TuxMobil: Touchscreen Laptops and Notebooks with Linux

An overview of Linux on laptops and notebooks, which feature a touchscreen and/or have a pen as an input device. See here for so-called Tablet PCs aka WebPads and Linux.

Touchscreen Laptops and Notebooks

COMPAQ: Concerto

This model was manufactured in 1994 and has a pen input device. The latest version of the Linux Compaq Concerto Pen Driver is available from Joe Pfeiffer's home page. You may find further information about Linux on these notebooks at:

Compaq Concerto

Fujitsu: Lifebook Biblo B 112/142 or MC 30

The Fujitsu Lifebook Biblo B 112/142 or MC 30 models are manufactured since 1999 and have a touch screen. These are the drivers I know of:

Lifebook B Series Touchscreen Drivers The "evtouch" driver works with Kernel 2.6.x and XFree86 >= 4.x. The "lbtouch" driver works with Kernel 2.4.x and XFree86 >= 4.x.
Linux Touch Panel Drivers for the Fujitsu Lifebooks B112/B142/B2130 (XFree86 3.3.x only)
For Linux 2.4 see here .

You may find further information about Linux on these machines (and it's predecessor B110, without a touchscreen) at:

Fujitsu: Lifebook Biblo B-2130

Fujitsu : Lifebook Biblo B-2130 No Linux information available.

Fujitsu: Stylistic 500, 1000 and 2300

John Apfelbaum <johnapf_at_linuxslate.org> wrote: "I and others have developed an X Input extension that supports the pen system in the Fujitsu Stylistic 500, 1000 and 2300 . This work may also support other Fujitsu hardware and possibly the Dauphin DTR-1. Please note that I am NOT prepared to provide Linux installation help on these machines. Please contact me ONLY IF YOU ALREADY HAVE LINUX AND X RUNNING on your machine, then I can help you with the pen support."

Fujitsu Stylistic 500, 1000 and 2300 X Input extension

Fujitsu P-Series

touchscreen driver for Fujitsu P-Series e.g. P-1510

Gigatech: Krystalbook De Luxe 400

Gigatech : Krystalbook De Luxe 400 No Linux information available. Please look at Linux on Laptops

Palmax aka IPC: 1000/1100

Palmax aka IPC: 1000/1100 This models are manufactured since app. 1998 and have a pen input device. You may find further information about Linux on these machines at:

Panasonic Toughbook CF-M34

Panasonic : Toughbook CF-M34 Please look at Linux on Panasonic laptops and notebooks.

Other Touchscreens

Magic Touch Add-On Touch Screen for Notebooks

The manufacturer provides linux drivers for the Magic Touch Add-On Touch Screen for notebooks .

xext

From the Debian package description: xext provides extensions to X servers. [..] and XInput, which can manage the following input devices:

Elographics touchscreen, see special Linux advice .
MicroTouch touchscreens (using stylus or finger)

gpm

The GPM (General Purpose Mouse) is a mouse server for the console and xterm, with sample clients included (emacs, etc). It has support for Gunze touch screens.

Gunze

There is a Linux driver for Gunze touchscreens used e.g. in Panasonic laptops.

Metrolink Metro-X Enhanced Server

This X server supports touchscreen from the following manufacturers (don't know yet whether these are used in laptops):

Carroll Touch
EloGraphic
Lucas Deeco
Micro Touch
Citron Touch

Additional Touchscreens

Touchscreen.COM offers additional touchscreens and a touchscreen FAQ.

WebPads

All the above mentioned laptops come with keyboard and touchscreen, there are also laptops available which feature a touchscreen as the only or main input device (e.g. Fujitsu Pen PCs: Stylistic ST 2300, Stylistic LT, Point 1600). Sometimes these machines are called WebPads.

Applications

GTKeyboard

GTKeyboard is a graphical keyboard that can be useful for the physically disabled and for keyboardless workstations. It provides the ability to type into foreign windows, to redirect output, and it also provides many shortcuts for common editing tasks.

XFree86-Touch-Screen-HOWTO

The HOWTO is available at the LDP .

ETC

ETC is a tiny Linux distro and software for turning inexpensive surplus Citadel touchscreen industrial PCs into a custom Web-based and PHP-scriptable home control/remote control.

mmmtouch - XFree86 driver for 3M touch screens

These are add on drivers for the 3M (formerly Dynapro) touch screens running under XFree86 . These drivers provide support for the SC3 and SC4 controllers as well as inter-active calibration.

3M Touch Systems USB TouchScreen Driver

3M Touch Systems USB TouchScreen Driver is a package containing a kernel module which supports a USB touchscreen device made by 3M Touch Systems (formerly known as MicroTouch Systems Inc.). This touchscreen is also known as IBM SurePoint, and it is used for instance in IBM SurePOS 750.

MK712 TouchScreen

There is a Kernel option for this device.

Troll Touch

Troll Touch touchscreen products are compatible with all major computer operating sytems. That includes add-on touchscreens, laptop systems, CRT touch-monitors, all-in-one touch-computers and touch-enabled LCD and Plasma displays, which we're proud to announce now include the beautiful NEC 18 and 20 inch models, the incredible Apple 17"20"23" Cinema Display and the Pioneer 50 inch plasma display. The manufacturer provides Linux drivers.

Xorg Evdev Touchscreen Driver (plpevtch)

The plpevtch driver is an eventdevice driver for touchscreens under Xorg 7.x. The driver was successful tested on: USB Touchscreen eGalax (ID 0eef:0001 D-WAV Scientific Co., Ltd eGalax TouchScreen), Flybook Touchscreen PenmountLPC (A33i, V33i).

Zytouch Driver

Zytouch Driver is a userspace driver for USB-connected projected capacitance touchscreens from Zytronic. It uses libusb to read data from the device, and the X11 XTest extensions to feed X events into the X server.

Multi-Touch

LibTISCH

libTISCH is a framework for easy development of multi-touch applications. It contains tools for video processing, calibration, gesture recognition and, most importantly, a GUI toolkit with widgets that utilize the multi-touch gestures detected by the lower layers. It runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.

Handwriting Recognition

xstroke

xstroke is a full-screen gesture recognition program written for the X Window System. It captures gestures that are performed with a pointer device, (such as a mouse, a stylus, or a pen/tablet), recognizes the gestures and performs actions based on the gestures. xstroke has been developed on Linux systems, (i386 and StrongARM), but should be quite portable to any UNIX-like system with X.

Resources

news group: comp.sys.pen
DirectFB (see the mailing list archiv about drivers for touchscreens)
survey of Linux laptops with detachable display
for so-called Tablet PCs aka WebPads and Linux see here

Credits

Linux on Laptops by Kenneth E. Harker, most of the links mentioned above are from his page.
CT 7/2000 p. 120