Touch Screen Controls in General

I've been a Linux user for many years, but I'm not technically oriented. In the past, I've used OpenSuse, Linux Mint, and spent most of my time happily using PCLinuxOS. Recently, I purchased a 2 year old Thinkpad X1 Yoga, a convertable laptop/tablet that has touch screen abilities. Unfortunately, PCLOS distros and desktops don't seem to have much or any touch screen support. I have tried several distros running from a USB pen drive, OpenSuse, Mint, Ubuntu, Deepin, and finally found the Fedora Cinnamon "spin" that has vey good touch screen support "out of the box". I now have it fully installed and am using it full time. Strangely (to me), after using it for a while, I added the KDE desktop and it had little or no touch screen support. Mint Cinnamon and Ubuntu Gnome had minimal touch control that was little more than moving the mouse cursor. I guess Deepin had good control, but I didn't like it and didn't work with it very much.

That is a long intro to my question: Without getting too technical, what is the difference in distros that give them touch screen controls or not. I read that it is mostly in the kernel. So, they should all have that ability. Are there post installation configurations that are needed in some, but not others?