All-in-one touch screen computers

[mark-OGhnF3Lt4opAfugRpC6u6w at public.gmane.org (Shirley Márquez Dúlcey)]

On 5/9/2011 9:45 PM, Tom Metro wrote:
> I see there are a bunch of All-in-one touch screen computers on the
> market now. HP seemed to lead this trend, but now Dell, Gateway, Asus,
> and MSI have similar models.
>
> Structurally they're like a laptop built-in to a large screen, plus
> touch navigation. Potentially a good fit for someone who wants a
> semi-portable machine, but with a bigger screen than is practical for a
> laptop. Probably a good "family" computer.
>
> I'm wondering how well the touch screens are supported by Linux.
> Presumably it'll just look like a mouse to the OS, so it shouldn't be
> anything out of the ordinary. But are there any distributions that are
> well tuned for (big) touch screen navigation?
>
> Would installing Linux on such a machine take away most of the advantage
> to the touch screen? (These machines typically come bundled with things
> like photo viewing apps and the like that are purposely designed for
> touch screen interaction.)
>
> Anyone tried Linux on one of these?

I can't imagine that current Linux distros would work well, as they have 
no touch screen UI. What might work would be a port of one of the 
variants of Linux designed for mobile phones (Android, or maybe even 
MeeGo if anybody is still working on that). Eventually we'll probably 
see somebody do a Linux window manager designed for desktop touch 
screens but I haven't heard of one yet.