The default for X is now the libinput driver. It's a miracle. My guess is that even if Canonical does no work in this area, the touchpad support will be much better.

I've been using it for over a year on MBP/Pixel2 and I've literally never once had a problem with palm detection.

Gesture support though is definitely still weak. Even GNOME that has 4-finger workspace switching has no configurability or hot corners...