There's a bit to explain here. So the root user is basically the equivalent of Administrator. One big difference (there are many) is that when you run something as root using sudo, you are actually running as the root user. When you ran the first command to create the folder, you created it in your home directory using the ~ shorthand variable which points to your /home/ user folder. The second command, also references your home folder. However since your running as root, it's looking for the file in the root user's home directory or /root, not your home folder.

The config file needs to be in the home directory of the user running the command unless you can put the full path to the config file in the command, then you can put it wherever you want.

In the GitHub it is written that you should only use fusuma.

About that error, in windows, you have two users say administrator and user. Both the users have their own user folder,they can't tamper with the others users folders right.

Similarly linux in default install has two users one the root and other the user. When you use sudo you are asking the root to open the file in its folder not in yours.

Australian spotted

Okay first question is : is MATE absolutely necessary ?

If not, I would advise you to switch to a distro that uses GNOME or KDE. I'd go for Zorin OS which is really perfect for anyone beginning on Linux.

In any case, I have a solution that should work no matter the device. It requires you to have libinput and libinput-gestures installed (rather than fusuma which I found buggy and laggy)

You can find it here : https://lemmy.one/comment/2189433

I tried my best to make it beginner-friendly — even if it is not. Don't read the first paragraph which is KDE specific.

I'm not familiar with this program, but did you follow the instructions to grant permissions? If you do that, you should be able to run it without using sudo, and it should read the config file from your home folder.