Trackpad lack of fine movement and overrun ruining experience.

[gillham]

Ok, I'm enjoying my PineBook Pro except for one problem that wrecks the experience... the trackpad.  Sure, I'm used to my MacBook Pro trackpad and I don't expect the PBP to be as good, but I'm finding the current PBP trackpad hard to use.

Yes I'm complaining, sorry.

The basic problem I have is that the trackpad is slow to start, I can move my finger a good bit before it even moves, and then it suffers serious overrun when I stop.  This happens with the stock image and with Manjaro XFCE so it doesn't seem specific to the factory image.  The overrun happens with NetBSD with just the basic X11 server via 'startx' as well.  I happens with the  Debian Installer testing version a bit even with the slow default speed.

You can test the overrun for yourself, just move your finger quickly left to right, starting quickly and stopping quickly.  You'll see the pointer continue to move well after you stopped your finger.

You can test the "delayed start" by moving your finger slowly.  You'll be able to move your finger several mm before the pointer responds.

Combine these two things and it is hard to use.  Grabbing the corner of a window is frustratingly hard.  Stopping on the correct window decoration (minimize/maximize/close/whatever you got) is difficult.  As a result instead of just using things, I'm thinking too hard about trying to get the pointer where it belongs.

I know someone else posted about this also, but I can't believe this isn't more widespread.  Are people just "living with it" or using an external pointing device or what?

Any ideas on how to fix this?  I seems to be in the trackpad/keyboard firmware since it is affecting Linux & NetBSD.

[phuzy]

Experiencing the same as OP (you're not alone).

[krigl]

Same here...

[tiho]

Count me in. Same experience.

[Kochise]

When you use two fingers to scroll up-down, open a document, slowly scroll down, pause a little, then go slowly up.

What happens :

As you start scrolling down, nothing happens until it starts to match the movement and do scroll down as expected.
When you pause, it stops.
But when you go up, it finishes scrolling down a little before scrolling up.

It's like position are filling a fifo queue instead to react immediately, hence there is a delay corresponding to the length of the queue.

Maybe that might help to spot the bug.

[c6Q$!]

Same here.

When editing text, the cursor will unexpectedly leap elsewhere on the line or paragraph. I'm not brushing against the trackpad. It's infuriating.

[drazurh]

Ok, I'm enjoying my PineBook Pro except for one problem that wrecks the experience... the trackpad.  Sure, I'm used to my MacBook Pro trackpad and I don't expect the PBP to be as good, but I'm finding the current PBP trackpad hard to use.

Yes I'm complaining, sorry.

The basic problem I have is that the trackpad is slow to start, I can move my finger a good bit before it even moves, and then it suffers serious overrun when I stop.  This happens with the stock image and with Manjaro XFCE so it doesn't seem specific to the factory image.  The overrun happens with NetBSD with just the basic X11 server via 'startx' as well.  I happens with the  Debian Installer testing version a bit even with the slow default speed.

You can test the overrun for yourself, just move your finger quickly left to right, starting quickly and stopping quickly.  You'll see the pointer continue to move well after you stopped your finger.

You can test the "delayed start" by moving your finger slowly.  You'll be able to move your finger several mm before the pointer responds.

Combine these two things and it is hard to use.  Grabbing the corner of a window is frustratingly hard.  Stopping on the correct window decoration (minimize/maximize/close/whatever you got) is difficult.  As a result instead of just using things, I'm thinking too hard about trying to get the pointer where it belongs.

I know someone else posted about this also, but I can't believe this isn't more widespread.  Are people just "living with it" or using an external pointing device or what?

Any ideas on how to fix this?  I seems to be in the trackpad/keyboard firmware since it is affecting Linux & NetBSD.

---

The trackpad is very annoying, I agree. The worst, like you said, is when you are trying to click the edge or corner of a window. It seems that in the default OS your cursor position needs to be pixel perfect, which would be annoying on any trackpad. I haven't tried to fix this by making the clicking area larger, but maybe that's something to look into.

My advice is to learn some shortcuts, which will help you out in the long run no matter what. To move a window press alt+f7 then move the window with your arrow keys. Holding shift snaps the edge to the edge of the next window or to the edge of the screen. Pressing alt+f8 allows you to adjust the size of the window using the arrow keys. Holding shift will snap the edge you are adjusting to the edge of the next window or to the edge of the screen.

Theres also alt+tab to flip through windows just like in windows, and shortcuts to maximize and minimize windows as well. You can set the up to be whatever you want in the shortcuts menu.

For my use case, the bad trackpad is ironically helping me. I do most of my work In a maximized terminal and have been learning tmux and vim to do all my code editing without using the mouse. I've also been I installing command line alternatives to browser apps such as hangups for Google hangouts chat and Mutt for email. It's been pretty fun :-)

If you let us know your use case, maybe we can brainstorm some ways to let you not use the mouse. If you really need a mouse I'd look into getting a wireless trackball such as the mx ergo or the m570. This would take some getting used to, but you could use it anywhere without the need of a flat surface or mousepad to use a mouse (and of course the bonus is it would make you look super cool).

Cheers!

[gillham]

It's like position are filling a fifo queue instead to react immediately, hence there is a delay corresponding to the length of the queue.

Right, my understanding from what @jackhumbert posted regarding his updated keyboard firmware is that the keyboard controller (8051 based) is what reads from the trackpad and reports the movements to the OS.  Over simplifying it, I would say maybe the keyboard controller is buffering messages from the trackpad as you mentioned and empties that buffer when movement stops.  Rather than perhaps flushing it.

Maybe @jackhumbert can provide some insight into how the trackpad movement data is passed through and whether there is queue/buffer of some type.

[qchapter1]

I have an ISO PBP and the trackpad has improved a lot since the last firmware update, although it's still not perfect. I find it usable, but do avoid resizing windows with the trackpad. Some folks use an external mouse or a tiling window manager as a workaround.

[logicprobe]

Same here. Living with it.