[gorgoiler]

I wish libinput gave the option for pointer inertia, where the pointer glides to a gradual rather than a hard halt after you stop moving it. I’m limited to a trackpad these days and it’s a really nice feature on my Steamdeck that I’d love to have on my Thinkpad.

Come to think of it, Steamdeck is Wayland? How do they implement it?

[solarkraft]

I highly agree. The synaptics driver on an Asus Eee PC I had had this feature and I really liked it. It just makes sense: It is a thing you touch and flick around. Having it immediately stop is like the list you’re scrolling immediately coming to a hard stop once you release the finger.

[gf000]

Semi-related - I think that controllers would be a very nice single input device for many kinds of workloads, especially if you can occasionally just dictate text. It's kind of sad that it's not supported all that well.

[ben-schaaf]

> How do they implement it?

In firmware.

[rcxdude]

>I wish libinput gave the option for pointer inertia, where the pointer glides to a gradual rather than a hard halt after you stop moving it

Why? That seems like it would make it a lot harder to move the cursor precisely. (in fact the main implementation of it on linux I know of was a joke in IOCC)

[fjalarhl]

You'd think so but as the person above mentioned, this is how the steam deck/controller does it and it works well. It mostly affects faster movements like flicking the mouse across the screen, leaving smaller movements unaffected.

[solarkraft]

The opposite applies to my use. Humans are generally great at predicting where moving things will land - we evolved for that. It feels great flicking the cursor around and stopping it at the right point. It’s just like scrolling a list on your phone, I for one get great precision doing that. It’s especially great on small touchpads.

[sublinear]

How precisely can you scroll on your phone? I don't think anyone finds it awkward.

I get the impression that you're thinking of a much jankier implementation of "inertia" than that, and to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if that's what we'd get anyway.

An unambitious inertia describes the linux community of the past decade pretty well.

[Gigachad]

It works similarly to the steam deck actually. You flick and then tap/hold to stop.

[retsibsi]

Does this mean the inertia only applies if you remove your finger at the end of the movement, and so non-flicky movements are interpreted normally, with the cursor stopping as soon as your finger stops? That implementation sounds a lot better than how I interpreted the original comment; I thought they meant it would apply to all movements, even when your finger stays down the whole time.

[Gigachad]

Yeah. It would only work on trackpads. It’s particularly good when you don’t have a massive MacBook style trackpad.