The problems of the pivoted tonearms - tracking error, skating and compromised anti-skating - should not exist with linear-tracking arms. By moving the entire arm across the record, the stylus/groove relationship is identical to that of the LP cutting lathe at any record radius. And because the arm has no offset, no skating force is generated.

Linear-tracking arms have another advantage: Because they're generally short, tangential-tracking arms can have lower vertical mass than pivoted arms. Linear-tracking arms, however, have higher horizontal mass. Because they don't pivot, the effective horizontal mass of a tangential arm is the arm's actual mass, which is higher than the effective horizontal mass of a pivoted arm. Tangential arm design is a compromise between too-low vertical mass and too-high horizontal mass.
One the down side, linear tracking is much more complex, and consequently more expensive to execute well. The entire arm must be moved along a track tangent to the record-a difficult engineering challenge. The problems associated with many linear-tracking arms usually result in greater tracking errors than you'll find in a properly set-up pivoted arm. Any linear arm that permits yaw - which can be caused by a variety of mechanical conditions - will describe, instead of the desired radius, a series of differing arcs across the record surface.

There are three basic technologies for effectuating lateral linear movement tonearm.
A servo motor system is one way of moving it across the record. The mechanical bearing system is another. However, the solution in high-end linear-tracking arms is the air-bearing, in which the arm is floating on a thin film of pressurized air surrounding a tube. The only force moving the tonearm is the gentle force of the stylus. Owing to the air-bearing, the friction between the arm and the tube on which it is mounted is practically zero. Almost all the parallel-tracker action today (such that there is) is in air-bearings.