Ask Slashdot: What Touch Screen Support is Available in X?

Gextyr submitted a question regarding something I've always wondered about as well. He asks: "I work at a local computer shop, and was just given permission to put together a Linux box for display and demo purposes. My boss gave me a touch screen for this (the touch matrix is serial controlled) purpose as well. I want to know if there is any touch screen support for Linux, and if so, where can I get mode information about it?"

Standalone touchscreen app

[sdw]

I have thought about doing this off and on for years. I always assumed that the easiest way to do it would be to have a seperate app read the serial info and control the cursor via standard X events. There might be a problem with sending mouse clicks to other programs (cross-app events are specially marked and ignored for security reasons in some or most apps). This could be solved in a number of simple ways.

sdw

We use them quite a bit...

[NikoDemous]

Touch Screens are something we use a lot at my compnay...for POS applications...it is extremely fast under linux and of course reliable...a good source of info can be found at www.viewtouch.com
Gene and CO. are good people....


Good Luck,
Nick
LSG

We use them quite a bit...

[NikoDemous]

Touch Screens are something we use a lot at my company...for POS applications...it is extremely fast under linux and of course reliable...a good source of info can be found at www.viewtouch.com
Gene and CO. are good people....


Good Luck,
Nick
LSG

Touchscreens and X

[jerodd]

I have no personal experience with a touchscreen specifically supported by X. However, I have used (for that matter, I'm using it right now-- the IBM 8516 is staring at me and the IBM TouchSelect panel (one of this clipon jobbies) is on the shelf five feet from me)) touchscreens with X. OS/2 has excellent touchscreen drivers (for IBM's touchscreen of course). I use the XFree86 for OS/2 Xserver, which runs just fine and uses the OSMOUSE mouse subsystem--in other words, OS/2 managers the mouse.

Thus, I get a touchscreen and then run Unix programs with it. I especially like using touchscreens while using the Web.

This isn't really using a touchscreen with Linux--it's using an Xserver that has a touchscreen. But, it works (and besides, I'm an OS/2 junkie. It's a love-hate thing with me but I keep using OS/2 anyways.)

TrueType X fontserver ported to OS/2 [ml.org] (I told you I was an OS/2 junkie)

RedHat 5.0

[hgc]

RedHat 5.0 included Metro-X as optional X server. The condition was that you could use Metro-X for free on one machine but had to pay Metro-X for addtional installations. It is not expensive in any case.
-- hgc

Mice & Touchscreens

[Artemis]

My experience with touchscreens is the same, just unplug the mouse, plug in the touchscreen, and away you go, pretty slick. I've only ever used one touchscreen on a PC though, so don't get all over me if not all are like this. :)

Force Recon Half-Life TC: Check it out [cass.net]

Touch Screen Support for X

[chaz]

. . . MetroX provides support with their X server.
The Linux server is I think about $40 dollars.

chaz

MicroTouch

[jalex]

You might want to check out MicroTouch [microtouch.com]. I know that at least at one point they had drivers available for various unixes, but I've only had the unfortunate opportunity of using them with windows. On windows, the touch screen basically sent mouse events to the OS.