Enable swipe and pinch gestures for Linux® applications by analyzing synclient program output for a Synaptics TouchPad.

Track pads on Linux notebooks set to improve with the OEM only release of Synaptics Gesture Suite for Linux

Multitouch interfaces provide a great deal of benefits for integrating new interaction modes within applications. Newer hardware and drivers on Mac OS X and Microsoft® Windows® allow for a variety of gestures beyond point and click that create more efficient application navigation.

Multitouch interfaces provide a great deal of benefits for integrating new interaction modes within applications. The Perl code presented here allows you to assign specific application functions to "Three-Finger Swipe," as well as open- and close-pinch gestures.

Thinking about picking up one of those newfangled multitouch displays for your netbook, but holding off because you're worried that there won't be support for multitouch gestures under Linux? It looks like there's nothing to worry about.

gestikk provides mouse gestures for you, supporting many linux window managers. With gestikk, you can easily control your PC by drawing gestures with the mouse: mouse gestures. Gestikk allows to define an infinite number of gestures, which start applications or simulate key presses. Versions >= 0.5 uses PyGTK for GUI and python-virtkey for keypresses.

Multitouch is just as useful on a desktop as it is on a phone or tablet, so I'm delighted that the first cut of Canonical's UTouch framework has landed in Maverick and will be there for its release on 10.10.10.

Earlier this month Canonical introduced its own multi-touch framework for Ubuntu that is set to premiere with Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" and it's called UTouch and is joined by their own gesture/touch language. The X.Org Gesture Extension is already being re-evaluated and may in fact not be needed.

When Canonical broke the news recently that Ubuntu 10.10 will include uTouch 1.0, a multitouch and gesture stack, it caused a flurry of excitement about the Linux release's potential for use in tablets.