I have a new Sony laptop with a touch screen and windows 8. I find I like the touch interface but do not like Metro.

I would like to install Linux, but do not know of a distro - desktop combination that supports a touch interface.

Any suggestions?

Larry of the Traveling Morgans

Not to be that guy.. but why would anyone ever design a linux distro built around the new windows 8 hardware designs. To answer your question there are none that exist as far as I know and none that are in current development.

You can get some touchscreen support for the current distros such as as arch with guides like https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchscreen

As far as the actual driver support, there is quite a bit out there but all its going to do is act like a touch screen mouse on top of the already existing linux distros. Not gonna find a distro that is designed to be driven by a touchscreen the way windows 8 is.

good thing about linux is that you can try it without installing, so why don't you prepare usb key and boot your favorite linux disto and check if it is working?

edit:seems like you are looking for gui interface for touchscreen, maybe ubuntu's unity will do fine?

Apart from Android, Ubuntu/Ubuntu Phone, Chrome OS, Firefox OS, Linpus... Gnome Shell...
"Windows 8 Style 'NOT METRO!!!!!!' " is just an OS that works with a multi-touch touch-screen for heavens sake -- it's not some new paradigm never seen before.
Of course drivers could be tough but as pointed out by yooy this is exactly the kind of hardware that Ubuntu is designed for.

I guess I shouldve clarified that a bit, there is touchscreen support but you aren't going to find anyone designing a linux distro that is comparable to the windows metro environment. As stated in the second part of my post most linux distros should support touchscreens but you won't get any flashy functionality like that stupid swiping function on the metro gui.

My advise, try some livecd's of newly released distro's with the latest drivers.

I'm Currently using Fedora 18 on a Windows 8 release Laptop (only Bluetooth doesnt work) rest of it is fully supported.

But do try some others. Gnome 3.x should work fine for a touch interface, or just install an other shell of your choice.

I have a Win7 Lenovo Think Center with a touch screen. So far, it's worked under both Wubi 11.04 and Mint 13.

Note that this is a computer designed for graphics and presentations, not a tablet. The touch screen is not as good as the one on my Android, but any means, by the computer is designed for primary input to be from a mouse and a keyboard. But the point is that touch screen support exists in the kernel.

The Arch Wiki has a good article on touchscreens. It may help you out. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchscreen

The suggestions to test with Live CDs are excellent.

1 members found this post helpful.

Touch screens have been around for a very long time. They are usually from one or two companies. They used to be serial only but now tend to be only usb even if the system is unitized.

Looking at the system information for windows would help you see what it is and what it is connected to.

I have used several Linux Distros on non-touch laptops and I am the original poster on this question

I gave some background on the type of system I had, just to get the request properly framed.
I must have failed because:
1. I did NOT ask for a distro based on giving the same "service" as windows 8, but rather asked for a distro that included a touch interface and (hopefully) also worked on Sony hardware.
2. I was looking for suggestions to try based on someone else's knowledge or personal experience.
3. There are a LOT of distro/desktop combinations I can download and try, so the advice to try some is not very helpful. Where to start WOULD be helpful, and - - -
4. One of the posts contained useful information. I am grateful to that person and will try the recommended distros.
5. Personally, I find Unity not very useful and I migrated my other workstation away from Ubuntu because of it.
I got tired of having to download Classic Gnome 2 and try to remember all of the customizations I had found and implemented in the past.
6. Metro on a laptop is much worse than Unity, at least to me. Perhaps both interfaces will improve over time.

Knowing what device you have is what I'd consider the first step.

Touchscreen support has been integrated in the Linux kernel for quite some time now. So pretty much any distro should support touchscreen interface and if it doesn't then it can be configured by adjusting a few parameters in /etc/X11/xorg.conf

You have to decide what distro you like and go from there.

I've done some research on this topic myself because I plan on getting a few linux touch machines going here shortly.

As long as there is a kernel driver for the touchscreen it will work.

In my case, with Debian Wheezy on an ASUS x200e, I had to install a kernel from the experimental repository. 3.6.x was the earliest that worked with this particular model. Ubuntu 12.10 worked out of the box, I'd expect Mint to as well. Unfortunately being EFI I have not had much success with other live images.

mmmmprobably because the industry standard is CATAPULTING in that direction. kNow this is old post, but got directed here via search engine