Arch Linux

flammenwurfer

Member

Registered: 2009-02-04

Posts: 118

Does anyone have tips for 2-in-1 laptops or tablets?

I'm running arch on my 2 in 1 laptop that can be a traditional notebook or a touchscreen tablet.  My current environment is LXQt with openbox as the wm.  I'm pretty happy with the functionality overall, but does anybody have any tips or tweaks they've figured out with their convertible notebooks or touchscreen devices such as good DEs, WMs, launchers, other applications that work really well in tablet mode?

Probably my biggest frustration so far is that I haven't found a good full screen touch friendly launcher that is lightweight.  Gnome has a touch friendly launcher but gnome is too heavy for me and I'm just not a fan.

Here is a list of some things I've found work well or that have promise:

Touchegg is a pretty neat program that lets you specify different gestures and define what they do.  It lets you enable certain multitouch gestures that may not be supported by default such as touch scrolling and maximizing or minimizing windows with gestures.  Apparently it's not really being developed anymore though.

Easystroke is another touch gesture program but I haven't had a chance to test it out yet.

OnBoard is an on screen keyboard that is pretty nice and is very configurable.  It seems to work the best out of the few I tried. 

Chromium is by far the most touch friendly browser.  If anyone has any tips for making other browsers work better with touchscreens please share.

If you have any thoughts on the things I've listed or other suggestions I'd love to hear it!

Oh yeah...screenshots.

http://imgur.com/EAALhCl.png

http://i.imgur.com/jDsugBC.png

-- read the rules and only post thumbnails https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=61754  [jwr] --

flammenwurfer

Member

Registered: 2009-02-04

Posts: 118

Re: Does anyone have tips for 2-in-1 laptops or tablets?

Ok. I guess nobody uses 2 in 1 laptops.

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 15,552

Re: Does anyone have tips for 2-in-1 laptops or tablets?

flammenwurfer,

It's just been 2 days since your first post, I doubt every arch forum user has been online in that time.
It might help if you choose a more specific title. Maybe something like : looking for touchscreen apps that work well on laptops.

Last edited by Lone_Wolf (2015-12-05 13:36:55)

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Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: The Wirral

Registered: 2014-02-20

Posts: 9,003

Website

Re: Does anyone have tips for 2-in-1 laptops or tablets?

I can't stand touchscreens (I usually have dirty hands ) but I understand that the GNOME desktop is particularly well-suited to that input method.

EDIT: Sorry, missed the bit where you said you don't want GNOME.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2015-12-05 13:33:58)

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flammenwurfer

Member

Registered: 2009-02-04

Posts: 118

Re: Does anyone have tips for 2-in-1 laptops or tablets?

Yeah, I personally am not considering gnome just because my device is a litttle underpowered for it.  It looks like it would be great for a more powerful device though.

After looking into easystroke more it appears it's not developed anymore either.  I can't get it to run on my machine anyways.

Silkworm205

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2012-05-21

Posts: 267

Re: Does anyone have tips for 2-in-1 laptops or tablets?

I'm happy on my Ideapad using Mate and Compiz 0.8, available in the AUR. I've not got gestures and the like, but I've got desktop switching configured by "swiping" the edges of the screen (mouse 1 on the very edge, it counts.) and corners bound to things like initiating the scale plugin or expo.
Emerald gets bonus points from me for letting me scale the borders of the window decorations up to be easier to click.
With mate-gtk3 available, there's some extra touch functionality coming in like inertial scrolling.
Compiz is compatible with other DE's too, and LXQT is mentioned here on the wiki.

Unity felt quite nice back when it worked. Our maintainer seems to have gone though, so it currently no longer works without the ALA. Still, some minor things like 3 finger taps to bring up a move/resize window overlay, or 4 finger tap to bring the Unity launcher up were nice touches.

The one thing I dislike in the touch environment is the touch support between different programs. I really like eye of Mate, but eye of Gnome supports swiping to change images, and pinch zooming.Of course, Arch being Arch I can pick 'n' mix as much as I like.

I know you're concerned about performance, and compiz can use a decent amount of processing power, but if you steer clear of unnecessary plugins it'll be fine. My Ideapad's on a dual core celeron with Intel Integrated graphics and no fan.

I posted screenshots here a while ago. Still much the same besides the addition of emerald and a new gtk theme.

And before I stop driveling on, fusion-icon is a useful little tool for managing it. I'm not sure if it supports openbox, but in mate it lets me switch between compiz and metacity as the compositor.

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