Comment by Groxx

Linux and Windows touchpad hardware and software is significantly more widely varying, usually ranging from "good lord, did any human ever try this?" to "I hate it but it's usually functional", with only a few outliers in the "this does what I expect" realms. Touch screens on the other hand have a 1:1 mapping for everything, and very nearly all of them support 5+ fingers (not just 1 or 2), so they almost always work like you expect. (... when they work at all on Linux)