Open a terminal and do the following:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yobbobandana/ppa
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install bluez
sudo dpkg-reconfigure linux-image-`uname -r`

Reboot your computer and add your wacom to the bluetooth devices. This is working for the wacom bluetooth tablet.

Configuring the "Extended Input Devices"

Your tablet input devices (usually stylus, eraser, and cursor) should now appear in programs that support them -- at the moment, Gimp and Inkscape are the most common. However, you still have to enable them before you can use them fully.

Gimp

• Open Files>Preferences :

  

Use the tab "Input devices", then click on "Configure Extended Input Devices"

Choose Device: Stylus then Mode: Screen³. Do the same for the Eraser and the Cursor: (Note, that all values have to be the same as in the picture.)

Now you're ready to draw, for example with the Paintbrush. You can change the Pressure Sensitivity effect from Opacity to Size, such as here :

Inkscape

Being a vector drawing program, unlike Gimp, Inkscape is very good for ink-style drawings. An advantage of vector drawings (apart from the low resource requirements) is that your strokes will remain sharp at whatever magnification, resolution or thinness.

• Open Files>Input devices... :

  

  Choose Device: Stylus then Mode: Screen³ - do the same for the Eraser and the Cursor:

(Note, that all values have to be the same as in the picture.)

• 

  Now you're ready to draw. The best tool with a tablet is the Calligraphy tool (Ctrl+F6) , you have to click on the icon to use the pressure, and adjust the settings on the bar just above the horizontal ruler

• like on the following picture :

  

Tips

Modifying Stroke Pressure

• If you find that with the defaults setting for the stylet it's hard to draw thin strokes, you can add this line in /etc/X11/xorg.conf⁴:

    Option        "PressCurve"    "50,0,100,50"         # Custom preference

  to the section "InputDevice" relative to the stylet. It will then look like this :

  Section "InputDevice"
    Driver        "wacom"
    Identifier    "stylus"
    Option        "Device"        "/dev/input/wacom" 
    Option        "Type"          "stylus"
    Option        "PressCurve"    "50,0,100,50"         # Custom preference
    Option        "Threshold"     "60"                  # sensitivity to do a "click"
  EndSection

The parameter "50,0, 100,50" determine the slope of two tangents of the pressure curve("deltaX_1,deltaY_1 ,100-deltaX_2,100-deltaY_2"; 1:no pressure, 2:full pressure). On Gnome Graphic Tablet Apps you can find an application that does this and some pictures that show what the pressure curve is.

Fixing the Inverted Scrolling Problem

If the scroll wheel on your Wacom mouse is inverted (up is down and down is up), there is a workaround. Open up the terminal and type in:

xsetwacom set cursor RelWDn 4
xsetwacom set cursor RelWUp 5

If the scroll wheel now works correctly (which it should), open up a text editor, type "#!/bin/sh", and then below that paste in the above commands. Save it as ".xsetwacomrc" in your home directory and make sure it is executable (type in "chmod +x .xsetwacomrc" from the terminal). To load this file on startup, go to System->Preferences->Sessions and click on the "Startup Programs" tab. Click on "New" and enter the command "/home/USERNAME/.xsetwacomrc", then give it a title like "Wacom Cursor Scroll Inversion Rectifier". You may of course like to place other xsetwacom commands into that file, depending on your needs.

You can limit the used area of the tablet to get the correct aspect ratio (if you draw circles and get something oval).

Section "InputDevice"
        ...     
        Option          "TopX"        "100"     
        Option          "TopY"        "200"      
        Option          "BottomX"     "14000"
        Option          "BottomY"     "6000"
        ...
    EndSection

Although you can make this different for the pen and the eraser, you probably want to have the same area for both of them. On the Graphire4 XL the resolution is 800 dots per cm, so 6000-200 is 7.25 cm on the tablet.

Problems Related to mouseemu

mouseemu is used on some systems (mostly Apple hardware) to emulate a two button mouse using a single button trackpad. It conflicts with the Wacom drivers stopping it working altogether and producing errors in /var/log/Xorg.0.log similar to

(**) Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
pad Wacom X driver can't grab event device, errno=1022

To fix this simply uninstall mouseemu using the package manager of your choice and restart the X server.

Specific Cases

TC1100 in Ubuntu 10.04

Use this guide: Ubuntu Lucid on the TC1100 or Karmic

See Also

• Wacom Ubuntu Forum Thread - Use this thread for help, asking questions about this guide or suggesting improvements.

• The Linux Wacom Project - Home page of the Linux Wacom Project, responsible for the Wacom drivers in Linux.

• Installing the Latest Driver in Ubuntu - Guide on how to install a version of the linuxwacom drivers from the Linux Wacom Project other than the version available through the Ubuntu repositories.

• Gnome Graphic Tablet Apps - Home to a wacom configuration application which allows you to edit pressure curve, device mode and tilt(coming soon). It also includes a nice test area which offers realtime testing of your decisions. This site includes both source code and .deb's (only for i368 architecture).

CategoryWacom