I feel like things are a little better in the regular users (modern stock GNOME) chunk of Linux land: Wayland / GDK / GTK handle touchpad gestures as well as "smooth" scroll events, which are sent in combination with regular (coarse-grained) touchpad scroll events. Works out of the box in GTK 3 applications, so as an application developer all you have to do (if you're targeting GNOME) is not use a dead version of GTK :b GTK 3 even does scroll inertia: https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkScrolledWindow.ht.... Firefox started supporting this stuff recently, as well.
I think the story is similar for Windows, but a little less satisfying since their hodepodge of UI toolkits starts from the very core, whereas at least with modern desktop Linux distros the core apps are generally implemented the same way.
Alas, mouse wheels are a whole other story. Pixel perfect scroll wheels have been a thing for a while, and Windows actually has support for these (not that it works anywhere). Support in Linux has been progressing at a similarly glacial pace, but it looks really promising. That's one spot where Apple is definitely years ahead. (If only they would make a practical mouse…).
I think the story is similar for Windows, but a little less satisfying since their hodepodge of UI toolkits starts from the very core, whereas at least with modern desktop Linux distros the core apps are generally implemented the same way.
Alas, mouse wheels are a whole other story. Pixel perfect scroll wheels have been a thing for a while, and Windows actually has support for these (not that it works anywhere). Support in Linux has been progressing at a similarly glacial pace, but it looks really promising. That's one spot where Apple is definitely years ahead. (If only they would make a practical mouse…).