Three fingers is typically—I mean, you can potentially rig a touchpad up for whatever—a middle-click, which isn’t a terribly-common operation in Windows, but is in Linux (to insert whatever is in the PRIMARY selection, which is typically text that one has selected), or to scroll something while dragging.
EDIT: IMHO, a touchpad with three physical buttons is preferable to multi-touch, though it costs slightly more. However, aside from some Thinkbook models that have a Synaptics touchpad, it’s uncommon as an integrated option in a laptop.
You can get external, USB-connected touchpads that have three physical buttons.
On Windows middle click is used primarily for scrolling and tab operations. Linux has a second clipboard mapped there, plus it’s more heavily utilized in legacy apps since 80s-90s workstations had mice with three buttons while personal computers didn’t have a standardized third button until the wheel mouse became dominant.
My old lappy had two physical buttons, which were right next to each other. So, if I enabled the option that left-click + right-click = middle-click, then I could just press in the middle where they were divided. I always really liked that, because it didn’t take space away from the other buttons.
Unfortunately, probably depends a lot on the build quality, whether you can actually press the buttons on their edges…
Three fingers is typically—I mean, you can potentially rig a touchpad up for whatever—a middle-click, which isn’t a terribly-common operation in Windows, but is in Linux (to insert whatever is in the PRIMARY selection, which is typically text that one has selected), or to scroll something while dragging.
EDIT: IMHO, a touchpad with three physical buttons is preferable to multi-touch, though it costs slightly more. However, aside from some Thinkbook models that have a Synaptics touchpad, it’s uncommon as an integrated option in a laptop.
You can get external, USB-connected touchpads that have three physical buttons.
I use middle click constantly on every OS
On Windows middle click is used primarily for scrolling and tab operations. Linux has a second clipboard mapped there, plus it’s more heavily utilized in legacy apps since 80s-90s workstations had mice with three buttons while personal computers didn’t have a standardized third button until the wheel mouse became dominant.
Super useful in any browser, as it’s used to open a link in a new tab.
My old lappy had two physical buttons, which were right next to each other. So, if I enabled the option that left-click + right-click = middle-click, then I could just press in the middle where they were divided. I always really liked that, because it didn’t take space away from the other buttons.
Unfortunately, probably depends a lot on the build quality, whether you can actually press the buttons on their edges…