New Wacom Drawing Tablet Driver Features With Linux 6.12

[phoronix]

Phoronix: New Wacom Drawing Tablet Driver Features With Linux 6.12

The HID subsystem updates have been merged for the in-development Linux 6.12 kernel. Notable this time around are some new feature additions for the popular Wacom drawing tablet support...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.12-HID

[rabcor]

It's pretty funny how the linux wacom driver is superior to pretty much any drawing tablet driver anywhere. Including the wacom windows and macos drivers.

[AdrianBc]

It's pretty funny how the linux wacom driver is superior to pretty much any drawing tablet driver anywhere. Including the wacom windows and macos drivers.

I am grateful for the good Wacom Linux support, because already for a few years I have no longer used mice, trackballs, trackpoints or touchpads as pointing devices, but only small Wacom tablets (which are not bigger than a traditional mouse pad), configured to behave as mice, i.e. in their "relative" mode.

When used in the "relative" mode, a Wacom stylus is much more comfortable than a mouse and also much faster and more accurate.

[andrea76]

I am grateful for the good Wacom Linux support, because already for a few years I have no longer used mice, trackballs, trackpoints or touchpads as pointing devices, but only small Wacom tablets (which are not bigger than a traditional mouse pad), configured to behave as mice, i.e. in their "relative" mode.

When used in the "relative" mode, a Wacom stylus is much more comfortable than a mouse and also much faster and more accurate.

Interesting. Which wacom model do you have?

[AdrianBc]

Interesting. Which wacom model do you have?

Intuos small.

There are two variants of Intuos small, one cheaper with only an USB interface and one more expensive that also has Bluetooth. I prefer the cheaper USB-only variant.

Intuos small has about the same size as a mouse pad, even somewhat smaller.

Because the stylus is extremely light and because it does not touch the tablet, you can move it much faster than a mouse.

If you set the relative mode instead of the absolute mode and if you set a high enough acceleration in your GUI settings, then it is enough to move the stylus over a small area to reach any part of your screen.

You can press the tip of the stylus on the tablet and the stylus has two other buttons that you can press with your index. I configure the tip to mean left click, the first button to be right click (e.g. show menu) and the second button to be double left click (e.g. open or run file). Other choices are possible, but I think that these are best for emulating a mouse.

Because the stylus is extremely light, I retain it between my fingers when I alternate with my right hand between keyboard and "mouse", i.e. graphic tablet in my case, and the stylus does not hinder typing. This is much more convenient than when moving the hand between keyboard and gripping a mouse. Only when I have to type long texts, I drop the stylus on the tablet, until the next use.