Synaptics extends multitouch Gesture Suite to Linux, Chrome OS included
By Vlad Savov 
posted April 20th 2010 6:06AM
posted April 20th 2010 6:06AM
Synaptics Gesture Suite(TM) Now Available for Popular Linux Operating Systems
Wider Availability of Industry-Leading TouchPad(TM) Gestures Empowers PC OEMs to Leverage Synaptics' Advanced Gesture Capabilities in Linux-based Operating Systems
SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Synaptics Inc. (Nasdaq: SYNA), a leading developer of human interface solutions for mobile computing, communications, and entertainment devices, today announced the extension of its industry-leading Synaptics Gesture Suite™ to the Linux operating system environment. This release extends the Synaptics Gesture Suite-which includes sophisticated multi-finger gestures-to OEMs that offer Linux-based solutions.
Synaptics is a recognized leader in the mobile computing and handheld human interface areas, with more than 700 million devices shipped since 1995. Synaptics has a strong leadership position in the Microsoft Windows-based TouchPad™ market and Synaptics Gesture Suite (SGS™)-currently available on a majority of Synaptics TouchPads delivered to PC OEMs around the world-allows users to enhance their productivity with thousands of Microsoft Windows-based applications available today. Today's announcement extends the industry's broadest gesture suite across a wide range of leading Linux operating systems.
"The Synaptics Gesture Suite for Linux enables our OEMs to leverage a broad range of gesture capabilities across Linux operating systems, and offers extensibility into new Linux flavors such as Google Chrome OS and additional support for touch-enabled remote control devices," said Ted Theocheung, head of Synaptics PC and digital home products & ecosystem. "SGS ensures optimized interoperability of gestures, minimal gesture interpretations errors, and proven usability performance across the widest range of TouchPad sizes from small remote controls and netbooks to large powerhouse notebook PCs, as well as customization capabilities to OEMs' exacting specifications."
Supported Linux operating systems include Fedora, Millos Linpus, Red Flag, SLED 11 (SuSE), Ubuntu, and Xandros. SGS for Linux (SGS-L) supports a wide range of pointing enhancements and gestures including two-finger scrolling, PinchZoom, TwistRotate, PivotRotate™, three-finger flick, three-finger press, Momentum™, and ChiralScrolling. Bundled with Synaptics' enhanced driver interface, SGS-L is provided free of charge to Synaptics OEM/ODM partners when ordered with Synaptics TouchPad and ClickPad™ products.
Synaptics Gesture Suite for Linux (SGS-L) helps manufacturers bring new interactivity and productivity to their notebook PC systems and other peripheral devices that use Synaptics TouchPads. To find out more about Synaptics Gesture Suite for Linux, please contact your Synaptics sales representative or visit www.synaptics.com/go/SGSL .
About Synaptics
Synaptics (NASDAQ: SYNA) is a leading developer of human interface solutions for the mobile computing, communications, and entertainment industries. The company creates interface solutions for a variety of devices including notebook PCs, PC peripherals, digital music players, and mobile phones. The TouchPad™, Synaptics' flagship product, is integrated into a majority of today's notebook computers. Consumer electronics and computing manufacturers use Synaptics' solutions to enrich the interaction between humans and intelligent devices through improved usability, functionality, and industrial design. The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif. www.synaptics.com
Synaptics, TouchPad, ClickPad, Synaptics Gesture Suite, SGS, Momentum, PivotRotate, and the Synaptics logo are trademarks of Synaptics in the United States and/or other countries.
All other marks are the property of their respective owners.
Windows naowz!
@Pipera are you seriously too stupid to finish reading the first line of the article or were you just desperate to be first commenter?
@trashpants I thought for windows there's only one gesture an its a two finger scroll. See - http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/19/synaptics-driver-enables-multitouch-gestures-on-older-trackpads/
@trashpants
Simple.... Jeff Hann and Tom Cruise didn't patent it...
@Pipera WOW I thought that gesture thing was way older than mid March! wasn't there some synaptics thing about doing strange patterns to minimise maximise and the such? my memory has failed me again.
I retract my stupidity comment :(
@Pipera Dang, my touchpad is Alps :(
@Billy You're not necessarily out of luck with Alps. Note that this just "official" Synaptics mutitouch... there has already been multitouch libraries in Linux for a long time.
Has Chrome OS officially released on a laptop yet?
@n8equalsd Kinda.
Cool, finally.
Looks like some tech
(SUNGLASSES)
... just got swiped.
@Decoy
Yep.. But we let iFanboys think Apple invented it anyway.
How does Apple have a patent on pinch to zoom when Tom Cruise showed a similar gesture in minority report. And also Jeff Han demo'd it in at least 2005.
@JS
You can see Jeff Han showing pinch to zoom in at the :45 second mark of this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89sz8ExZndc
This video was made in 2005 or early 2006 about a year before the iPhone came out .. probably more than a year even.
@JS Not to mention the fact that multitouch has been around for decades...
@JS
Re: "How does Apple have a patent on pinch to zoom..."
IANAL, but Apple acquired Fingerworks in early 2005 and so absorbed their multitouch IP. Fingerworks had been manufacturing their iGesture Pad since ~1998/1999. Apple now owns their technology.
I don't know how Apple/Fingerwork's patent differs from Jeff Han/Perceptive Pixel's implementation, which debuted in 2006. Might be a resistive vs. capacitive kind of deal (don't quote me on that; I did not bother to check their tech -_-¡). I'm guessing that prior implementations of multitouch - dating as far back as 1982 at the University of Toronto - mainly focused on camera-based tech (like Microsoft's Surface).
Great news! Cant wait to try it out on my Ubuntu laptop.
@maxim
I just got a update for my Synaptics driver today on Ubuntu 10.04 beta but I'm afraid nothing new. I would assume that we will see everything described not immediate. More likely we will see rolling distros getting it quick. Like Arch then Gentoo based distros.
Anyone else think the increasing amount of gestures is becoming the geek equivalent of sign language?
In the end we'll forget all the relevant ones and just remember the curse words...
@FNi
We'll learn the curse words first.
Please, start using linux or at least learn something about it before telling people you need X, Y, or Z distributions to get the updated Synaptics driver. If it doesn't come bundled, it's a matter of fetching the source or a packaged binary for your version of X.org and installing it.
@SpideyBR I would agree, but the article doesn't really do that. It mentions the distros that the press release itself mentions. If that bugs you then look to Synaptics.
@SpideyBR
It'll come when it comes.
The two finger scroll function has been available for some time. And is already in the Fedora repositories at least. I have it working great on my old Thinkpad. But to be honest.. I don't really have much use for most of the "OMG MULTITOUCH!!!" features. My main motive for going from the defaults was to get rid of that damned tap click.
Given that Synaptics touch-pads are pretty common, no reason to think that it will take very long to arrive in the repos. If not this release for most distros, the next one.
@SpideyBR
From the press release it sounds like this fancy proprietary version comes as a binary blob (and only to OEMs?). It probably requires specific versions of X and related packages.
@SpideyBR
Are you telling me that I bought my Synaptics touchpad, but I won't have access to the new driver except I update my system to the supported linux partners?
I don't think so. I guess that the Synaptics team will create the bundles for those distribuitions, but all others will manage to get them from somewhere and make some kind of wrapper around the external binaries.
I happen to use Gentoo and I see this all the time, they get the upstream source code, wrap it around an ebuild and releases it into the portage tree.
Eh....I use a mouse with my laptop. Maybe if I had another laptop though, with a better touchpad, I never did like this pad on what is now a 3 year old HP.
@Cringer
Wow. An Amish guy on here...
Once I went two finger swipe to scroll windows I never went back.
@Cringer
touchpad sucks. Good Mouse is good
multitouch touchpad is multitouch (read awesome)
Cool, not that I feel like I need it, but still. Cool.
I just bought a multitouch macbook and a multitouch Fujitsu at the same time (for reasons other than personal) and that touchpad on the Fujitsu is so unresponsive compared to the one on the mac that all touch features it has are rendered useless.
That's what specs don't tell, mate.
@blland
Did you bother to check and see if there were any updates? My Dell Studio 1555 has a multitouch touchpad, and it works better than my original Apple MacBook Pro.
@Dafrety Yes, that Fujitsu updater thing updates itself on startup.
Crap is crap - sigh!
@blland I installed an HP driver on my Thinkpad, and I must say, the multitouch is quite lousy. I'm not blaming Lenovo or HP, obviously, since this is not the intended use for the driver. My best guess is that since the touch pad in the Lenovo is on the small side, it doesn't behave well. Scrolling jumps a lot - i.e. I'm scrolling down, and when I release my fingers, the page will jump back up or down a lot.
I'll probably revert to the original driver, which only allowed edge scrolling, which is not really optimal.
@jok Hey actually I had the same problem as you on my ASUS G51VX-A1. I had been just dealing with it for a month (though the two finger scrolling was getting on my nerves, it jumped around all over the place). However I FINALLY figured out what the problem is/was. The thing is that when you have more fingers on the touchpad it requires more force pushing down on it then with just one finger to correctly register both (or all three) fingers. Now obviously you could just push harder down on the touchpad, that will work, BUT that would get annoying, so what you do is you change the synaptics touchpad settings to require lighter touches, effectively fixing the reconition problem! Its easy, all you do is go into the settings menu with all the little expandable menus, then expand pointing, then expand sensitivty, then click on touch sensitivity. Finally slide the slider all the way to "light touch", apply, and your golden! Hope that helps and enjoy your newly usable touchpad!
Looks cool. I hope they adopt some of jiTouch gestures in the future http://www.jitouch.com/index.php?page=trackpad
I've had multitouch support on my Ubuntu laptops for about 3 releases now. Showed up for 9.04 IIRC, and worked even on my 5 year old Asus laptop.
Not exactly sure how they did it since that particular laptop did not come with multitouch support, but it worked really well. Also my EeePC that did come with multitouch support already has support out-of-the-box for it.
So I see this as a bit of a non-feature.
@jijacob
Same thing here, I dont remember having it for the last 3 releases though. I had enabled multitouch manually in Ubuntu 9.04 and in 9.10 it came already enables with options in my mouse menu for it.
@jijacob
guess the difference is that they are offering official packages for those distrubutions, so us *buntu users will only have to install a .deb and get over with it.
Not bad.
only gesture I particularly care about is shuttle scrolling, which I miss dearly whenever I log into Linux. since that seems to be what their "ChiralScroll" is, this is a winner
@sRc
Chiral scroll has been in linux for years now. Its called circular scrolling in the current opensource synaptics driver.
Will this be in the ubuntu update, because my eeepc supports this