1438107 - [meta] Enable touchscreen support by default on Linux (non Wayland/X11)

Status: NEW

(Core :: Widget: Gtk, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Thomas Pointhuber]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:58.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/58.0
Build ID: 20180207210535

Steps to reproduce:

1.) Start Firefox on Linux
2.) Try to use touchscreen for scrolling/clicking


Actual results:

Text is selected, click's do not work


Expected results:

Touchscreen should behave like on Windows, without doing the manual workaround of setting "MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1" and "dom.w3c.touch_events.enabled 1"


System informations:

Gnome 3.26.2 on Arch Linux with Wayland

Comment 1

[Parrenin]

I agree with this report.
Touch scrolling should be enabled by default on firefox on linux.
Setting an environment variable is not for the common mortals.

Comment 2

[info]

The problem is still there. In the middle of the time of touchscreens that should be solved. Incomprehensible. The new Firefox-style-Browser "Brave" supports touchscreen gestures perfectly. It's great if it's updated as soon as possible. Thank you.

Comment 3

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1552613

Comment 4

[Martin Stránský [:stransky] (ni? me)]

Would be great to have it enabled for Wayland at least.

Comment 5

[Sylvia Sánchez]

Fedora 31 KDE. Firefox 70, installed from repositories.
Click works but nothing else. And I already configured everything configurable, but still, touchscreen is not recognised.
However Brave, Vivaldi, Opera and Chrome, all recognise and use the touchscreen without an issue.
Furthermore, same Firefox version on Windows, recognises and uses my touchscreen without an issue.
So what is missing for Linux?

Comment 6

[ericdrex]

Touch support works for me under Sway, with a fresh profile.

Comment 7

[Martin Stránský [:stransky] (ni? me)]

Hi Botond,
do you know what's needed here to make the gestures work? Looks like you already hit that at Bug 1217515.
Thanks.

Comment 8

[Botond Ballo [:botond]]

It's unclear to me if anyone is actually experiencing this problem in Wayland mode (as opposed to running Firefox in X11 mode under XWayland).

You can tell this by going to about:support and seeing what it says under "Window Protocol".

For X11 mode, the issue of requiring MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1 to enable touch support is tracked in bug 1207700.

Comment 9

[Sylvia Sánchez]

(In reply to Botond Ballo [:botond] from comment #8)

It's unclear to me if anyone is actually experiencing this problem in Wayland mode (as opposed to running Firefox in X11 mode under XWayland).

You can tell this by going to about:support and seeing what it says under "Window Protocol".

For X11 mode, the issue of requiring MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1 to enable touch support is tracked in bug 1207700.

Well, I'm using KDE so it's definitely not Wayland. However, it's not the bug you linked because that's about GTK and, well, I'm on KDE so it's QT.
So for me, the bug remains the same.

Comment 10

[Botond Ballo [:botond]]

(In reply to Sylvia Sánchez from comment #9)

(In reply to Botond Ballo [:botond] from comment #8)
However, it's not the bug you linked because that's about GTK and, well, I'm on KDE so it's QT.
So for me, the bug remains the same.

Firefox uses GTK regardless of what desktop environment it runs in (so, even under KDE).

Comment 11

[vetco]

This exact thing is still an issue in linux.

Whats strange is it does it EVERY time after it updates firefox on linux automatically (constant updates need to die). Which i wish I could disable. We aren't children mozilla.... Plus I HATE the glitch mozilla refuses to fix "Sorry. We just need to do one small thing to keep going." that makes it so I am FORCED to routinely re-start firefox. The firefox+linux experience is just generally horrible.

I use firefox for the POS system we developed on our cash registers and this is EXTREMELY impactful on our ability to ring customers up and check them out when the touchscreen isn't allowed to interact with firefox.

Way around this issue. Launch firefox from command line using the command "firefox -p" and choosing the default profile. That has fixed it every time so far. But I fear this is an extremely fragile band-aid that is going to randomly stop working. Plus it requires completely unskilled register users to launch firefox from command line.

Using XUbuntu 16.04.+ (what ever the most up to date version is)
Using the newest version of Firefox 79.0 32-bit
I5-2500k, 16GB RAM, SSD on all registers.

Thanks everyone.
-C

Comment 12

[Botond Ballo [:botond]]

(In reply to vetco from comment #11)

Whats strange is it does it EVERY time after it updates firefox on linux automatically (constant updates need to die). Which i wish I could disable.

Are you using an official build of Firefox (which is configured to download updates from Mozilla's update servers) or the one in the Ubuntu package repositories (which is updated through Ubuntu's package manager, e.g. apt-get upgrade)?

In the first case, you can disable automatic updates by going to about:preferences --> General --> Firefox Updates and selecting "Check for updates but let you choose to install them".

In the second case, Ubuntu presumably gives you a way to configure the frequency of package updates or disable them.

Plus I HATE the glitch mozilla refuses to fix "Sorry. We just need to do one small thing to keep going." that makes it so I am FORCED to routinely re-start firefox.

This is also related to updates. When an update is installed, the Firefox executable is replaced with the updated version. As Firefox is a multi-process application, when it needs to spin up a new process, if the executable has changed the application needs to restart (otherwise you'd have existing processes based on the old executable trying to communicate with the new process based on the new executable).

You can avoid this by proactively restarting Firefox after installing and update (combined with using one of the mechanisms mentioned above to control when the updates happen, e.g. periodically when a skilled user is present).

Comment 13

[Martin Stránský [:stransky] (ni? me)]

Removing Wayland tracker as it doesn't seem to be related to Wayland backend.

Comment 14

[Matthieu Yiptong]

Is there a particular reason why setting an environment variable and about:config preference manually are required to enable the touchscreen functionality on X11? I only just found out this was even supported and works great, all this time I had been using Chromium-based browsers on my touchscreen Linux devices to avoid the issue when I could have been using Firefox.

Comment 15

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto [:gcp]]

Is there a particular reason why setting an environment variable and about:config preference manually are required to enable the touchscreen functionality on X11?

Look at the bugs linked off of bug 1207700 - defaulting it on caused many regressions.

Comment 16

[Sam Bull]

(In reply to Gian-Carlo Pascutto [:gcp] from comment #15)

Umm, I'm following this issue due to wanting this enabled on Wayland by default. Not sure why you've now tagged it as non Wayland..

Early comments in the thread are even talking about Wayland as a minimum: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1438107#c4

I don't care about X11, as it's an aging legacy project at this point, and their touch support is clunky (atleast last time I tried to use X11).

Comment 17

[Botond Ballo [:botond]]

(In reply to Matthieu Yiptong from comment #14)

Is there a particular reason why setting an environment variable and about:config preference manually are required to enable the touchscreen functionality on X11?

Which about:config preference are you referring to? I'm only aware of the MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1 environment variable that's needed to enable touchscreen support on X11.

Comment 18

[Botond Ballo [:botond]]

(In reply to Sam Bull from comment #16)

I'm following this issue due to wanting this enabled on Wayland by default.

What do you need to do to manually enable touchscreen support on Wayland? As far as I'm aware, other than the steps to enable Wayland mode itself, nothing specific to touchscreen support should be required.

Comment 19

[Sam Bull]

(In reply to Botond Ballo [:botond] from comment #18)

(In reply to Sam Bull from comment #16)

I'm following this issue due to wanting this enabled on Wayland by default.

What do you need to do to manually enable touchscreen support on Wayland? As far as I'm aware, other than the steps to enable Wayland mode itself, nothing specific to touchscreen support should be required.

Oh yeah, you're right. It's just MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1. So, I really need a bug report to enable Wayland mode by default, maybe I'm mixing up bugs. I'll just unsubscribe from this one. Sorry.