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On Linux you'd be using the community-maintained drivers[0], so I assume this wouldn't be a problem (correct me if I'm wrong). But as far as I can tell, there'

On Linux you'd be using the community-maintained drivers[0], so I assume this wouldn't be a problem (correct me if I'm wrong). But as far as I can tell, there's not equivalent Open Wacom drivers for Windows. People with more Windows knowledge than me: any thoughts on why? Is it just that someone using Windows probably doesn't care about Open drivers, so the demand isn't there? Or is there something about Windows that makes substituting drivers harder? Wacom doesn't provide their own Linux drivers, but looking at the state of drivers around GPUs, printers, I vaguely suspect that somebody in Linux would be working on Open alternatives even if they did. I'm trying to think off the top of my head what Windows-compatible hardware has 3rd-party driver options. Maybe some printers? [0]: https://linuxwacom.github.io/ https://linuxwacom.github.io/

leppr 7y ago
Clearly this isn't a trivial or very fun job (last time I used them, the Linux drivers were buggy as hell). Who would have the motivation to do it on Windows, where you have a driver that works and users have little expectation of privacy to begin with?
- jchw 7y ago
  The Linux drivers for Wacom tablets have never been buggy in the past decade in a half I’ve used them. Other parts of the stack (Xinput, libinput, GUI libraries) have been, but the actual driver provides good data to userspace. Even then, to me the drivers on Linux have been perpetually less buggy. On Windows I found myself needing to restart the usermode service and restart applications frequently, especially if the USB connection was unreliable. The Linux driver did not have similar issues. For example, you’ll never have to follow this guide on Linux: https://www.deviantart.com/kiiroikat/art/How-to-Fix-Wacom-Drivers-Without-Rebooting-602842865 https://www.deviantart.com/kiiroikat/art/How-to-Fix-Wacom-Dr... I don’t recall having issues with the Mac drivers either.
  - oehpr 7y ago
    Just because it would be better doesn't mean it will be made. So long as something is "good enough", it will strangle new projects in the crib.
    - jchw 7y ago
      1. Did you reply to the wrong comment? I was only remarking on the Linux driver not being buggy. 2. If you’re referring to a Windows open source Wacom driver, one already exists, as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, though it has a pretty specific purpose in mind. https://github.com/hawku/TabletDriver https://github.com/hawku/TabletDriver
      - oehpr 7y ago
        the comment you are replying to is talking about the motivation to make a driver. I assumed your comment was also about that, I didn't expect that you were ignoring the context of the conversation and just commenting about whether the current driver was buggy or not. Sorry.
  - leppr 7y ago
    Ok the bugs might have been isolated to the configuration GUI and not the driver strictly speaking, but the point still stands.
    - jchw 7y ago
      LinuxWacom doesn’t provide a configuration GUI that I am aware of, though. The xf86 input driver has knobs you can tweak but as far as I am aware the only official way to do it is CLI. If you are talking about GNOME’s Wacom settings, then I can understand the confusion: under Windows this would be part of the driver package, but under Linux this bit just happens to be completely unrelated and maintained by GNOME. I realize this does not matter much to the end user but it kind of matters in the context of this discussion; the bugs aren’t inherent, they are probably mostly a result of how the software ecosystem works on Linux...
- ohithereyou 7y ago
  >users have little expectation of privacy to begin with? The cynical side of me wonders how long it will be before prosecutors argue, with a straight face, that using evidence obtained from mass surveillance against people using Microsoft Windows is okay because Microsoft collects a massive amount of data so nobody should expect their files and activities to remain private; that there is or should be no expectation of privacy on such a system. And then how long until warrant applications come in with supporting evidence that the subject of the warrant uses Linux and therefore their increased desire for privacy is prima facia evidence that they're doing something illegal.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    The first part is long since true. Courts have already (wrongly) established that you have no expectation of privacy in anything you entrust to a third party agent like a bank or a cloud service. If you give the provider a key to your stuff, they can give it to law enforcement. The latter is a tougher desecration of the constitution to sell.
    - bitwize 7y ago
      Constitution schmonstitution. Just say the magic words -- "national security" -- and that problem goes away. The NSA is already selecting people with "Linux" and "Tor" in their search histories for added scrutiny.
      - gruez 7y ago
        >The NSA is already selecting people with "Linux" [...] in their search histories for added scrutiny. Source for this? If it's true it would be both sad and hilarious.
        bitwize 7y ago
        https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nsa-linux-journal-extremist-forum-and-its-readers-get-flagged-extra-surveillance https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nsa-linux-journal-extre...
exKitsune 7y ago
Here is an open source driver that has been made that supports Wacom and Huion tablets https://github.com/hawku/TabletDriver https://github.com/hawku/TabletDriver These were made to reduce input latency to increase performance in a rhythm game called "osu!"
- naikrovek 7y ago
  Thank you.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  Wow, thanks. Mentioning osu! will probably cost me a few hours after work. Never thought of using a tablet for it, but I am so going to try that!
- elfchief 7y ago
  Now, if only someone could make Wacom drivers that make the Wacom touch functionality interface better with Photoshop and friends, rather than just handing keyboard shortcuts to them. Somehow, that's the best Wacom has managed to do, which makes those features effectively unusable in the very apps those tablets are most commonly used...
dehrmann 7y ago
> On Linux...this wouldn't be a problem This, perhaps not, but Linux distros track app usage, too: https://popcon.debian.org/ https://popcon.debian.org/
- arsome 7y ago
  ... if you install and configure popularity-contest, which includes an explicit opt-in process [0] and it still doesn't track usage, merely installation. [0] http://www.linuxandubuntu.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/configure-popularity-contest-program.png.webp?is-pending-load=1 http://www.linuxandubuntu.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/con...
  - roelschroeven 7y ago
    It's a tiny bit more than that: popcon weekly reports which packages have been used that week based on their atime. atime, ctime and filename are reported (the times are truncated to a multiple of twelve hours). See https://popcon.debian.org/FAQ https://popcon.debian.org/FAQ (thanks to toastal for the link).
    - account42 7y ago
      Wait people still leave atime enabled?
      - roelschroeven 7y ago
        I suppose many people use relatime, which is good enough for popcon I think. Edit: Debian uses relatime by default. I don't know about other distributions.
    - Piskvorrr 7y ago
      Which is still a far cry from "opts you in by default (!!!), and collects every time (!) you open the program."
      - 7y ago
zzzcpan 7y ago
Yes, it doesn't apply to Linux. Also on Linux libinput and synaptics drivers support wacom tablets, so you don't necessarily need to even install linuxwacom (in my config I do "xinput set-prop ..." for both cases to setup pressure curve).
tomatotomato37 7y ago
Ever since the Windows multi-platform tablet push windows has had built-in drivers for touch & pen support. For the purpose of drawing, these drivers are actively antagonistic, as they have weird touch macros that make fine detail virtually impossible. And as they are built-in to windows, these drivers are also a pain to override by third-party drivers. Add that to the complications that already arise from interfacing a 3D (touch sensitivity) precision input device with a computer and you end up with poor official driver support, and even worse community driver support
- Moru 7y ago
  It's not that hard to turn off any more. But if you don't know about the setting, you will be wondering how anyone can work with a grafics tablet.
  - mkl 7y ago
    What is it called, and how do you turn it off? I haven't run into this issue on Surface devices, but I do have a couple of Wacom tablets too (mainly used on Linux on another machine).
moron4hire 7y ago
This particular issue wouldn't be a problem. You'd have new problems of the tablet not working consistently or easily configurably across apps. It is certainly on Wacom for not providing better drivers to Linux, but neither is the FOSS solution a complete one.
babypuncher 7y ago
Open source drivers are rare on Windows because manufacturers almost always ship proprietary drivers that are good enough, and Windows users clearly have no issues running closed-source software. Proprietary drivers on Linux are often crap, if they even exist at all.
- squarefoot 7y ago
  Windows users should push for FOSS drivers as well also when the proprietary ones run perfectly. Privacy and security issues aside, being forced to depend on a closed driver means that the manufacturer can make the product obsolete just by stopping support on newer Windows versions, therefore turning the product essentially into trash, thus forcing the user to buy a new one.
  - jfim 7y ago
    The vast majority of Windows users don't really care about that though. In the 90s, software modems ("winmodems", see [0]) were popular because they were cheaper than using dedicated hardware for generating and decoding the audio signals sent over the phone line. Those would break if the manufacturer didn't upgrade their driver for newer versions of Windows, since they're completely software driven. I'd be very surprised if things have changed since then, and I bet that the majority of consumers would just pick the cheapest option at the big box store. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmodem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmodem
    - djsumdog 7y ago
      I remember getting PCI based Winmodems working on my old machines back in the late 90s/early 2000s. A lot of people bought ISA modems or physical COM port models so they wouldn't have to deal with that bullshit. Now most Linux distributions are littered with binary blobs in linux-firmware that have to be loaded for everything from Wi-Fi to Bluetooth. We've gone the total opposite direction of where we should be .. except for like .. amdgpu.
    - rhizome 7y ago
tinus_hn 7y ago
Windows drivers on 32bit Windows request and on 64bit Windows require certification.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

leppr 7y ago

Clearly this isn't a trivial or very fun job (last time I used them, the Linux drivers were buggy as hell). Who would have the motivation to do it on Windows, where you have a driver that works and users have little expectation of privacy to begin with?

jchw 7y ago
The Linux drivers for Wacom tablets have never been buggy in the past decade in a half I’ve used them. Other parts of the stack (Xinput, libinput, GUI libraries) have been, but the actual driver provides good data to userspace. Even then, to me the drivers on Linux have been perpetually less buggy. On Windows I found myself needing to restart the usermode service and restart applications frequently, especially if the USB connection was unreliable. The Linux driver did not have similar issues. For example, you’ll never have to follow this guide on Linux: https://www.deviantart.com/kiiroikat/art/How-to-Fix-Wacom-Drivers-Without-Rebooting-602842865 https://www.deviantart.com/kiiroikat/art/How-to-Fix-Wacom-Dr... I don’t recall having issues with the Mac drivers either.
- oehpr 7y ago
  Just because it would be better doesn't mean it will be made. So long as something is "good enough", it will strangle new projects in the crib.
  - jchw 7y ago
    1. Did you reply to the wrong comment? I was only remarking on the Linux driver not being buggy. 2. If you’re referring to a Windows open source Wacom driver, one already exists, as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, though it has a pretty specific purpose in mind. https://github.com/hawku/TabletDriver https://github.com/hawku/TabletDriver
    - oehpr 7y ago
      the comment you are replying to is talking about the motivation to make a driver. I assumed your comment was also about that, I didn't expect that you were ignoring the context of the conversation and just commenting about whether the current driver was buggy or not. Sorry.
- leppr 7y ago
  Ok the bugs might have been isolated to the configuration GUI and not the driver strictly speaking, but the point still stands.
  - jchw 7y ago
    LinuxWacom doesn’t provide a configuration GUI that I am aware of, though. The xf86 input driver has knobs you can tweak but as far as I am aware the only official way to do it is CLI. If you are talking about GNOME’s Wacom settings, then I can understand the confusion: under Windows this would be part of the driver package, but under Linux this bit just happens to be completely unrelated and maintained by GNOME. I realize this does not matter much to the end user but it kind of matters in the context of this discussion; the bugs aren’t inherent, they are probably mostly a result of how the software ecosystem works on Linux...
ohithereyou 7y ago
>users have little expectation of privacy to begin with? The cynical side of me wonders how long it will be before prosecutors argue, with a straight face, that using evidence obtained from mass surveillance against people using Microsoft Windows is okay because Microsoft collects a massive amount of data so nobody should expect their files and activities to remain private; that there is or should be no expectation of privacy on such a system. And then how long until warrant applications come in with supporting evidence that the subject of the warrant uses Linux and therefore their increased desire for privacy is prima facia evidence that they're doing something illegal.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  The first part is long since true. Courts have already (wrongly) established that you have no expectation of privacy in anything you entrust to a third party agent like a bank or a cloud service. If you give the provider a key to your stuff, they can give it to law enforcement. The latter is a tougher desecration of the constitution to sell.
  - bitwize 7y ago
    Constitution schmonstitution. Just say the magic words -- "national security" -- and that problem goes away. The NSA is already selecting people with "Linux" and "Tor" in their search histories for added scrutiny.
    - gruez 7y ago
      >The NSA is already selecting people with "Linux" [...] in their search histories for added scrutiny. Source for this? If it's true it would be both sad and hilarious.
      - bitwize 7y ago
        https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nsa-linux-journal-extremist-forum-and-its-readers-get-flagged-extra-surveillance https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nsa-linux-journal-extre...

exKitsune 7y ago

Here is an open source driver that has been made that supports Wacom and Huion tablets https://github.com/hawku/TabletDriver https://github.com/hawku/TabletDriver These were made to reduce input latency to increase performance in a rhythm game called "osu!"

naikrovek 7y ago
Thank you.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
raxxorrax 7y ago
Wow, thanks. Mentioning osu! will probably cost me a few hours after work. Never thought of using a tablet for it, but I am so going to try that!
elfchief 7y ago
Now, if only someone could make Wacom drivers that make the Wacom touch functionality interface better with Photoshop and friends, rather than just handing keyboard shortcuts to them. Somehow, that's the best Wacom has managed to do, which makes those features effectively unusable in the very apps those tablets are most commonly used...

dehrmann 7y ago

> On Linux...this wouldn't be a problem This, perhaps not, but Linux distros track app usage, too: https://popcon.debian.org/ https://popcon.debian.org/

arsome 7y ago
... if you install and configure popularity-contest, which includes an explicit opt-in process [0] and it still doesn't track usage, merely installation. [0] http://www.linuxandubuntu.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/configure-popularity-contest-program.png.webp?is-pending-load=1 http://www.linuxandubuntu.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/con...
- roelschroeven 7y ago
  It's a tiny bit more than that: popcon weekly reports which packages have been used that week based on their atime. atime, ctime and filename are reported (the times are truncated to a multiple of twelve hours). See https://popcon.debian.org/FAQ https://popcon.debian.org/FAQ (thanks to toastal for the link).
  - account42 7y ago
    Wait people still leave atime enabled?
    - roelschroeven 7y ago
      I suppose many people use relatime, which is good enough for popcon I think. Edit: Debian uses relatime by default. I don't know about other distributions.
  - Piskvorrr 7y ago
    Which is still a far cry from "opts you in by default (!!!), and collects every time (!) you open the program."
    - 7y ago

zzzcpan 7y ago

Yes, it doesn't apply to Linux. Also on Linux libinput and synaptics drivers support wacom tablets, so you don't necessarily need to even install linuxwacom (in my config I do "xinput set-prop ..." for both cases to setup pressure curve).

tomatotomato37 7y ago

Ever since the Windows multi-platform tablet push windows has had built-in drivers for touch & pen support. For the purpose of drawing, these drivers are actively antagonistic, as they have weird touch macros that make fine detail virtually impossible. And as they are built-in to windows, these drivers are also a pain to override by third-party drivers. Add that to the complications that already arise from interfacing a 3D (touch sensitivity) precision input device with a computer and you end up with poor official driver support, and even worse community driver support

Moru 7y ago
It's not that hard to turn off any more. But if you don't know about the setting, you will be wondering how anyone can work with a grafics tablet.
- mkl 7y ago
  What is it called, and how do you turn it off? I haven't run into this issue on Surface devices, but I do have a couple of Wacom tablets too (mainly used on Linux on another machine).

moron4hire 7y ago

This particular issue wouldn't be a problem. You'd have new problems of the tablet not working consistently or easily configurably across apps. It is certainly on Wacom for not providing better drivers to Linux, but neither is the FOSS solution a complete one.

babypuncher 7y ago

Open source drivers are rare on Windows because manufacturers almost always ship proprietary drivers that are good enough, and Windows users clearly have no issues running closed-source software. Proprietary drivers on Linux are often crap, if they even exist at all.

squarefoot 7y ago
Windows users should push for FOSS drivers as well also when the proprietary ones run perfectly. Privacy and security issues aside, being forced to depend on a closed driver means that the manufacturer can make the product obsolete just by stopping support on newer Windows versions, therefore turning the product essentially into trash, thus forcing the user to buy a new one.
- jfim 7y ago
  The vast majority of Windows users don't really care about that though. In the 90s, software modems ("winmodems", see [0]) were popular because they were cheaper than using dedicated hardware for generating and decoding the audio signals sent over the phone line. Those would break if the manufacturer didn't upgrade their driver for newer versions of Windows, since they're completely software driven. I'd be very surprised if things have changed since then, and I bet that the majority of consumers would just pick the cheapest option at the big box store. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmodem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmodem
  - djsumdog 7y ago
    I remember getting PCI based Winmodems working on my old machines back in the late 90s/early 2000s. A lot of people bought ISA modems or physical COM port models so they wouldn't have to deal with that bullshit. Now most Linux distributions are littered with binary blobs in linux-firmware that have to be loaded for everything from Wi-Fi to Bluetooth. We've gone the total opposite direction of where we should be .. except for like .. amdgpu.
  - rhizome 7y ago

tinus_hn 7y ago

Windows drivers on 32bit Windows request and on 64bit Windows require certification.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]