Setting up Linux touchpad like mac OS

Oh Mac, I love you, I hate you, I can’t live without you, but I’ve crossed over to Linux, however I still need your handy touchpad gestures…

at least what I can manage to figure out how to do on Linux. I recently decided to upgrade my personal laptop to a new Thinkpad x1 Extreme running dual boot Windows OS and Linux. I started coding on a Thinkpad T420 that my brother gave my after he had used it during business school. I started off using Windows on it for a while until I had reached the limit of it’s capabilities running Windows and doing development… AKA I installed Android Studio. 🔥 Thus begins my journey into the dark web… AKA Linux 🤓

I started off with Ubuntu and this worked wonders for me, and I never looked back. Installing Linux on an old Laptop that isn’t running great is a fantastic way to give it some more life, I actually used this very laptop until a week ago, when I got my brand new laptop, and I was able to do some pretty significant software development on it . Now that I have a new Machine, I want to try and make it operate as much as a Mac OS as possible, since that is my main work machine, I want to make the keyboard and mouse gestures as similar as possible.

There are more than a few options to customize the touchpad in Linux, which is just one of the many reasons why we all love Linux, we can customize it to our nerdy heart’s desires, just like with my Thinkpad (I bought a base model and maxed out the ram and added 2 TB HD in minutes and for 1/2 the price). Here are a few of the main options I came across.

• Fusuma
  • https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-get-apple-like-gestures-on-the-linux-desktop/
• Comfortable-Swipe
  • https://github.com/Hikari9/comfortable-swipe
• Mtrack
  • https://howchoo.com/linux/the-perfect-almost-touchpad-settings-on-linux-2

These are links that I came across while I was trying out all three. They are all really easy to setup and customize, but I found that the last one worked the best for me. Let me know if you come across any options that work well for you, cheers!