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 pipeline

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.