GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 768682
Removal of synaptics support was premature
Last modified: 2017-01-15 07:02:00 UTC
Hello, I know that you dropped synaptics support in favor of libinput. This was not a very good idea because it forces distribution to handle a one-time switch from synaptics to libinput. Xorg can be configured to prefer either one of the driver but the default upstream configuration is to prefer "synaptics" over "libinput". Upstream decided that the synaptics driver should not be installed by default but that once installed, it should take precedence: See https://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-input-synaptics/commit/?id=59e5db025307404fbfbc82f2fb3fe91d6a3005d7 Distributions have to support multiple desktop environments and not only GNOME... and other desktop environments are not yet ready to use libinput so there is no way to have all desktop environments to work at the same time except by handling this transition smoothly (like any transition should be done): support both drivers for now, and after a while once 80% of the desktops environments have been updated, drop support for synaptics. So please consider bringing back support for the synaptics-managed touchpads in the mean time. Thank you (as Debian developer and Kali developer dealing with many user requests related to this).
Just some small comments, but I think KDE already supports it (https://rajeeshknambiar.wordpress.com/2015/02/22/libinput-support-added-to-touchpad-kcm/), and XFCE appears to have support in a branch for now (though I haven't tried this one: https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-commits/2015-February/057275.html)
(In reply to Raphael Hertzog from comment #0) > Hello, > > I know that you dropped synaptics support in favor of libinput. This was not > a very good idea because it forces distribution to handle a one-time switch > from synaptics to libinput. Using the libinput Xorg was the end goal since it was first released. > Xorg can be configured to prefer either one of the driver but the default > upstream configuration is to prefer "synaptics" over "libinput". Upstream > decided that the synaptics driver should not be installed by default but > that once installed, it should take precedence: > See > https://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-input-synaptics/commit/ > ?id=59e5db025307404fbfbc82f2fb3fe91d6a3005d7 > > Distributions have to support multiple desktop environments and not only > GNOME... and other desktop environments are not yet ready to use libinput so > there is no way to have all desktop environments to work at the same time > except by handling this transition smoothly (like any transition should be > done): support both drivers for now, and after a while once 80% of the > desktops environments have been updated, drop support for synaptics. > > So please consider bringing back support for the synaptics-managed touchpads > in the mean time. No, that's too much code for us to deal with. > Thank you (as Debian developer and Kali developer dealing with many user > requests related to this). You've had since January 2015 to fix those desktops. You can try reverting the patches that removed synaptics support in gnome-settings-daemon and gnome-control-center if you want, but you'll get to keep both pieces.