebastianblunt
@alanorth
@jpeloquin
@nicolasfella
@canadaduane
@HalfVoxel
@bwitt
@ah-
Private Sponsor
@jaos
@joelmatth
@iamtheworstdev
@drasch
@josharrington
@paddykontschak
Private Sponsor
Private Sponsor
@lopter
@zauster
@cibyr
@kd35a
@caboteria
@peperjohnny
@tvi
Private Sponsor
@gaul
Private Sponsor
@aadavids
@whereswaldon
@cassiecarlson
@Ericson2314
@toastercup
@NoahAndrews
@RayBB
@DavidZemon
Private Sponsor
@dlobraico
@benwaffle
@kevinhughes27
@quentindemetz
@martinstuecklschwaiger
@zarvox

Past sponsors 221

@paulperegud
Private Sponsor
Private Sponsor
Private Sponsor
@SwiftPush
@EliasGabrielsson
@atsushieno
@codabrink
Private Sponsor
@ElijahLynn
@DominoTree
@teh
@pnovotnak
@benoliver999
Private Sponsor
@scuba-tech
@josteink
@manup

Learn more about sponsoring developers and organizations.

Report abuse

Select a tier

$ a month

Choose a custom amount.

$5 a month

Select

Silver-level supporter. You will receive that warm feeling from knowing that you're making the world a little better place. 🙌

$15 a month

Select

Gold-level supporter. We will message you when new preview builds are released so that you can get early access to assist our QA effort.

$25 a month

Select

Platinum-level supporter. Includes the benefits at the lower tiers, plus you or your company will be publicly thanked in a future project announcement.

$100 a month

Select

Diamond-level supporter. Includes the benefits at the lower tiers, plus:

  1. The opportunity to guide prioritization of features. We will keep a spreadsheet of touchpad requests from Diamond supporters and use it as an additional source of prioritization signal.
  2. Get thanked with a link to your company and logo within the project README file
  3. Get thanked with a link to your company and its logo in next project update blog post