Hello all!
Given that Windows 10 is going to be unsupported by the end of this year, I was planning on switching to Linux since my laptop doesn’t meet the requirements to run Windows 11.
My current laptop is an HP Pavilion x360 and by far, my favourite part about it is how it’s not only a touchscreen, but the hinges allow the laptop screen to lay completely flat just like a tablet, (the interface even changes to a more tablet ish version) it’s great for watching movies and drawing. When I switch over to Linux, I want to be able to keep as much of this feature as much as possible. I was planning on installing Elementary OS as it’s designed to be more ‘plug and play’ as I’m not super tech savvy. When I was looking into if converting a touchscreen laptop to Linux, I read that Ubuntu has some touchscreen support which Elementary OS is based on, but I’m not sure how good it is, as all the Reddit threads on the topic were pretty old.
Whats the touchscreen support on Ubuntu like now? If you have a touchscreen laptop running Linux at the moment, how responsive is the screen? Is there other distrios that support touchscreen that are don’t have a steep learning curve?
Thanks!
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Touchscreen (and 2-in-1) support in general is quite good, both Gnome and Plasma (two most popular “desktop environments”) support it well. It should be about as responsive as it is on Windows, because the response time generally comes from hardware and not software. However, I must warn you that I’ve had a similar HP 2-in-1 (although a different model) and there simply wasn’t a Linux driver for the touchscreen so it didn’t work at all; all the other tablet-like features worked fine. I would first check on a liveUSB - the touchscreen should work there the same as it will on the installed distro. If it doesn’t work, well, there’s your answer.
Ubuntu
Don’t use it. They apply some weird patches to make the touchscreen experience worse. Try Fedora instead.
One thing to understand here is that it mostly depends on the “desktop environment”, which is basically the GUI of the system. (Imagine you could have the Windows XP GUI on a Windows 11 PC. Or the macOS GUI on a Windows 11 PC.)
Distros intended for desktop use will typically come with a certain desktop environment by default, so to some degree, you can talk about the distro, but yeah, there’s just gonna be a strong correlation with their default desktop environment.
To my knowledge, GNOME and (recent/Wayland versions of) KDE have good support. Most comments here imply these two desktop environments, so for example Ubuntu, Fedora and POP!_OS are typically GNOME, whereas Kubuntu and Nobara are typically KDE.
Some folks here also mention Linux Mint and LMDE working well, which use the Cinnamon desktop environment, so I guess that works well, too. Cinnamon is somewhat based on GNOME.
Well, and Elementary OS’s whole shtick is its Pantheon desktop environment, which is also based on GNOME.So, basically, as Elementary’s Pantheon is its own thing, there’s no guarantee that it’ll work, but I would not be surprised.
As someone else already said, you can use a Linux Live USB to try it out before installing. You should be able to just follow along the installation instructions of Elementary OS and shortly before you actually install things, you should find yourself in Pantheon and can try it out.The Linux Experiment recently looked into touchscreen support of different desktop enviromenents. His findings mostly align with your comment. However, this seems to be one of the rare cases where the distro matters for Gnome. Upstream Gnome (e.g., as shipped by Fedora) works fine with touch screens, but support on Ubuntu Gnome appears to be quite broken.
The Linux Experiment videos:
It absolutely is. I had a Dell 2-in-1 with Ubuntu preinstalled like 10 years ago.
Running an Acer Chromebook R1 on OpenSUSE right now. ChromeOS was end of life, so I managed to get Libreboot to work. It got a touch screen and you can fold it into a tablet. The touch functionality is ok, but the problem is that the Chromebook specs shit, so I have to run xfce. But tbh, I didn’t use the touch functionality much when it was a Chromebook either.
I use Fedora Atomic (GNOME Desktop Environment) and it works amazingly with a touch screen!
I have LMDE on an old Lenovo Yoga, but it doesn’t disable the keyboard when in tablet mode. It’s on my list of crap I need to fix. Make sure to check that behavior before you go full install.
I’ve used an Acer Spin 5 and Dell Latitude 7440 with Kubuntu, Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora and NixOS over the years without many issues.
I’ve heard that the x360 laptop you have may be a little troublesome but you can always test things out on a live Linux USB.
- I’ve heard that the sound quality might be degraded on Linux, or certain speakers don’t work
- The flip switch doesn’t work, meaning that the keyboard and trackpad aren’t disabled when flipped.
Ofc, there are a few x360 laptops so it might not apply, I’d encourage you to just give it a go with a live USB.
For using your stylus for note taking, I’d recommend trying Xournal++ and/or Rnote
Running Linux Mint 22.1 on a Dell Latitude 5300 2-in-1 with zero issues. Touch screen worked OOTB.
I’ve been running kubuntu on a lenovo yoga for years, works great.
I think the only think is that the touch screen maps incorrectly when there’s a second monitor plugged in. I didn’t use it enough for that to be annoying, and it’s possible it’s fixed on plasma 6, I haven’t tried yet.
Arch Linux on Dell 7389 : just works. Also had OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on this machine, best installer ever.
Debian on Thinkpad X390 Yoga : with included variable-pressure pen, the touchscreen is actually a wacom tablet, perfect. Also, one if the best installer there is.
Ubuntu on Thinkpad T480s : just works. Installing Ubuntu today is literally just a couple of clicks. Wife hasn’t complained in 3 years, this distro must be doing it right.
(Everything Gnome here, no additional setup whatsoever. The KDE gang will argue that Plasma has a lot of goodies for touchscreens, be sure to check it out)
I can’t see why it shouldn’t be. I have used it with touch screens. It works great. Remember that Android is linux too, and that really spurred the development in that area… :-)
I have an x360 running bazzite with gnome and it runs great.
Chiming in with another laptop with a touchscreen running kubuntu. Works great, required zero setup on my part.
Oddly a jailbroke Chromebook i5 has been the best 2 in 1 I’ve ever used
