Gestures With Multitouch In Ubuntu 10.10

jitendraharlalka writes "Mark Shuttleworth recently announced on his blog that the first cut of Canonical's UTouch framework is ready and will be available in Ubuntu Maverick. He goes on to talk about the development of 'touch language' by the design team. The 'touch language' will allow the chaining of basic gestures to create complex gestures. The approach is quite different from the single magic gestures implemented elsewhere. In Maverick, a few Gtk applications will support gesture-based scrolling."

Comments

One gesture

[dasdumper]

Maybe I can stop using the same gesture when my wifi card does not work.

Hardware support is still weak

[vlueboy]

Other than specialty devices, hardware support is not even on the map.
I believe W7 already supports multitouch, joining the mac bandwagon. So, how long until non-laptops, non-cellphones start shipping with that, so that we can see an explosion in programmer response and API's?

Oh, and while we wait, it'd be good to find where I can buy a USB pad currently to add multi-touch support for a Windows desktop. Thanks

Re:Hardware support is still weak

[Ethanol-fueled]

Speaking of drivers, I bought an HP printer with claims to support only Mac and Windows. Lo and behold, turns out there is a 'NIX driver, HPLIP, that is very similar to typical Windows drivers in that it is a unified center of settings and even shows the HP logo in Ubuntu's taskbar.

Familiar-feeling stuff like that goes a long way toward spreading desktop Linux adoption. Yet, for some reason, they don't simply add it to their standard driver CD.

Re:Hardware support is still weak

[turbidostato]

"Show me ANY Linux where I can take a mix of totally random hardware thrown together and hand my 67 year old clueless dad the disc and have him install it PERFECTLY, without a SINGLE fuckup or hardware issue, and then we'll talk."

Show me FIRST the Windows where I can take a mix of totally random hardware thrown together and hand my 67 year old clueless dad the disc and have him install it PERFECTLY, without a SINGLE fuckup or hardware issue.

Re:Hardware support is still weak

[Narksos]

"Show me ANY Linux where I can take a mix of totally random hardware thrown together and hand my 67 year old clueless dad the disc and have him install it PERFECTLY, without a SINGLE fuckup or hardware issue, and then we'll talk."

Show me FIRST the Windows where I can take a mix of totally random hardware thrown together and hand my 67 year old clueless dad the disc and have him install it PERFECTLY, without a SINGLE fuckup or hardware issue.

And then let said 67 year old clueless dad on the internet for 30 minutes and see if it still runs.

Re:Hardware support is still weak

[Minwee]

Then I want some of whatever he is smoking.

Re:Hardware support is still weak

[jedidiah]

Vendor specific nonsense that ignores the standard interfaces across all operating systems (MacOS included) does squat to encourage adoption of Linux. If anything, lack of this sort of nonsense for Linux is actually a considerable net gain. Incidentally, Linux has been using the "MacOS printing system" since before Apple was.

If it were up to HP, I wouldn't be able to use my all-in-one as a network printer under Linux either.

Re:Hardware support is still weak

[JohnFluxx]

> My dad didn't need a SINGLE DRIVER, those that Windows 7 HP didn't have it got from windows Update at first boot,

Yay, anecdotal evidence! There are plenty of people for whom Ubuntu installs perfectly too. That is why you are being a troll.

I've always had problems installing Windows - I think I'm unlucky.

I recently bought a usb WIFI device from Japan to get on the internet. Windows did not have the drivers and the drivers that came with it only worked on the Japanese version of windows. I had to spend several days doing registry hacks to force it to install.

On Linux I plugged it in and it worked.

Re:Hardware support is still weak

[kiddygrinder]

that's absolute bullshit, my current new windows install has about 4 missing drivers till i bother tracking down my motherboard disc, EVERY SINGLE REQUIRED DRIVER downloaded from the ubuntu repo for my dual boot linux partition and on all 3 linux installs in my house. the only thing that is stopping me from running ubuntu only with no issues is native versions of blizzard and valve games.

It's just a toy

[KiloByte]

Having tried multitouch, it's useless in the long term. It is a nice gimmick to show in an advertisement, but for using it for longer than 15 minutes at a time, it's not a good idea -- you'll hand will get sore in no time.

Even for mobile devices, there is simply no better thing than the good old keyboard. If you try the on-screen touch thingy on an iPad or most Androids, it may be enough for typing a single line of text. On an N900 with a proper physical keyboard, you're in good shape after several hours of typing. And since you can't have that many distinct gestures, traditional keyboard shortcuts are so much better.

Re:It's just a toy

[shmlco]

Your hand will get sore? You're kidding,right?

There was probably some guy like you shaking his head thirty years ago. "Mice? Sorry, I tried one and it's totally useless. You always have to take your hand off the keyboard to do anything at all."

"Not to mention how sore your hand will get mashing buttons and dragging it around your desktop."

Re:It's just a toy

[dlevitan]

Multi-touch on my Macbook is great. Two finger scrolling, three finger flipping from page to page makes life significantly easier. Yes, I can do everything with a mouse, but usually don't have mine out if I just have my laptop. And of course I can always use the keyboard, but why when I can do the same thing 10 times faster with a few finger movements.

Re:It's just a toy

[JanneM]

Swype is very overrated. Works fine for 90% of what you write (if you're using a well supported language), and makes the remaining 10% a pain to use. If you use more than one language, or want to use uncommon or non-standard vocabulary that 90% drops to something like 60% or worse.

Besides, swype doesn't need multitouch. I agree with the OP; it's a nice gimmick but not particularly useful.

Were can I buy...

[Just_Say_Duhhh]

where I can buy a USB pad currently to add multi-touch support for a Windows desktop. Thanks

From Wacom. I have one of these, and use it on a Windows system. I haven't plugged it into my Lucid system...yet.

Minigames!

[VortexCortex]

They are introducing multi-touch in 10.10 because in 11.04 the close and minimize buttons
will run around the borders of your windows and you'll need two hands to catch them.

This is much better than the current 10.04 "Memory" min-game where you try to remember which side the buttons are on.

Re:Good job Mark, you've overcomplicated it ...

[h4rr4r]

Redhat makes half its money from RHEL.

You can even sell GPL software that uses closed art, for example.

I have bought GPLed software on my phone, perhaps the dev won't get rich, but so what. We don't need more rich folks, we need more people doing what they love making a decent income.

Sweet move, Mark!

[Rogerborg]

Hey, the RT2700 and open source Nvidia drivers are shagged sideways in 10.04 again but fuck fixing that legacy shit, right, because we can focus on adding bells and whistles for hardware that two, maybe three of the actual competent devs and testers currently own! Rock on, buddy!

Re:Put more effort on the everyday stuff

[jedidiah]

> There are still a boat load of everyday things that should be addressed
> before they start to put too much effort in bleeding edge technologies
> that may never actually come to market.

Got a personal favorite you would like to actually cite or would you prefer to just continue the lame trolling?

There are already Linux based appliance tablet devices. So it's not like this is just pie in the sky stuff. This is new hardware that needs to be supported like anything else including whatever happens to be your pet "obscure" peripheral.