Why were multi touch trackpad gestures removed from 13.04?

Question

I have an ASUS Zenbook UX31a and multi touch gestures worked great on 12.10, but after I upgraded to 13.04 every gesture stopped working, except for 2, 3 and 4 finger taps (the 3 finger tapped changed function, though).

According to this comment on Launchpad the gestures were removed by design, but no other explanation is provided.

What is the reason for removing trackpad gestures?

Solution

Yes the touchpad gesture was removed but the nearest possible touch gesture software you can get is : Easystroke Gesture

Its available in Ubuntu Software Center.

or else you can try installing Touchegg

Source

Pre-requisites You need the latest vesion of Utouch to be running this. So add the following PPA

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:utouch-team/daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install utouch 

Installation

Editing the config file Config file is located here ~/.config/touchegg/touchegg.conf

Editing the file: Open config file.

gedit ~/.config/touchegg/touchegg.conf

In the example below, the four finger drag gesture is configured to switch to Show Desktop

Four Fingers Drag

[FOUR_FINGERS_DRAG_DOWN]
action=SHOW_DESKTOP
settings=

Three Fingers Drag

[THREE_FINGERS_DRAG_UP]
action=MAXIMIZE_RESTORE_WINDOW
settings=

[THREE_FINGERS_DRAG_DOWN]
action=MINIMIZE_WINDOW
settings=  

Comments

[Jo-Erlend Schinstad]

I just added the "design" tag since it's a question about design. Interesting question, and answers will also apply to this question; askubuntu.com/questions/285487/…, though I think this question is more useful.

[Rmano]

Probably for the same reason emblems where dropped from Nautilus, configurability options are dropped every release, etc... :-(

[Michael Aquilina]

I don't know the reason they were removed, but you can install touchegg which provides the same functionality :)