Arch Linux

bananaoomarang

Member

Registered: 2009-10-29

Posts: 180

Wacom bamboo pen & touch

Hi, I was thinking of buying a bamboo pen & touch but found that success was mixed on linux.

Is there anyone with a working device running on Arch? If there is someone who has had success, could you explain what works and what doesn't?

Thanks,

bananaoomarang

devius

Member

Registered: 2010-11-11

Posts: 22

Re: Wacom bamboo pen & touch

Wacom tablets are only supported in kernels up to 2.6.35. I had a Bamboo Pen (CTL-460) working almost perfectly until the last kernel upgrade to version 2.6.36 a few days ago. Everything worked very well except the kde configuration tool, but it seems that for everybody else that was working as well. Now, all we can do is wait until the linuxwacom project releases a new version of their driver that supports newer kernels. I believe some professional wacom tablets (intuos and graphire) have kernel drivers already and so, these shouldn't be affected.
I have also tried running it with openSUSE 11.2, but I still had no success. I'm under the impression that as far as linux support goes, wacom is the best in the tablet business, which makes me think that the other brand's tablets should be even more painfull to get going in linux.

bananaoomarang

Member

Registered: 2009-10-29

Posts: 180

Re: Wacom bamboo pen & touch

If that's the case I can either:

a) wait for a new linuxwacom upgrade

OR

b) downgrade the kernel

neither of those sound like a struggle.

Thanks for the info, it's quite confused elsewhere

EdgarButan

Member

Registered: 2010-02-09

Posts: 42

Re: Wacom bamboo pen & touch

http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=31540

This is your friend even for kernel 2.6.36

bananaoomarang

Member

Registered: 2009-10-29

Posts: 180

Re: Wacom bamboo pen & touch

OK, thanks. Does anyone know what features of the tablet would work? I heard that the multi touch deal wasn't great, even on windows and OSX.

devius

Member

Registered: 2010-11-11

Posts: 22

Re: Wacom bamboo pen & touch

This is your friend even for kernel 2.6.36

Damn! That was fast! It was marked out of date as soon as Kernel 2.6.36 was moved to core, and I was expecting it would take longer before this package got updated. I tried myself building the module from source but had no luck, so this is great news

BTW, I'm a new arch user and I have to say I'm pretty impressed with the way things work around here.

@bananaoomarang
My bamboo is pen only, and it works perfectly. Maybe others can say about the touch part.

Last edited by devius (2010-12-02 20:33:22)

curson

Member

From: London

Registered: 2010-12-03

Posts: 32

Website

Re: Wacom bamboo pen & touch

My first post here, and my first half (or more) day of ArchLinux, and I too, like devius I'm already loving it.

There was no way for me to get my Wacom Bamboo to work under Ubuntu (that I was previously using) and I have to say it took a bit too much troubles to have it working in Arch too, but thanks to EdgarButan patch I've been finally able to build the driver with Kernel 2.6.36. I have to say, though, that probably due to the AUR package being reverted, I had to apply the patch provided by EdgarButan manually to the source file of the linuxwacom drivers, compile the module, copy it to its intended location and then launch yaourt again to install from 'linuxwacom-...' from AUR. It worked, and I've been able, for the first time in 2 months, to draw a line in Gimp ^_^

Trying to tweak its sensibility would be my next step, but for today, I'll consider this a nice success

bananaoomarang

Member

Registered: 2009-10-29

Posts: 180

Re: Wacom bamboo pen & touch

Well as long as it WORKS eventually with 'not too much' effort, I'll be happy!