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What's your experience with a touchscreen laptop on your distro?

Hello everyone!

I’m finally tired enough of the invasive and anti-consumer practices of Windows to convert over. I’m going to start with my laptop, but I’m concerned about compatibility for 2-in-1 convertible touchscreens.

A distro that’s sufficient for both computers would be ideal for consistency’s and simplicity’s sake.

  • 2-in-1 convertible touchscreen laptop. Can be folded into a “tablet” mode. Used for web browsing and simple games
  • Main workstation for gaming, programming, etc. NVIDIA GPU (no touchscreen)

Most anecdotes say touchscreen support is hit or miss, and the On Screen Keyboard / Auto-rotate support is an additional challenge. MINT with cinnamon seems to be the best contender at the moment due to its compatibly with most games and the touchscreen support seems to be there.

But, I’d love some fresh perspectives as most sources were ~a year old. Thanks for your time!

Secret300 ,

I don’t have one but my cousin has one and I tried to use it back in fedora 35-36 I think. Not a good experience. Maybe it’s better now

0x2d ,

i have arch linux running on a surface pro 6

laptop specs: core i5, 8 gb ram, 256 gb ssd

linux setup:

  • arch btw
  • linux-surface kernel
  • gnome (Wayland)

the touchscreen is working very smoothly

notenoughbutter ,

I’ve read that latest Microsoft surface devices have proprietary touchscreen implementation so it can’t be included in main Linux kernel

thus, you need to install a customized kernel for that, read up linux-surface for that

aside from this, I think every laptop works just fine under Wayland

library_napper ,
@library_napper@monyet.cc avatar

It has glare

GreyFalcon ,

manjaro running on an old yoga 12. no problems. it’s the old ladies, so i would have heard.

thurstylark ,

This has less to do with distro, and more to do with Desktop Environment choice. Anything on Wayland is great with touchscreens. I’m on Plasma, and it’s pretty fantastic.

yojimbo ,

A colleague wanted to throw out Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 3, 10IGL5 (a tablet pc with IMO cool keyboard that can be disconnected and used over bluetooth, 4 core intel CPU taking like 5W & 8GB of ram). Originally bought for his kid but it is absolutely useless under windows. I’ve tested it with current Ubuntu with somewhat meh results (BT keyboard won’t work, no chance to get the automatic screen rotation going, screwy on screen keyboard) then I have installed Fedora and the thing is absolutely amazing. Everything works out of the box, I haven’t done anything “smart” at all and honestly as a XFCE (still deep in x11) user I am amazed how well the Wayland is doing on this. I would dare to say better out of the box experience than Apple - everything is similarly polished but you don’t have to register / pay anything. Now my teamleader is taking it to presentations. He connects the display over USB-C adapter to the projector, walks over the room and controls it with the BT keyboard - Mac wielding accounts are starting to cry. As docker/podman is native he continues to spin up the whole app in a container - at which point every technical person in the room needs to know what the f is that thing?! They are no longer being manufactured though, newer version does not have that cool keyboard…

Daeraxa ,

I have an Thinkpad X380 Yoga running stock Fedora with GNOME and it works pretty damn well. The pen works and it recognises the buttons, the auto appearing keyboard works and so does the auto rotate. Basically very few problems at all, I don’t use it all that extensively outside of GIMP though.

Lettuceeatlettuce ,
@Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml avatar

I’ve owned a Thinkpad A485 with touchscreen for years and had several Linux distros on it including Manjaro and Linux Mint which I am currently using.

Never had any issues, touchscreen always works out of the box without me having to do anything extra. In fact, with a few distros, I’ve had issues with certain wireless mice, but my touchscreen always has worked. So I’ve actually had slightly better luck with the laptop touchscreen than some external mice lol.

Now a qualifier: I rarely use the touchscreen, and when I do, it’s always just to click something or scroll on an article or file list. I don’t do any special gestures or fancy touch functions, so I can’t speak to support from that perspective.

Aman9das ,

Ubuntu should work well. extensions.gnome.org/extension/…/screen-rotate/

possiblylinux127 ,

Anything with Wayland will have good touchscreen support

julianh ,

I’ve been using fedora on a surface go 3 and it’s been a good experience - auto rotate works and osk mostly works. In general Gnome seems to be the best DE for touchscreens, especially if you use it in tablet mode a lot. You’re gonna at least want something up to date and probably using Wayland, so I wouldn’t go with mint.

One option is to use something like Fedora or Arch for both PCs, but use a different desktop environment (gnome on the 2-in-1, kde on the desktop).

joyjoy ,

Using an xps17 2019. The touch screen works ok, but it stops working after closing the lid. Using EndeavourOS with Wayland btw.

dylanmorgan ,

I use Fedora on a gen 7 Carbon X1 thinkpad and the small amount I use the touch screen has worked fine.

Jakeroxs ,

I also use Fedora Wayland but on a HP Spectre X360 from like 2013 or something, touch screen works fine and overall runs a lot better then win 10 was prior.

SaintWacko ,

I use an old Surface Pro 3 with PopOS and it works perfectly

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