Hello,
I have an old macbook pro 2012. With Apple dropping all support for it, I want to run Linux on it. The caveat is - Im looking for the same feel as the experience with the macbook trackpad and keyboard.
I’ve tried a few different OS’s on it, and each time, it runs as how you would expect. No issues with installation or anything, and most issues have a small or easy fix.
Being used to old habits with that laptop, I haven’t had good luck with remapping things to give it it’s old feel again.
By feel, I mean things like mapping trackpad gestures, some of the “function row” to map the same things as they keyboard has them, remapping some hotkeys to make use of the command button, etc.
I was wondering if there was an OS that has a lot of the things like mouse gestures, or the keyboard mappings of those laptops already built into it.
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I’ve got a family member on one running mint.
I’ve run debian and fedora on the late 2013 model. Trackpad gestures used to be handled by libinput-gestures (found on github), and would handle tap double tap and swipe up to 4 fingers - though I think there are some gestures that are just handled by some window managers these days
Edit: added link
Yes, but mostly on Wayland. Both GNOME and KDE Plasma have gestures out of the box on their Wayland sessions.
If you absolutely need Xorg, check out Elementary.
Libinput-gestures is more of a hack and the gestures are simple keypress/command triggers.
I’d recommend looking up Ventoy and getting a big thumb drive (like 64gb or so). Then you can download several different distro live images and put them all on one flash drive and try them all out in a live environment. It isn’t 100% the experience you’ll get running it installed on the machine, but you can get a decent feel for each distro to see what you like and what you don’t without having to keep track of 5-10 different flash drives.