All-in-one touch screen computers

[tmetro-blu-5a1Jt6qxUNc at public.gmane.org (Tom Metro)]

Mark D?lcey wrote:
> 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). 

A tablet flavor would be better than a phone version. I did think of
MeeGo (yes, Intel is still apparently plugging away at it after Nokia's
departure), as it is intended to target a wide variety of screen sizes.

But Android particularly, and MeeGo both provide such a scaled down
Linux, that your library of applications would be significantly
impacted. While it'd be nice to have a few flagship applications that
take advantage of the touchscreen, the computer should still be a fully
usable desktop for traditional applications.

I'm thinking something like the Ubuntu Netbook remix would be closer.
Perhaps it'll get touch capabilities now that the netbook market is
migrating to tablets.


Ian Stokes-Rees wrote:
> It seems "generic" mouse-like input devices (track point, touch pad,
> mouse, trackball) all provide relative cursor movement signals.
> 
> It seems like existing "absolute position" pointing devices (wacom
> tablets are the only thing I can think of other than touch screens) have
> quite a different input that requires custom drivers and provides custom
> input signals.

Ah, good point. My recollection was that touch screens looked like a
mouse to the OS, but I glossed over the issue of whether they require a
custom driver, or simply have a standard USB HID API.


> Multi-touch complicates things further.

That I did wonder about, but I figured it would still be worth while
even if the OS only supported single-touch initially.


> The long-and-short of it is that you can't go out and buy a nice 24" HP
> multi-touch LCD (like I did), plug it into your Mac (like I did), or
> Linux machine, plug in the USB cable, and hope it will show up as a
> standard mouse.
> 
> So while I think those all-in-one touch screen HPs look great, don't
> think of OS X or Linux on them yet.  Hopefully someone will write a
> driver for them soon (it isn't as if the screen touch signals are a secret).

That's too bad. Good to know. I'll have to see if I can track down a
forum somewhere that relates to Linux support on these machines to see
how it is progressing.

I guess in the mean time one can just ignore the touch screen and use it
like a large screen portable. It's not like you would forgo having a
mouse, anyway.

 -Tom

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Tom Metro
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