Trackpad Drivers for Linux on a Mac

A computer scientist working in open source towards a more hopeful future.

Posted on 2015-08-04, around 1 minutes of reading.

If you're like me and have Mac hardware but run Linux you might also run into the slight annoyance with the trackpad drivers X.org defaults to.

If you haven't explored, there is a fantastic replacement called mtrack that I've had great luck with.

Here's an example of my configuration in vim /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-mtrack.conf

Section "InputClass"
    MatchIsTouchpad "on"
    Identifier "Touchpads"
    Driver "mtrack"
    Option "Sensitivity" "0.5"
    Option "IgnorePalm" "on"
    Option "IgnoreThumb" "on"
    Option "FingerHigh" "15"
    Option "ClickFinger1" "3"
    Option "ClickFinger2" "2"
    Option "ClickFinger3" "0"
    Option "TapButton1" "1"
    Option "TapButton2" "3"
    Option "TapButton3" "2"
    Option "SwipeDistance" "1400"
    Option "Swipe4Distance" "1400"
    Option "SwipeLeftButton" "9"
    Option "Swipe4LeftButton" "9"
    Option "SwipeRightButton" "8"
    Option "Swipe4RightButton" "8"
    Option "SwipeUpButton" "10"
    Option "Swipe4UpButton" "10"
    Option "SwipeDownButton" "11"
    Option "Swipe4DownButton" "11"
EndSection

It works decently! I like how in Firefox I can even use it to go back/forward with a swipe just like on Mac!

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