I'm trying to switch from Windows to Linux, specifically on my media PC and work laptop, but I'm running into some serious issues with input devices. I've tried multiple distributions, including Linux Mint, Fedora, and Debian, but they all have their downsides. The most frustrating problem is with the touch input on my laptop. No matter which distro I use, the touchpad responsiveness varies from bad to awful. Scrolling speeds differ dramatically between different applications—Debian at least has a slider to adjust it, but Chrome and Firefox behave differently. Apart from the speed issue, the touch input itself is unresponsive unless I'm just clicking. Two-finger scrolling only works about 70% of the time, and often it won't even initiate scrolling mid-motion. Am I being too critical here? Is it unreasonable to expect solid hardware integration from open source systems? What am I missing? I'm open to some tinkering, but the end result really should perform better in my opinion.
1 Answer
It sounds like you need to provide more details for the best advice. What versions of the distributions are you using? What desktop environments? I haven't experienced similar issues on Arch or multiple versions of Fedora and Debian, all of which performed well with my hardware setup. Specifying these details might help others assist you better.
Thanks for the input! I'm on Debian 13.2 with KDE Plasma at the moment. I used Fedora with GNOME but can't recall the exact version. I also find Arch a bit daunting, to be honest.