16 ms·

Pens and Tablets for Linux

525 points by tux1968 5y ago

belter 5y ago
3 Required cookies, 28 Advertising cookies and 28 Functional and Analytics cookies, to read about Linux on tablets... it's a whole cookie jar.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
phendrenad2 5y ago
It's super rare to see a company actually blog about how good their Linux support is. But digital artists overlap with Linux users enough that yeah, Linux support for digitizers is a big deal!
- berkut 5y ago
  Indeed: Most of the artists at the high-end VFX studios (Weta, ILM, Framestore, MPC, DNEG, etc) are using Linux workstations and have been for years. There's still a bit of Windows (for ZBrush), and other more smaller studios use Windows or MacOS more, but Linux support is very important for those larger studios.
  - taeric 5y ago
    Curious to know what software the high-end VFX studios use. I'd just assumed most places were using adobe software.
    - gabereiser 5y ago
      Blender has a large market share. Other tools like renderman are used. Painting software such as Krita and others but Photoshop and Substance Painter are still king (windows). Unreal engine is gaining a lot of traction in the VFX digital set space.
      - bitwize 5y ago
        When CinePaint became a big thing in Hollywood, its major rival was... Photoshop on Wine.
      - berkut 5y ago
        Blender's not really used at the high-end facilities... It doesn't really scale that well on large scenes, and only had a Python3 API - VFX studios have only really moved to Python 3 this year.
        blenderdt 5y ago
        While this is true it is also changing. Studios are starting to allow Blender. But yes, only since Blender 2.8 it came in the spotlight and adoption is slow.
        p_l 5y ago
        Do we count the work behind latest Evangelion movie as high-end? Because IIRC they openly talked about using Blender in increasing amounts and sponsoring Blender foundation because of that.
        blenderdt 5y ago
        Blender was used for other big films as well. But it is still not an industry standard. But that might change very soon.
        woolion 5y ago
        I do wonder about that: it was also criticized for its jarring 3D effects (arguably, some of it due to artistic choices, but clearly not all of it), to the point where it was hot-fixed while it was still shown in theaters. So it might not be the advertising you might want for Blender. But it might also be the consequence of its flawed production process.
    - lattalayta 5y ago
      Maya, 3ds max, Houdini, After Effects, Nuke, Mari, Katana, Vray, Arnold, Renderman, Clarisse, Modo, Substance, Zbrush, Cinema 4D https://www.technowifi.com/software/video-editing/visual-effects-vfx-software-used-by-the-pros/ https://www.technowifi.com/software/video-editing/visual-eff...
    - berkut 5y ago
      Maya (modelling,UVing,layout,anim,rigging), Houdini (everything these days, but simulation/layout strongly), Nuke (compositing), Katana (scene management and rendering/lighting), Mari (texture painting). Most packages (other than things like ZBrush) have Linux versions. Some packages originally were Linux only (Mari - although it had a Mac version at Weta that was discontinued for a bit and then brought back to life in 2013) and Katana (now has a Windows version). Most of the commercial production VFX/CG renderers (Renderman, Arnold, VRay) have linux versions, and some of the proprietary ones (Manuka, Hyperion - I think?) are Linux only (only need to be used by the studio themselves).
      - 8f2ab37a-ed6c 5y ago
        Is there anywhere one could see an example of these tools being used together in and end-to-end workflow to get a quick sense of what VFX tools are capable of these days? It's a total black box to me, and I have no interest in it beyond the sheer curiosity of how far the tools have advanced and how much one can do with those with enough experience and effort.
        trynewideas 5y ago
        You can check http://vfxplatform.com/ http://vfxplatform.com/, which is a high-level attempt to provide at least guidelines for a reference platform, and this SIGGRAPH 2021 presentation by Nick Cannon (Disney) and Francois Chardavoine (Lucasfilm/ILM) on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4tXrtJBqK0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4tXrtJBqK0
        berkut 5y ago
        Not really sure I understand what you're after... If you're after what the software is capable of, then looking at the films to some degree is obviously the Litmus test :), but more usefully VFX breakdown videos might be useful or demos of the software described. I can give you some links to breakdowns the studio I work for worked on, but unless you know the software to some degree, it's probably a bit too fast to really understand exactly what the software is doing, and doesn't really show the software being interactive with or used, but: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKtis34i8AM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKtis34i8AM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye7arp5IrAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye7arp5IrAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAzm3LUvYWA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAzm3LUvYWA
    - wdb 5y ago
      In a past lifetime I was a big user of Fusion. A limited version is these days free as part of DaVinci Resolve. I think the paid version is only $300. Quite a good deal for such a powerful tool. Fusion can be used alongside with its friends After Effects, Nuke, Flame
    - rperez333 5y ago
      You are not alone, the strong marketing from Adobe and Apple creates the impression that image creators are all about having Adobe software on the latest Macs. This is far from the reality. While most don’t correlate Linux with artists, we can argue that the most impressive and sophisticated computer imagery is mostly created under this platform. Actually, even when the studio is mostly Windows based, after a certain size, it gradually moves to Linux, like Scanline.
    - mappu 5y ago
      The https://vfxplatform.com/ https://vfxplatform.com/ project is really interesting. From the FAQ: > we have the enthusiastic support of all of the major application providers for the visual effects and animation industry, including Autodesk, The Foundry and Side Effects Software. [...] Linux is prevalent in VFX, particularly in the larger studios where they build sophisticated automation pipelines that integrate multiple different software vendors’ products together.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      There is an official reference platform on the industry, https://vfxplatform.com/ https://vfxplatform.com/
- ninjin 5y ago
  They are a tiny company as well, yet they have employed kernel developers since the early 00s when Linux was far far from what we see today when it comes to software for artists. Keep in mind also that Wacom is more than just about artists, as they produce display/pen integrations for offices where customers need to read and sign agreements and tiny black and white LCD displays with pens for signatures. All praise on my part, but it would have been nice if the blog post had used photos of people using their tablets with Linux rather than (at least to my eye) Windows. '^^
  - JohnHaugeland 5y ago
    wacom has more than a thousand employees and had nearly a billion dollars in revenue last year their market cap is $150 billion https://craft.co/wacom https://craft.co/wacom
    - Cyph0n 5y ago
      I did a double-take when I saw $150B. It’s actually ¥150B, so around $1.2B.
      - robocat 5y ago
        Wacom Revenue ¥108.5 B (2021), Market Capitalization ¥153.1 B I expected the market cap to be higher for that revenue, but Logitech Price/Sales ratio is 2.1, and Razer is 1.7 so maybe normal for that market?
      - JohnHaugeland 5y ago
        sorry, you're right i did actually convert in google; it's not clear to me how my error came to 125x that's a weird multiple
    - ninjin 5y ago
      No disagreement here, but to me 1,000 employees is small when talking about a hardware company that as far as I know does a very large part of the manufacturing in-house. Also, I think you forgot to convert JPY to USD, at the time of writing that means dividing by ~120 which makes the numbers less insane.
- modeless 5y ago
  I think it's going to become more common. With Steam Deck and accompanying improvements to Proton, and Chrome OS supporting it too, the year of Linux on the desktop is starting to become less of a joke.
- syntheweave 5y ago
  High-end digital imagery has always had a use case for Linux because being open lets you bodge together custom software and hardware to create bespoken pipelines - Wacom just followed along with that demand as it picked up in the early years of desktop Linux, as a form of B2B client service. Proprietary apps in this space still gained most of the market by aggregating the most common features, giving them some UX polish and shoving them into the education pipeline; the open alternatives have always been in the background, since they are, in fact, too professional, in the sense of "you have to make it your job to understand this thing", and didn't aim to make the common things particularly easy. That's only changed with time, gradual iteration and industry support to break the monopolies.
bitwize 5y ago
Never thought I'd see the day when Wacom would use their Linux support as a selling point. Then again I recently played my favorite game (Rez) on my favorite desktop OS (Linux) so wonders never cease. 25-year-old me would be so stoked.
- esjeon 5y ago
  > Never thought I'd see the day when Wacom would use their Linux support as a selling point. I never thought any consumer-grade product would, lol. Also we recently got Steam Deck out in the market, so maybe Linux is really becoming a desktop OS...?
  - sorry_outta_gas 5y ago
    it's been a desktop/workstation os for a long while now.
    - esjeon 5y ago
      Maybe I should put it this way: "2022 is the year of linux desktop!"
      - seanw444 5y ago
        I get that it's a meme at this point, but I don't know why anybody thought there'd be a year of the Linux desktop. It was always going to be very gradual.
        Underphil 5y ago
        Well, exactly. And for those of us who've used it for years now, every year has been 'the year of the Linux desktop'.
      - Shared404 5y ago
        Every year can be the year of the Linux Desktop if we believe hard enough! Jokes aside, it's in a really good place. With everything being web based now, Flatpak being a defacto "can run anywhere" target for proprietary apps, community based wrappers for most of said apps which don't have official builds, Distro's like *buntu[0] and Fedora which are easy to install/use, Valve pushing Proton, and Windows pushing away enthusiasts, it could actually happen. Even better would be a company selling chromebook-grade hardware with one of the above mentioned distro's preinstalled in physical stores. I wish System76 would be able to do that, but I think it's a way's out from being feasible still. [0] Ironically, I don't actually include "Ubuntu" proper in this. Snap is a dealbreaker for me. Mint and Pop are my favorite *buntu's, followed by Ubuntu Server with Snap removed and a DE installed.
confident_inept 5y ago
I have a Huion Kamvas Pro 16 that I struggle to get to work with Arch. There are multiple projects out there on Github that have slapdash python drivers with various degrees of functionality. The previous most functional one is no longer in development. I was unable to successfully get OpenTabletDriver working even though it is a supported device. Multiple monitors? Forget it. I had to run the pen display on its own to even have a chance. Wacom stuff almost always just works. I really don't want to pay triple the price for (in most cases) a lesser functional device than the competition that is Huion, XP-Pen, etc. Can't wait until the day some form of kernel driver is available.
- xupybd 5y ago
  Is the price difference worth having a Windows license and dual booting?
- bo1024 5y ago
  Huion has been working pretty easily for me with Mint.
- killjoywashere 5y ago
- r_hoods_ghost 5y ago
  In fairness I have the same tablet and it can be pretty flaky on Windows too. Pity, because when it does work it's great!
- evilsetg 5y ago
  Have you looked into the digimend project (digimend.github.io)? They have drivers for a bunch of non-wacom tablets (including Huion) and provide tools and to make it easier to write new ones.
  - confident_inept 5y ago
    That project is outdated, and doesn't have drivers for pen displays.
inamberclad 5y ago
My Intuos 4 still doesn't have really good OLED and wheel support but it's got a flawless pen interface. I'd just love to be able to easily zoom and rotate the canvas in an incremental way. It might be a question for the Krita developers though.
lambdasquirrel 5y ago
Are they still dialing home about your app usage though?
- userbinator 5y ago
  For those who missed it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29056847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29056847
- asddgsgsaxg 5y ago
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  Oh, but it gets better. When the furor over the app usage collection hit, they disabled the data collection via remote server 'kill switch' (the driver hits an XML file.) About a month later, after the furor died down - they flipped it right back on. https://robertheaton.com/2020/02/05/wacom-drawing-tablets-track-name-of-every-application-you-open/ https://robertheaton.com/2020/02/05/wacom-drawing-tablets-tr... Super fucking scummy.
- bo1024 5y ago
  Right? How is Wacom considered an acceptable option after that, especially for FOSS people?
  - ninjin 5y ago
    To me, because the world is too complex to allow us to deal in absolutes – especially when dealing with corporations. Wacom deserves to have their name shamed when it comes to spying on their customers, but they equally well deserve praise for their Linux kernel drivers and libraries. As far as I can see there is no perfect option out there, so for now I (as a “FLOSS person”) have no choice but to settle with an imperfect alternative (or world for that matter) and praise the good parts and shame the bad while hoping for things to gradually improve.
    - danwills 5y ago
QuikAccount 5y ago
I wanna shout out XP-Pen here. They are much cheaper than Wacom and they also have first-party Linux drivers.
- throwaway09223 5y ago
  Yeah, seconding this. I bought my daughter a beautiful 24" XP pro for only like $800. She runs Ubuntu and absolutely loves it.
- justinclift 5y ago
  If only XP-Pen tablets had touch functionality. :) After using a smaller sized Wacom (with touch functionality) for ages, I wanted to move to a bigger tablet. The XP-Pen tablets are much cheaper than Wacom, but none of them (nor the other clones/alternatives) seem to have touch functionality. In my case, I ended up getting a good medium sized Wacom 2nd hand on eBay due to the previous owner having lost their pen (I had one anyway). But having touch support in XP-Pen/Huion/etc would have made them possibilities too. :)
  - HKH2 5y ago
    Mine has touch functionality but I turned it off. I move/spin the canvas using the pen buttons.
    - justinclift 5y ago
      Oh, that's good news. What model is yours, so I can look up it's and keep it (and similar) in mind for the future? :)
      - HKH2 5y ago
        I have a Wacom tablet, not an XP-Pen, sorry. Even with touch you need apps that support it. Pinching to zoom is the only thing that seems to work in Krita. That's not worth the bother IMO.
turminal 5y ago
It's really nice that it works so well most of the time, but I tried fixing an annoyance with the wacom kernel driver once and I gave up because that driver is a mess internally.
yeetsfromhellL2 5y ago
I gotta say that I can remember seeing wacom support in GNOME and KDE settings apps since forever it seems like (2004? 2005? I'm getting old I think). I've never used one of their devices, but the brand has lodged itself pretty firmly in my mind for the goto artisticle input methodology, just because of their Linux support.
- fomine3 5y ago
  Yes it's interesting that only Wacom did free "advertisement" on settings app.
- nopenopenopeno 5y ago
  As an everyday Wacom user who switched to Ubuntu last year, I absolutely love that I never have to download and install those suspiciously massive and slow Wacom drivers. Everything just works!
- dagw 5y ago
  Wacom have had solid *nix support since even before that. In the mid-late 90s the company I worked for was using Wacom tablets on NeXTStep and Solaris workstations without any problem.
inamberclad 5y ago
The ReMarkable E-paper tablets use Wacom technologies (battery-free pen, etc) on a tiny Linux platform. The result is the best digital writing experience I've ever had.
- charlieyu1 5y ago
  But it costs as much as a tablet computer.
  - m463 5y ago
    I have one, the use case is different from a tablet. I use calibre to load it with ebooks and they are outdoor readable. (I don't do general tablet kinds of things)
  - KennyBlanken 5y ago
    It costs even more, because they force you to sign up for their cloud service to get its signature advertised features, like handwriting recognition. $400, and then another $80 for the "marker", which does not have replaceable tips like every other company that makes a pen-tablet device. Apple, Wacom, Samsung, etc. So the opex is about $100/year, plus however often you need to replace the 'pen'. That's hitting $800 TCO for three years. Or you can buy a previous generation iPad Air and Apple Pencil and get a device that is far more capable, has replacement tips, a stylus that supports pressure and angle, etc. It baffles me that people start frothing at the mouth about Apple "forcing" people to use iCloud when damn near nothing on the device requires a paid iCloud account and there's pretty decent integration with open standards based systems... ...but the ReMarkable is basically PDF reader without their cloud subscription and HNers just can't shut up about how awesome it is? Oh, and then there's the shady-as-shit return policy. They basically don't have one...unless you buy the cloud service. Which you have to buy in a minimum 3 month block, and is non-refundable. Edit: apparently there are replacement tips.
    - whathappenedto 5y ago
      > does not have replaceable tips Huh? Then what are these [https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en-us/articles/360006763018-Markers-and-Marker-tips-for-reMarkable-2 https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en-us/articles/36000676301...]
emkoemko 5y ago
i was surprised when i installed Linux and without doing anything a Wacom tab in the system settings was there and the tablet just worked without having to do anything, same with my printer just works straight away unlike Windows i still have not printed in color on my espon printer just refuses to do it.
TheDesolate0 5y ago
shmerl 5y ago
What's the situation with Wayland? The post mentions X driver, but I suppose Wayland compositors need to handle styluses and drawing tablets in some different way? UPDATE: I found some info here: https://developer-docs.wacom.com/intuos-cintiq-business-tablets/docs/wayland-faqs https://developer-docs.wacom.com/intuos-cintiq-business-tabl... > A tablet should work as long as both the system compositor and the application you are using both support the Wayland Tablet Protocol. > The Wayland Tablet Protocol is supported by the most common compositors in Linux: Mutter (GNOME), KWin (KDE Plasma), and compositors based on wlroots (e.g. Sway).
- fold3 5y ago
  But wayland doesn't support color management yet (if ever?). As of today Krita refuses to launch on wayland, so I keep using xorg for now.
  - shmerl 5y ago
    Oh, is there a bug for Krita to follow about it? I think color management in general is a big WIP for Wayland. Related: * https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2020/11/19/developing-wayland-color-management-and-high-dynamic-range/ https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2020/11/19/deve... * https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2022/01/25/a-pixels-color-and-new-documentation-repository/ https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2022/01/25/a-pi... * https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/14 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/m...
  - dorfsmay 5y ago
    I use Krista on Wayland on Fedora 35.
    - GrayShade 5y ago
      Are you sure it's not Xwayland? I tried to force it to run on Wayland, but it failed spectacularly.
danwills 5y ago
I work at a VFX company where all production is done in Linux and many of my colleagues prefer a Wacom. It's especially important for texture artists who actually have to paint textures. I mainly use Houdini and edit code so I don't use a Wacom, but we have had them at the company for many years and they do indeed work very well in Linux! (And now I know why!)
jchw 5y ago
Cool! I always assumed the Linux driver was maintained as a best effort side project by Wacom engineer(s), not as an official endeavor. Overall, Wacom tablets work fairly well under Linux and have for quite some time. There are some caveats with what events the devices report vs what apps expect, but I think that’s smoothed out in the modern world of XI2, the wayland tablet api, and libinput. I’m not a passionate user of graphics tablets, but in my experience, Wacom tablets work better on Linux than Windows (and similarly good to macOS) partly because on Windows, they predate Windows having an input stack that can support pressure-sensitive graphics tablet pens. That arrived in Windows 8. Wacom had instead implemented a sort of defacto standard called Wintab, which they seemingly standardized with a company called LCS/Telegraphics in the Win 3.x days. In the modern invocation of this, the tablet kernel driver appears to act as a relay for hardware events, but those events get pumped back to a usermode service, and then wintab32 clients get them pumped into their event loops. Modern Windows has WM_POINTER* events, but it seems this usermode service is needed even for those events to work, probably so that wintab and WM_POINTER events can remain consistent, sync with control panel, and not fire over eachother. Still, it’s a shame. In the modern world, if you happen to have a USB tablet that speaks the HID digitizer API, Linux should be able to give you fairly good support straight out of the box, usually only lacking support for rebinding keys easily, controlling LEDs, etc. More tablet manufacturers have been choosing hardware that can support the HID digitizer class as it’s probably the only way to get graphics tablet support for Android devices. I found this to be the case with an XP-Pen device that I bought with intent to try writing a driver, only to find it spoke perfectly good standard USB, produced events in evdev, and plumbed through to Krita absolutely fine. To be sure, not all XP-Pen tablets will work this way, but some will. I’d guess ones that advertise Android support are likely to.
- synergy20 5y ago
  I have a cheap XP-pen and worked well for me on ubuntu 20.04, though I'm not a heavy user of it.
- nsonha 5y ago
  I have a CTH-480 on Ubuntu and I don't know how to right click with it. 2 fingers scrolling works though
syntheweave 5y ago
I use a Xencelabs tablet - this is the premium brand of Haomon Ugee. While I haven't tried to research the topic in full depth, Ugee operates a number of different tablet brands(the best-known to the West being XP-Pen) but apparently has them working in independent groups, so the products and experiences differ substantially. The Xencelabs team was built out of former Wacom team members, so it's a cut above just on pedigree, and their first products have followed through in mine and most reviewers estimation. I can say for a fact that the Linux support is actually pretty great. Wacom's downside is simply the "monopoly curse" - they had the patents to EMR technology, so they had no real competition for a few decades. Now that the original patents are expired the competition has appeared, and Wacom has stepped up and made some good product releases lately.
charlieyu1 5y ago
Sadly the design industry is still dominated by Adobe and Adobe is 10x more annoying as Microsoft.
Topgamer7 5y ago
My 2010 Bluetooth Wacom tablet works flawlessly on Linux. And I can't even install the drivers on modern windows.
kadenwolff 5y ago
I've used a Wacom tablet with Fedora for a while and it works really well! I find a lot of value in drawing while programming to work out problems, and being able to easily put those drawings then into Obsidian is just great.
self_awareness 5y ago
I have a Wacom tablet and pen (Intuos 4) and it always worked perfectly on Linux. Sice I use 2 monitors, years ago confining the pointer to one monitor was a matter of 1 command in the command-line, but since some time KDE allows me to confine the pointer in the settings GUI, so even that inconvenience went away.
th3h4mm3r 5y ago
XP Pen. The support is great. I bought for my son an artist 12 with the fear of some malfunction on Linux but everything works really fine. Or better: there's a real configurable software and you can set everything about tablet and pen. Really really cool.
TT-392 5y ago
Didn't know wacom was supporting it, kinda just assumed these were community made drivers. Either way, spend a lot of hours with wacom on linux (playing osu!). Also nice that it doesn't have the shitty telemetry that the windows driver has.
JustinGarrison 5y ago
I worked as a Linux engineer at Disney Animation for 4.5 years and can attest to the great driver support Wacom has on Linux. We frequently tried new devices and always had support (user space tools were a different story).
- blenderdt 5y ago
  I think a lot of people underestimate how often Linux is used in the animation/VFX industry.
  - JustinGarrison 5y ago
    Linux on the desktop is alive and well in the entertainment industry.
    - throwmeariver1 5y ago
      I wouldn't say well... it's definitely not as popular with artists as it was 5 years ago.
      - ladyanita22 5y ago
        What's popular now?
      - smoldesu 5y ago
        The metrics seem to disagree: https://fosspost.org/survey-shows-60-of-vfx-designers-use-linux/ https://fosspost.org/survey-shows-60-of-vfx-designers-use-li...
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Not the flavour that FSF would be happy to have though. https://vfxplatform.com https://vfxplatform.com Or Linus, given the NVidia's domain on the rendering sector.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Mostly because the animation/GFX industry doesn't care about FOSS religion and doesn't have any issue using vendor binaries or custom distributions. Thanks to SGI they were deep into UNIX already. Just like AAA studios are used to POSIX/UNIX flavoured OSes on Nintendo/Sony game consoles, macOS/iOS, Android, game servers, and that hasn't made them care more about people using GNU/Linux for their games.
stavros 5y ago
> One of the unfortunate facts about open source operating systems like Linux is that specialized hardware support sometimes lags behind commercial operating systems like Windows and MacOS. Well that's just because the manufacturer just doesn't write one, not because of some intrinsic factor of FOSS. That's an odd point to make when it's the manufacturers' fault.
- bheadmaster 5y ago
  In most cases, it's not that the manufacturer doesn't write drivers - it's that they don't even release any hardware specification at all. There are a lot of people in the Free Software community that can write drivers, but not so many that can reverse engineer unknown hardware.
  - franga2000 5y ago
    I wonder if it might be time for some legislation around this. Manufacturers are already required to include operating instructions with products they release, so why not protocol specs? They don't need to release anything secret, just the instructions for software to interact with their hardware.
    - alimov 5y ago
      This is an interesting point. While this would be nice for some folks that just want drivers to be functional I could also see why a manufacturer might be reluctant to offer such information. One reason they could bring up is that it may put undue burden on them to document and provide such information. Another possible issue a manufacturer may have with this is that it offers a more direct route for abuse of their software/hardware (maybe?). Or in some cases it may be a liability to offer such information (if there is a potential for misuse) Edit: or maybe they don’t want to release that kind of info for product/brand lock-in reasons?
      - kwhitefoot 5y ago
        > it may put undue burden on them to document and provide such information. How can documenting something be an undue burden? In order to write the drivers that they do write, for say Windows, they must have written some documentation. And if I want to abuse some piece of hardware, such as making a musical instrument out of a pile of floppy disk drives, what business is that of the manufacturer?
blenderdt 5y ago
Wacom support on Linux has been good for over a decade, but not so good on a wide screen. I got a 4k widescreen monitor and I still can't use my Wacom very well. The aspect ratios are completely off. I tried manually setting it but often these settings get lost after an update. But my experience from the past has always been plug and play.
orangetuba 5y ago
That's it, I'm now a Wacom fanboy. What tablets are good for hobby game makers?
- t0bia_s 5y ago
  Depends on what you are want to do exactly with tablet? Concept arts, texturing, modeling...?
35mm 5y ago
Now if only Adobe would make creative cloud apps for Linux!
- t0bia_s 5y ago
  This will not happen unfortunately. We are minority, it would not be profitable for them.
w4rh4wk5 5y ago
I wonder whether the problems with Windows Ink have been a driving force behind this move. I think anyone that has used Krita on Windows has run into issues related to Windows Ink while using a Wacom tablet.
almog 5y ago
It seems that the news from Wacom applies to both pen displays and tablets, but since they only show photos of pen displays, I was wondering — under what circumstances you would choose a pen display over a tablet? The tablet I'm using (Huion HS611 on Mac) only serves as a tool for diagrams and sketching ideas, so laying it flat over my desk would require me to bend over or lean over to use it (instead of sitting straight and looking at the screen while using a non-display tablet).
- gmueckl 5y ago
  The pen displays include a stand to put them at an angle. In essence this is the same posture issue that you face when writing or drawing on paper. Some professional desks could be angled upwards for that reason. It's practical with pen and paper, but less so with computer equipment on the desk, so that feature disappeared.
  - almog 5y ago
    The posture you'd want when writing on a paper is that of a flat desk that allow your elbow to lean still so that your palm and fingers have full control of the pen. This is (I only guess) not the case for artist _painting_on real canvas and using broad/long strokes against a canvas, and for that kind of usage I understand what might be the benefits of an angled pen display.
- goosedragons 5y ago
  You want to look at what you're drawing/writing. I like pen displays better because I could never get over the disconnect of draw on tablet, everything happens on monitor. You also have to make sure that your tablet has the same aspect ratio as your monitor and for a little while I had a 16:9 tablet with a 16:10 monitor and it was juuust off and it took me a bit to figure out why. Pen displays being the display don't have that problem. Its also 1:1 which I prefer.
  - almog 5y ago
    Yes, I get the disconnect feeling argument, but I'm not sure if it is a learning curve thing or a something more fundamental for professionals in specific fields. As for the ratio, that's configurable in both Wacom and the tablet I'm using (but, yes, when not set to match it can give that uncanny valley feeling about my own hand)
foxhop 5y ago
marcodiego 5y ago
I have a wacom tablet. Just plugged it and started using. I have some colleagues who don't use linux. They have had bad experiences. I even saw an article or two on HN about wacom drivers phoning home. If you aren't locked by proprietary software and wants to use a wacom tablet, I strongly recommend using linux. Actually, if you aren't locked by proprietary software and wants to use a computer, I strongly recommend using linux.
- brnt 5y ago
  I use my Wacom in similar fashion: plug and play. Actually, this is my experience with printers and scanners as well. A huge difference with how I remember Windows, but then again things may have changed there as well. I mainly use it to sign paperwork :) Props to the use of Krita in their imagery!
  - judge2020 5y ago
    On Windows, consumer HP is also 'plug and play' as in 'Windows downloads and installs a HP UWP app for you that tries to sell you instant ink and happens to also install your scanner driver'
  - adhoc_slime 5y ago
    my Wacom drawing pad was a bit of a headache for finding drivers on windows. It makes me happy to hear they're improving that, becuase the tools are great.
PaulHoule 5y ago
Circa 2000 my wife and I were working on a book about doing graphics work with Linux (never got published) and Wacom was gracious about sending us free hardware for testing.
Lucasoato 5y ago
Is there any device and app that can give a comparable experience to the one delivered by OneNote on a Microsoft Surface Pro?
t0bia_s 5y ago
I was surprised how good my Wacom Cintiq 16 works with Fedora 35. Unfortunately Adobe and linux are not compatible and I cannot find professional replace for Photoshop, Lightroom, InDesign and Illustrator. It would be ok to replace Premiere, After Effects and Audition with DaVinci Resolve. I want Adobe support for linux so much.
savingGrace 5y ago
I have an XP-Pen 22 from 5+ years ago. It is still going strong. It was ~$500 back then and I opted to get the one that had buttons on the side. My primary OS was Ubuntu, and the XP-Pen 22 did not have drivers for the buttons in Linux. The tablet and drawing was spectacular, but I paid extra for the buttons. So I ended up dual booting with Windows, to get the buttons to work. The exact model after mine had Linux support for buttons. I was just a year too early. The only other complaint I have is that even in Windows, I cannot get it to dual screen no matter what. The tablet and my other monitors will split the view, but I cannot get the inputs to recognize just the screen my tablet is on. If I put my pen to the tablet, the cursor will shoot way over as if all the monitors are 'one giant screen'. I have to think they have improved on this and for the money saved, I will buy another XP-Pen someday. I am an amateur artist and a strong software developer(not designer). So, you have to take my review with a grain of engineering salt. To me, Wacom is a solid brand for professionals. However, they make me think of macs with their pricing..
tcyrus 5y ago
This is probably a good place to mention that wintab32 events currently don't work with WINE.

525 points by tux1968 5y ago

3 Required cookies, 28 Advertising cookies and 28 Functional and Analytics cookies, to read about Linux on tablets... it's a whole cookie jar.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

phendrenad2 5y ago

It's super rare to see a company actually blog about how good their Linux support is. But digital artists overlap with Linux users enough that yeah, Linux support for digitizers is a big deal!

berkut 5y ago
Indeed: Most of the artists at the high-end VFX studios (Weta, ILM, Framestore, MPC, DNEG, etc) are using Linux workstations and have been for years. There's still a bit of Windows (for ZBrush), and other more smaller studios use Windows or MacOS more, but Linux support is very important for those larger studios.
- taeric 5y ago
  Curious to know what software the high-end VFX studios use. I'd just assumed most places were using adobe software.
  - gabereiser 5y ago
    Blender has a large market share. Other tools like renderman are used. Painting software such as Krita and others but Photoshop and Substance Painter are still king (windows). Unreal engine is gaining a lot of traction in the VFX digital set space.
    - bitwize 5y ago
      When CinePaint became a big thing in Hollywood, its major rival was... Photoshop on Wine.
    - berkut 5y ago
      Blender's not really used at the high-end facilities... It doesn't really scale that well on large scenes, and only had a Python3 API - VFX studios have only really moved to Python 3 this year.
      - blenderdt 5y ago
        While this is true it is also changing. Studios are starting to allow Blender. But yes, only since Blender 2.8 it came in the spotlight and adoption is slow.
        p_l 5y ago
        Do we count the work behind latest Evangelion movie as high-end? Because IIRC they openly talked about using Blender in increasing amounts and sponsoring Blender foundation because of that.
        blenderdt 5y ago
        Blender was used for other big films as well. But it is still not an industry standard. But that might change very soon.
        woolion 5y ago
        I do wonder about that: it was also criticized for its jarring 3D effects (arguably, some of it due to artistic choices, but clearly not all of it), to the point where it was hot-fixed while it was still shown in theaters. So it might not be the advertising you might want for Blender. But it might also be the consequence of its flawed production process.
  - lattalayta 5y ago
    Maya, 3ds max, Houdini, After Effects, Nuke, Mari, Katana, Vray, Arnold, Renderman, Clarisse, Modo, Substance, Zbrush, Cinema 4D https://www.technowifi.com/software/video-editing/visual-effects-vfx-software-used-by-the-pros/ https://www.technowifi.com/software/video-editing/visual-eff...
  - berkut 5y ago
    Maya (modelling,UVing,layout,anim,rigging), Houdini (everything these days, but simulation/layout strongly), Nuke (compositing), Katana (scene management and rendering/lighting), Mari (texture painting). Most packages (other than things like ZBrush) have Linux versions. Some packages originally were Linux only (Mari - although it had a Mac version at Weta that was discontinued for a bit and then brought back to life in 2013) and Katana (now has a Windows version). Most of the commercial production VFX/CG renderers (Renderman, Arnold, VRay) have linux versions, and some of the proprietary ones (Manuka, Hyperion - I think?) are Linux only (only need to be used by the studio themselves).
    - 8f2ab37a-ed6c 5y ago
      Is there anywhere one could see an example of these tools being used together in and end-to-end workflow to get a quick sense of what VFX tools are capable of these days? It's a total black box to me, and I have no interest in it beyond the sheer curiosity of how far the tools have advanced and how much one can do with those with enough experience and effort.
      - trynewideas 5y ago
        You can check http://vfxplatform.com/ http://vfxplatform.com/, which is a high-level attempt to provide at least guidelines for a reference platform, and this SIGGRAPH 2021 presentation by Nick Cannon (Disney) and Francois Chardavoine (Lucasfilm/ILM) on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4tXrtJBqK0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4tXrtJBqK0
      - berkut 5y ago
        Not really sure I understand what you're after... If you're after what the software is capable of, then looking at the films to some degree is obviously the Litmus test :), but more usefully VFX breakdown videos might be useful or demos of the software described. I can give you some links to breakdowns the studio I work for worked on, but unless you know the software to some degree, it's probably a bit too fast to really understand exactly what the software is doing, and doesn't really show the software being interactive with or used, but: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKtis34i8AM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKtis34i8AM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye7arp5IrAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye7arp5IrAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAzm3LUvYWA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAzm3LUvYWA
  - wdb 5y ago
    In a past lifetime I was a big user of Fusion. A limited version is these days free as part of DaVinci Resolve. I think the paid version is only $300. Quite a good deal for such a powerful tool. Fusion can be used alongside with its friends After Effects, Nuke, Flame
  - rperez333 5y ago
    You are not alone, the strong marketing from Adobe and Apple creates the impression that image creators are all about having Adobe software on the latest Macs. This is far from the reality. While most don’t correlate Linux with artists, we can argue that the most impressive and sophisticated computer imagery is mostly created under this platform. Actually, even when the studio is mostly Windows based, after a certain size, it gradually moves to Linux, like Scanline.
  - mappu 5y ago
    The https://vfxplatform.com/ https://vfxplatform.com/ project is really interesting. From the FAQ: > we have the enthusiastic support of all of the major application providers for the visual effects and animation industry, including Autodesk, The Foundry and Side Effects Software. [...] Linux is prevalent in VFX, particularly in the larger studios where they build sophisticated automation pipelines that integrate multiple different software vendors’ products together.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    There is an official reference platform on the industry, https://vfxplatform.com/ https://vfxplatform.com/
ninjin 5y ago
They are a tiny company as well, yet they have employed kernel developers since the early 00s when Linux was far far from what we see today when it comes to software for artists. Keep in mind also that Wacom is more than just about artists, as they produce display/pen integrations for offices where customers need to read and sign agreements and tiny black and white LCD displays with pens for signatures. All praise on my part, but it would have been nice if the blog post had used photos of people using their tablets with Linux rather than (at least to my eye) Windows. '^^
- JohnHaugeland 5y ago
  wacom has more than a thousand employees and had nearly a billion dollars in revenue last year their market cap is $150 billion https://craft.co/wacom https://craft.co/wacom
  - Cyph0n 5y ago
    I did a double-take when I saw $150B. It’s actually ¥150B, so around $1.2B.
    - robocat 5y ago
      Wacom Revenue ¥108.5 B (2021), Market Capitalization ¥153.1 B I expected the market cap to be higher for that revenue, but Logitech Price/Sales ratio is 2.1, and Razer is 1.7 so maybe normal for that market?
    - JohnHaugeland 5y ago
      sorry, you're right i did actually convert in google; it's not clear to me how my error came to 125x that's a weird multiple
  - ninjin 5y ago
    No disagreement here, but to me 1,000 employees is small when talking about a hardware company that as far as I know does a very large part of the manufacturing in-house. Also, I think you forgot to convert JPY to USD, at the time of writing that means dividing by ~120 which makes the numbers less insane.
modeless 5y ago
I think it's going to become more common. With Steam Deck and accompanying improvements to Proton, and Chrome OS supporting it too, the year of Linux on the desktop is starting to become less of a joke.
syntheweave 5y ago
High-end digital imagery has always had a use case for Linux because being open lets you bodge together custom software and hardware to create bespoken pipelines - Wacom just followed along with that demand as it picked up in the early years of desktop Linux, as a form of B2B client service. Proprietary apps in this space still gained most of the market by aggregating the most common features, giving them some UX polish and shoving them into the education pipeline; the open alternatives have always been in the background, since they are, in fact, too professional, in the sense of "you have to make it your job to understand this thing", and didn't aim to make the common things particularly easy. That's only changed with time, gradual iteration and industry support to break the monopolies.

bitwize 5y ago

Never thought I'd see the day when Wacom would use their Linux support as a selling point. Then again I recently played my favorite game (Rez) on my favorite desktop OS (Linux) so wonders never cease. 25-year-old me would be so stoked.

esjeon 5y ago
> Never thought I'd see the day when Wacom would use their Linux support as a selling point. I never thought any consumer-grade product would, lol. Also we recently got Steam Deck out in the market, so maybe Linux is really becoming a desktop OS...?
- sorry_outta_gas 5y ago
  it's been a desktop/workstation os for a long while now.
  - esjeon 5y ago
    Maybe I should put it this way: "2022 is the year of linux desktop!"
    - seanw444 5y ago
      I get that it's a meme at this point, but I don't know why anybody thought there'd be a year of the Linux desktop. It was always going to be very gradual.
      - Underphil 5y ago
        Well, exactly. And for those of us who've used it for years now, every year has been 'the year of the Linux desktop'.
    - Shared404 5y ago
      Every year can be the year of the Linux Desktop if we believe hard enough! Jokes aside, it's in a really good place. With everything being web based now, Flatpak being a defacto "can run anywhere" target for proprietary apps, community based wrappers for most of said apps which don't have official builds, Distro's like *buntu[0] and Fedora which are easy to install/use, Valve pushing Proton, and Windows pushing away enthusiasts, it could actually happen. Even better would be a company selling chromebook-grade hardware with one of the above mentioned distro's preinstalled in physical stores. I wish System76 would be able to do that, but I think it's a way's out from being feasible still. [0] Ironically, I don't actually include "Ubuntu" proper in this. Snap is a dealbreaker for me. Mint and Pop are my favorite *buntu's, followed by Ubuntu Server with Snap removed and a DE installed.

confident_inept 5y ago

I have a Huion Kamvas Pro 16 that I struggle to get to work with Arch. There are multiple projects out there on Github that have slapdash python drivers with various degrees of functionality. The previous most functional one is no longer in development. I was unable to successfully get OpenTabletDriver working even though it is a supported device. Multiple monitors? Forget it. I had to run the pen display on its own to even have a chance. Wacom stuff almost always just works. I really don't want to pay triple the price for (in most cases) a lesser functional device than the competition that is Huion, XP-Pen, etc. Can't wait until the day some form of kernel driver is available.

xupybd 5y ago
Is the price difference worth having a Windows license and dual booting?
bo1024 5y ago
Huion has been working pretty easily for me with Mint.
killjoywashere 5y ago
r_hoods_ghost 5y ago
In fairness I have the same tablet and it can be pretty flaky on Windows too. Pity, because when it does work it's great!
evilsetg 5y ago
Have you looked into the digimend project (digimend.github.io)? They have drivers for a bunch of non-wacom tablets (including Huion) and provide tools and to make it easier to write new ones.
- confident_inept 5y ago
  That project is outdated, and doesn't have drivers for pen displays.

inamberclad 5y ago

My Intuos 4 still doesn't have really good OLED and wheel support but it's got a flawless pen interface. I'd just love to be able to easily zoom and rotate the canvas in an incremental way. It might be a question for the Krita developers though.

lambdasquirrel 5y ago

Are they still dialing home about your app usage though?

userbinator 5y ago
For those who missed it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29056847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29056847
asddgsgsaxg 5y ago
KennyBlanken 5y ago
Oh, but it gets better. When the furor over the app usage collection hit, they disabled the data collection via remote server 'kill switch' (the driver hits an XML file.) About a month later, after the furor died down - they flipped it right back on. https://robertheaton.com/2020/02/05/wacom-drawing-tablets-track-name-of-every-application-you-open/ https://robertheaton.com/2020/02/05/wacom-drawing-tablets-tr... Super fucking scummy.
bo1024 5y ago
Right? How is Wacom considered an acceptable option after that, especially for FOSS people?
- ninjin 5y ago
  To me, because the world is too complex to allow us to deal in absolutes – especially when dealing with corporations. Wacom deserves to have their name shamed when it comes to spying on their customers, but they equally well deserve praise for their Linux kernel drivers and libraries. As far as I can see there is no perfect option out there, so for now I (as a “FLOSS person”) have no choice but to settle with an imperfect alternative (or world for that matter) and praise the good parts and shame the bad while hoping for things to gradually improve.
  - danwills 5y ago

QuikAccount 5y ago

I wanna shout out XP-Pen here. They are much cheaper than Wacom and they also have first-party Linux drivers.

throwaway09223 5y ago
Yeah, seconding this. I bought my daughter a beautiful 24" XP pro for only like $800. She runs Ubuntu and absolutely loves it.
justinclift 5y ago
If only XP-Pen tablets had touch functionality. :) After using a smaller sized Wacom (with touch functionality) for ages, I wanted to move to a bigger tablet. The XP-Pen tablets are much cheaper than Wacom, but none of them (nor the other clones/alternatives) seem to have touch functionality. In my case, I ended up getting a good medium sized Wacom 2nd hand on eBay due to the previous owner having lost their pen (I had one anyway). But having touch support in XP-Pen/Huion/etc would have made them possibilities too. :)
- HKH2 5y ago
  Mine has touch functionality but I turned it off. I move/spin the canvas using the pen buttons.
  - justinclift 5y ago
    Oh, that's good news. What model is yours, so I can look up it's and keep it (and similar) in mind for the future? :)
    - HKH2 5y ago
      I have a Wacom tablet, not an XP-Pen, sorry. Even with touch you need apps that support it. Pinching to zoom is the only thing that seems to work in Krita. That's not worth the bother IMO.

turminal 5y ago

It's really nice that it works so well most of the time, but I tried fixing an annoyance with the wacom kernel driver once and I gave up because that driver is a mess internally.

yeetsfromhellL2 5y ago

I gotta say that I can remember seeing wacom support in GNOME and KDE settings apps since forever it seems like (2004? 2005? I'm getting old I think). I've never used one of their devices, but the brand has lodged itself pretty firmly in my mind for the goto artisticle input methodology, just because of their Linux support.

fomine3 5y ago
Yes it's interesting that only Wacom did free "advertisement" on settings app.
nopenopenopeno 5y ago
As an everyday Wacom user who switched to Ubuntu last year, I absolutely love that I never have to download and install those suspiciously massive and slow Wacom drivers. Everything just works!
dagw 5y ago
Wacom have had solid *nix support since even before that. In the mid-late 90s the company I worked for was using Wacom tablets on NeXTStep and Solaris workstations without any problem.

inamberclad 5y ago

The ReMarkable E-paper tablets use Wacom technologies (battery-free pen, etc) on a tiny Linux platform. The result is the best digital writing experience I've ever had.

charlieyu1 5y ago
But it costs as much as a tablet computer.
- m463 5y ago
  I have one, the use case is different from a tablet. I use calibre to load it with ebooks and they are outdoor readable. (I don't do general tablet kinds of things)
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  It costs even more, because they force you to sign up for their cloud service to get its signature advertised features, like handwriting recognition. $400, and then another $80 for the "marker", which does not have replaceable tips like every other company that makes a pen-tablet device. Apple, Wacom, Samsung, etc. So the opex is about $100/year, plus however often you need to replace the 'pen'. That's hitting $800 TCO for three years. Or you can buy a previous generation iPad Air and Apple Pencil and get a device that is far more capable, has replacement tips, a stylus that supports pressure and angle, etc. It baffles me that people start frothing at the mouth about Apple "forcing" people to use iCloud when damn near nothing on the device requires a paid iCloud account and there's pretty decent integration with open standards based systems... ...but the ReMarkable is basically PDF reader without their cloud subscription and HNers just can't shut up about how awesome it is? Oh, and then there's the shady-as-shit return policy. They basically don't have one...unless you buy the cloud service. Which you have to buy in a minimum 3 month block, and is non-refundable. Edit: apparently there are replacement tips.
  - whathappenedto 5y ago
    > does not have replaceable tips Huh? Then what are these [https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en-us/articles/360006763018-Markers-and-Marker-tips-for-reMarkable-2 https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en-us/articles/36000676301...]

emkoemko 5y ago

i was surprised when i installed Linux and without doing anything a Wacom tab in the system settings was there and the tablet just worked without having to do anything, same with my printer just works straight away unlike Windows i still have not printed in color on my espon printer just refuses to do it.

TheDesolate0 5y ago

shmerl 5y ago

What's the situation with Wayland? The post mentions X driver, but I suppose Wayland compositors need to handle styluses and drawing tablets in some different way? UPDATE: I found some info here: https://developer-docs.wacom.com/intuos-cintiq-business-tablets/docs/wayland-faqs https://developer-docs.wacom.com/intuos-cintiq-business-tabl... > A tablet should work as long as both the system compositor and the application you are using both support the Wayland Tablet Protocol. > The Wayland Tablet Protocol is supported by the most common compositors in Linux: Mutter (GNOME), KWin (KDE Plasma), and compositors based on wlroots (e.g. Sway).

fold3 5y ago
But wayland doesn't support color management yet (if ever?). As of today Krita refuses to launch on wayland, so I keep using xorg for now.
- shmerl 5y ago
  Oh, is there a bug for Krita to follow about it? I think color management in general is a big WIP for Wayland. Related: * https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2020/11/19/developing-wayland-color-management-and-high-dynamic-range/ https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2020/11/19/deve... * https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2022/01/25/a-pixels-color-and-new-documentation-repository/ https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2022/01/25/a-pi... * https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/14 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/m...
- dorfsmay 5y ago
  I use Krista on Wayland on Fedora 35.
  - GrayShade 5y ago
    Are you sure it's not Xwayland? I tried to force it to run on Wayland, but it failed spectacularly.

danwills 5y ago

I work at a VFX company where all production is done in Linux and many of my colleagues prefer a Wacom. It's especially important for texture artists who actually have to paint textures. I mainly use Houdini and edit code so I don't use a Wacom, but we have had them at the company for many years and they do indeed work very well in Linux! (And now I know why!)

jchw 5y ago

Cool! I always assumed the Linux driver was maintained as a best effort side project by Wacom engineer(s), not as an official endeavor. Overall, Wacom tablets work fairly well under Linux and have for quite some time. There are some caveats with what events the devices report vs what apps expect, but I think that’s smoothed out in the modern world of XI2, the wayland tablet api, and libinput. I’m not a passionate user of graphics tablets, but in my experience, Wacom tablets work better on Linux than Windows (and similarly good to macOS) partly because on Windows, they predate Windows having an input stack that can support pressure-sensitive graphics tablet pens. That arrived in Windows 8. Wacom had instead implemented a sort of defacto standard called Wintab, which they seemingly standardized with a company called LCS/Telegraphics in the Win 3.x days. In the modern invocation of this, the tablet kernel driver appears to act as a relay for hardware events, but those events get pumped back to a usermode service, and then wintab32 clients get them pumped into their event loops. Modern Windows has WM_POINTER* events, but it seems this usermode service is needed even for those events to work, probably so that wintab and WM_POINTER events can remain consistent, sync with control panel, and not fire over eachother. Still, it’s a shame. In the modern world, if you happen to have a USB tablet that speaks the HID digitizer API, Linux should be able to give you fairly good support straight out of the box, usually only lacking support for rebinding keys easily, controlling LEDs, etc. More tablet manufacturers have been choosing hardware that can support the HID digitizer class as it’s probably the only way to get graphics tablet support for Android devices. I found this to be the case with an XP-Pen device that I bought with intent to try writing a driver, only to find it spoke perfectly good standard USB, produced events in evdev, and plumbed through to Krita absolutely fine. To be sure, not all XP-Pen tablets will work this way, but some will. I’d guess ones that advertise Android support are likely to.

synergy20 5y ago
I have a cheap XP-pen and worked well for me on ubuntu 20.04, though I'm not a heavy user of it.
nsonha 5y ago
I have a CTH-480 on Ubuntu and I don't know how to right click with it. 2 fingers scrolling works though

syntheweave 5y ago

I use a Xencelabs tablet - this is the premium brand of Haomon Ugee. While I haven't tried to research the topic in full depth, Ugee operates a number of different tablet brands(the best-known to the West being XP-Pen) but apparently has them working in independent groups, so the products and experiences differ substantially. The Xencelabs team was built out of former Wacom team members, so it's a cut above just on pedigree, and their first products have followed through in mine and most reviewers estimation. I can say for a fact that the Linux support is actually pretty great. Wacom's downside is simply the "monopoly curse" - they had the patents to EMR technology, so they had no real competition for a few decades. Now that the original patents are expired the competition has appeared, and Wacom has stepped up and made some good product releases lately.

charlieyu1 5y ago

Sadly the design industry is still dominated by Adobe and Adobe is 10x more annoying as Microsoft.

Topgamer7 5y ago

My 2010 Bluetooth Wacom tablet works flawlessly on Linux. And I can't even install the drivers on modern windows.

kadenwolff 5y ago

I've used a Wacom tablet with Fedora for a while and it works really well! I find a lot of value in drawing while programming to work out problems, and being able to easily put those drawings then into Obsidian is just great.

self_awareness 5y ago

I have a Wacom tablet and pen (Intuos 4) and it always worked perfectly on Linux. Sice I use 2 monitors, years ago confining the pointer to one monitor was a matter of 1 command in the command-line, but since some time KDE allows me to confine the pointer in the settings GUI, so even that inconvenience went away.

th3h4mm3r 5y ago

XP Pen. The support is great. I bought for my son an artist 12 with the fear of some malfunction on Linux but everything works really fine. Or better: there's a real configurable software and you can set everything about tablet and pen. Really really cool.

TT-392 5y ago

Didn't know wacom was supporting it, kinda just assumed these were community made drivers. Either way, spend a lot of hours with wacom on linux (playing osu!). Also nice that it doesn't have the shitty telemetry that the windows driver has.

JustinGarrison 5y ago

I worked as a Linux engineer at Disney Animation for 4.5 years and can attest to the great driver support Wacom has on Linux. We frequently tried new devices and always had support (user space tools were a different story).

blenderdt 5y ago
I think a lot of people underestimate how often Linux is used in the animation/VFX industry.
- JustinGarrison 5y ago
  Linux on the desktop is alive and well in the entertainment industry.
  - throwmeariver1 5y ago
    I wouldn't say well... it's definitely not as popular with artists as it was 5 years ago.
    - ladyanita22 5y ago
      What's popular now?
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      The metrics seem to disagree: https://fosspost.org/survey-shows-60-of-vfx-designers-use-linux/ https://fosspost.org/survey-shows-60-of-vfx-designers-use-li...
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Not the flavour that FSF would be happy to have though. https://vfxplatform.com https://vfxplatform.com Or Linus, given the NVidia's domain on the rendering sector.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Mostly because the animation/GFX industry doesn't care about FOSS religion and doesn't have any issue using vendor binaries or custom distributions. Thanks to SGI they were deep into UNIX already. Just like AAA studios are used to POSIX/UNIX flavoured OSes on Nintendo/Sony game consoles, macOS/iOS, Android, game servers, and that hasn't made them care more about people using GNU/Linux for their games.

stavros 5y ago

> One of the unfortunate facts about open source operating systems like Linux is that specialized hardware support sometimes lags behind commercial operating systems like Windows and MacOS. Well that's just because the manufacturer just doesn't write one, not because of some intrinsic factor of FOSS. That's an odd point to make when it's the manufacturers' fault.

bheadmaster 5y ago
In most cases, it's not that the manufacturer doesn't write drivers - it's that they don't even release any hardware specification at all. There are a lot of people in the Free Software community that can write drivers, but not so many that can reverse engineer unknown hardware.
- franga2000 5y ago
  I wonder if it might be time for some legislation around this. Manufacturers are already required to include operating instructions with products they release, so why not protocol specs? They don't need to release anything secret, just the instructions for software to interact with their hardware.
  - alimov 5y ago
    This is an interesting point. While this would be nice for some folks that just want drivers to be functional I could also see why a manufacturer might be reluctant to offer such information. One reason they could bring up is that it may put undue burden on them to document and provide such information. Another possible issue a manufacturer may have with this is that it offers a more direct route for abuse of their software/hardware (maybe?). Or in some cases it may be a liability to offer such information (if there is a potential for misuse) Edit: or maybe they don’t want to release that kind of info for product/brand lock-in reasons?
    - kwhitefoot 5y ago
      > it may put undue burden on them to document and provide such information. How can documenting something be an undue burden? In order to write the drivers that they do write, for say Windows, they must have written some documentation. And if I want to abuse some piece of hardware, such as making a musical instrument out of a pile of floppy disk drives, what business is that of the manufacturer?

blenderdt 5y ago

Wacom support on Linux has been good for over a decade, but not so good on a wide screen. I got a 4k widescreen monitor and I still can't use my Wacom very well. The aspect ratios are completely off. I tried manually setting it but often these settings get lost after an update. But my experience from the past has always been plug and play.

orangetuba 5y ago

That's it, I'm now a Wacom fanboy. What tablets are good for hobby game makers?

t0bia_s 5y ago
Depends on what you are want to do exactly with tablet? Concept arts, texturing, modeling...?

35mm 5y ago

Now if only Adobe would make creative cloud apps for Linux!

t0bia_s 5y ago
This will not happen unfortunately. We are minority, it would not be profitable for them.

w4rh4wk5 5y ago

I wonder whether the problems with Windows Ink have been a driving force behind this move. I think anyone that has used Krita on Windows has run into issues related to Windows Ink while using a Wacom tablet.

almog 5y ago

It seems that the news from Wacom applies to both pen displays and tablets, but since they only show photos of pen displays, I was wondering — under what circumstances you would choose a pen display over a tablet? The tablet I'm using (Huion HS611 on Mac) only serves as a tool for diagrams and sketching ideas, so laying it flat over my desk would require me to bend over or lean over to use it (instead of sitting straight and looking at the screen while using a non-display tablet).

gmueckl 5y ago
The pen displays include a stand to put them at an angle. In essence this is the same posture issue that you face when writing or drawing on paper. Some professional desks could be angled upwards for that reason. It's practical with pen and paper, but less so with computer equipment on the desk, so that feature disappeared.
- almog 5y ago
  The posture you'd want when writing on a paper is that of a flat desk that allow your elbow to lean still so that your palm and fingers have full control of the pen. This is (I only guess) not the case for artist _painting_on real canvas and using broad/long strokes against a canvas, and for that kind of usage I understand what might be the benefits of an angled pen display.
goosedragons 5y ago
You want to look at what you're drawing/writing. I like pen displays better because I could never get over the disconnect of draw on tablet, everything happens on monitor. You also have to make sure that your tablet has the same aspect ratio as your monitor and for a little while I had a 16:9 tablet with a 16:10 monitor and it was juuust off and it took me a bit to figure out why. Pen displays being the display don't have that problem. Its also 1:1 which I prefer.
- almog 5y ago
  Yes, I get the disconnect feeling argument, but I'm not sure if it is a learning curve thing or a something more fundamental for professionals in specific fields. As for the ratio, that's configurable in both Wacom and the tablet I'm using (but, yes, when not set to match it can give that uncanny valley feeling about my own hand)

foxhop 5y ago

marcodiego 5y ago

I have a wacom tablet. Just plugged it and started using. I have some colleagues who don't use linux. They have had bad experiences. I even saw an article or two on HN about wacom drivers phoning home. If you aren't locked by proprietary software and wants to use a wacom tablet, I strongly recommend using linux. Actually, if you aren't locked by proprietary software and wants to use a computer, I strongly recommend using linux.

brnt 5y ago
I use my Wacom in similar fashion: plug and play. Actually, this is my experience with printers and scanners as well. A huge difference with how I remember Windows, but then again things may have changed there as well. I mainly use it to sign paperwork :) Props to the use of Krita in their imagery!
- judge2020 5y ago
  On Windows, consumer HP is also 'plug and play' as in 'Windows downloads and installs a HP UWP app for you that tries to sell you instant ink and happens to also install your scanner driver'
- adhoc_slime 5y ago
  my Wacom drawing pad was a bit of a headache for finding drivers on windows. It makes me happy to hear they're improving that, becuase the tools are great.

PaulHoule 5y ago

Circa 2000 my wife and I were working on a book about doing graphics work with Linux (never got published) and Wacom was gracious about sending us free hardware for testing.

Lucasoato 5y ago

Is there any device and app that can give a comparable experience to the one delivered by OneNote on a Microsoft Surface Pro?

t0bia_s 5y ago

I was surprised how good my Wacom Cintiq 16 works with Fedora 35. Unfortunately Adobe and linux are not compatible and I cannot find professional replace for Photoshop, Lightroom, InDesign and Illustrator. It would be ok to replace Premiere, After Effects and Audition with DaVinci Resolve. I want Adobe support for linux so much.

savingGrace 5y ago

I have an XP-Pen 22 from 5+ years ago. It is still going strong. It was ~$500 back then and I opted to get the one that had buttons on the side. My primary OS was Ubuntu, and the XP-Pen 22 did not have drivers for the buttons in Linux. The tablet and drawing was spectacular, but I paid extra for the buttons. So I ended up dual booting with Windows, to get the buttons to work. The exact model after mine had Linux support for buttons. I was just a year too early. The only other complaint I have is that even in Windows, I cannot get it to dual screen no matter what. The tablet and my other monitors will split the view, but I cannot get the inputs to recognize just the screen my tablet is on. If I put my pen to the tablet, the cursor will shoot way over as if all the monitors are 'one giant screen'. I have to think they have improved on this and for the money saved, I will buy another XP-Pen someday. I am an amateur artist and a strong software developer(not designer). So, you have to take my review with a grain of engineering salt. To me, Wacom is a solid brand for professionals. However, they make me think of macs with their pricing..

tcyrus 5y ago

This is probably a good place to mention that wintab32 events currently don't work with WINE.