Touchpad Gestures in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

I am using XPS 15 with Ubuntu 18.04 (X.org). I have managed to get multi-gestures working for me. Kohei Yamada has developed an application called Fusuma to enable multi-touch gestures on Linux. It requires you to install Ruby on your machine if it isn't already installed.

Follow the instructions from fusuma GitHub's Readme page or you could follow these steps which worked for me:

First of all check if your current user is part of the input group. You can do that by

sudo gpasswd -a $USER input  

Then log out and log back in. Now install xdotool and libinput-tools.

sudo apt-get install libinput-tools  

sudo apt-get install xdotool  

If you haven't installed Ruby you can do that now:

sudo apt install ruby  

Now install fusuma

sudo gem install fusuma  

Deciding your gestures

This is basically creating a .yml file with the desired configuration. If you want standard gestures you can follow these instructions or feel free to tweak around to get desired gestures.

Go to your config folder in home directory.

cd ~/.config    

Now create a folder named fusuma

mkdir fusuma  
cd fusuma

In there create a file called config.yml

touch config.yml   

Now you can use your favourite text editor to enter the contents in this file.

nano config.yml   

Copy and paste the following instructions if you are using GNOME, which is the default environment in 18.04.

swipe:
  3: 
    left: 
      command: 'xdotool key alt+Right'
    right: 
      command: 'xdotool key alt+Left'
    up: 
      command: 'xdotool key super'
    down: 
      command: 'xdotool key super'
  4:
    left: 
      command: 'xdotool key ctrl+alt+Down'
    right: 
      command: 'xdotool key ctrl+alt+Up'
    up: 
      command: 'xdotool key ctrl+alt+Down'
    down: 
      command: 'xdotool key ctrl+alt+Up'
pinch:
  in:
    command: 'xdotool key ctrl+plus'
  out:
     command: 'xdotool key ctrl+minus'

threshold:
  swipe: 0.4
  pinch: 0.4

interval:
  swipe: 0.8
  pinch: 0.1

Note that the gestures that this configuration has created for you are the following:

Mult-touch Gesture | Action |
3 Fingers - Left | Go Next on Browser |
3 Fingers - Right | Go Back on Browser |
3 Fingers - Up | Show all Windows|
3 Fingers - Down | Close Exposé (Esc) |
4 Fingers - Left | Next Desktop |
4 Fingers - Right | Previous Desktop|
4 Fingers - Up | Next Desktop|
4 Fingers - Down | Previous Desktop|

After this you can run the command in terminal to test if it has installed

sudo fusuma  

nothing will happen in the terminal. Just start using your multi-touch gestures - swipe away on your touchpad.

Now all you have to do is add Fusuma and the command for it in your start-up applications.

Hope this helps.

Ubuntu 18.04 uses Xorg as the default display server instead of Wayland. The mentioned Extended Gestures extension currently works only with Wayland.

What you need to do is choose Wayland while logging in after a restart. This link shows the same procedure but the other way around (from Wayland to Xorg).

Working on 18.10 (XPS 9570): Simply search for "Startup application" by pressing the super key (windows key in my case) then add a new application. add the command fusuma and then reboot to test it.