The index page
Wacom bamboo on Ubuntu 8.04 first impression
Installing drivers
The problem with linux and drivers is not that drivers are unavailable, but rather that your Linux distro does not provide the latest drivers. As with the case for Ubuntu 8.04 you need to install and compile the drivers yourself.
The latest drivers are found on linuxwacom.sourceforge.net , and the driver package also contain precompiled drivers.
The compiling and installing the driver is not that hard. Instructions on how to do so may be found on the ubuntuforums and will not be repeated here. But a few very important comments should be noted:
- First remove the pacages wacom-tools and xserver-xorg-input-wacom from your system. You will be making new files, replacing the files in these packages.
- I don't think you should do step 15 if you are compiling the drivers yourself, since this about precompiled drivers. The commands here will first remove the drivers you just build and installed.
- Step 16 is about downloading some “rules” on how linux should start USB devices (I think...). On Ubuntu 8.04 these rules are already present. So you can skip this step.
- You might have problem with step 18 for starting wacomcpl, this is because the libraries are not registered by ldconfig. It seems like Ubuntu stores the available drivers in a cache and the new libraries are not present there. To fix this use the command.
- If you don't want to compile yourself, but rather use the precompiled drivers, just do step 15.
Wacomcpl
Along with the driver source files comes a program called wacomcpl which you can use to configure the wacom board and pen. This is just a graphical front end for xsetwacom. The wacomcpl saves the configurations in your .xinitrc file in your home directory. I do not think ubuntu reads this file during start of Xorg. I simply copied the file as wacomsetup and have it run as a ordinary script. You need to remove the line “. /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc” otherwise this script will be called as well. It makes an excellent method to create small scripts you can leave on your desktop to configure how the drawing tablet should be configured for various programs. It's a few other of other ways of setting up the configuration for your system, but I will not explain all of them here.
Be warned, it's not the most stable program around. The first time I started the wacomcpl program it complained about missing libraries. I described how to solve this above.
I got errors when I first clicked at the configuration for stylus (the pen) and then switched to the pad for instance. I simply figured out that the smartest way to work with it was to restart the program for each device I needed to configure. Another problem is when registering Keyevents another window/dialog pops up but is placed under the other windows and you might not bee aware of this before you move one of the windows away.
Another bug with it is that it tries to display the layout of you pad, but the layout is actually wrong. The button names are however correct. Another tip is to use the xev program to check if the buttons are correctly mapped, if you are in doubt.
Configuring for the Gimp
The main reason to have a drawing board is to use it with the Gimp. It's working wonderfully, pressure with the pen is working as it should.
Some instructions tell you to configure your drawing pad under File → Preferences → Input Devices → Configure Extended Input Devices. My tablet is working without setting these preferences. Without these settings the Gimp regards the tablet and mouse somewhat as the same devices. It is recommended to set them if you want the Gimp to remember which tool you set for mouse, stylus and/or eraser work more independently. For instance it would be very practical to have the pen's eraser set to eraser tool or smudge. External devices should not be needed to activated it for the pad. If you activate the pad you might see that the cursor jumps a bit when you press one of the keys since it it regarded as another input device. I regard this as normal and should not be something to be concerned about.
I have configured the pad to zoom in and out with the '<' and 'FN1' keys, undo on '>' since it is easy to do mistakes. To do this use wacomcpl and set the following keymapping:
- button 1 (<) → +
- button 2 (FN1) → -
- button 3 (>) → Ctrl-Z
When working with the gimp it is advised to learn the hot keys to the different tools to easy switch between them. Another thing that I am struggling a bit with is when I select brushes, I easily makes double clicks with the pen, and the brush editor pops up. I think this will not be a problem when I've gotten more used to the drawing board.
