Intel Preparing USI Stylus Support For Linux

Intel open-source driver engineers have been working on USI stylus support for the Linux kernel. The Universal Stylus Initiative (USI) aims to offer interoperability of active styluses across touchscreen devices.

The Universal Stylus Initiative has a goal of allowing all styluses that comply with USI to work across devices. USI is backed by the likes of Google who wants to see USI working uniformally across Chromebooks, Dell and other hardware vendors, Intel is also involved and leading the upstream Linux support patches, and peripheral vendors like Logitech are also supporting the standard. Other big names like Wacom, Samsung, and many other players from desktop to laptops to mobile.

The USI initiative site at UniversalStylus.org has the stated goal of "A single, active stylus capable of operating with all the devices that a consumer owns or uses in their everyday life."

On Friday the newest "request for comments" patches adding USI stylus support to the Linux kernel's HID subsystem were posted for review. There were previously some USI stylus Linux patches posted that implemented support in a separate HID driver while now the approach being pursued is adding the USI handling to the core HID code.