I use an Apple Magic Trackpad on KDE and it works great. My only problem is that customizing the touch gestures is not well supported. Unsure if it's any better on Gnome or COSMIC Desktop.
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I read about this a while ago. Don’t know how good it is but it was something I’ve been wanting to look into.
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pre-2010 macbooks can be had for like $10 nowadays. those had the touchpads (and webcam, keyboard, etc) connected via USB to the system. pinouts are available on the net and with a little bit of effort and maybe 3D printing you can have your bespoke rig.
I used an Apple wireless trackpad with Ubuntu many years ago, maybe 10? I had to do some work to get it to recognize gestures but I don't remember what was involved. It worked great once everything was configured.
It's possible that support has improved over the years and it might work out of the box though I haven't tried recently.
Not sure how helpful this info is.
if you're into hacky workarounds like i am; you can use an android as a trackpad.
my home server was also multimedia center as well as one point running kodi & plex and i setup x11vnc on it and an old android phone to act as trackpad so that i can channel surf with the phone that was already in my hand.
magic trackpad is the best choice here. the first generation is powered by aa batteries and bluetooth only. the second generation uses a built-in li-ion battery and charges with apple's lightning port, and can do both bluetooth and wired usb. I have the second generation and use it wired. (mine's battery is dead so idk how well bluetooth works)
They're pretty simple USB input devices, so support should be pretty good. I wouldn't worry too much about which one you get, unless you are looking at something unusual.
I don’t know anything about wireless trackpads, but I love my workflow with Gnome and I know it wouldn’t be doable if I wasn’t working on a laptop.
Using the keyboard just wouldn’t be the same.
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