[ubuntu-uk] Wacom bamboo and linux...

[Timothy Rittman]

Hi All,

I said I'd report back on the wacom bamboo pen and touch (model 
CTH-460). It's taken me a little while to get round to it, but here are 
a few findings. In summary, the pen works well and the touch pad 
doesn't. Just for the record I'm using a 64-bit version of kubuntu natty 
with twinview over two screens.

Setting up the driver was relatively straightforward. I used the driver 
and instructions referred to in this 
howto:https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wacom/LatestDriver

The pen works immediately. One slightly off-putting aspect for someone 
who is used to touchpads on laptops is the automatic set up is for the 
location to be absolute rather than relative, ie 1-to-1 mapping of each 
point on the touchpad to the screen, rather than the movement of the 
cursor starting afresh each time you move. To be honest, I've got used 
to it now, but you can change it via xsetwacom if you want to: 
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/maverick/man1/xsetwacom.1.html

The big downside is the touchpad. Apparently the recent bamboos have 4 
finger support, which has messed up the touchpad settings on ubuntu. 
Therefore every time you lift your finger on or off the touchpad the 
cursor jumps about 3 inches. Not very helpful! The only place I could 
find this glitch mentioned is on flavux's comments here: 
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=9496609&postcount=1 There doesn't 
seem to be a cure I can find as yet.

Gimp set-up was very easy using the instructions here: 
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wacom#Gimp
Again, the pen worked straight away with pressure sensitivity as well.

Slightly worryingly the ubuntu wacom page has been marked for deletion. 
I couldn't find a more updated version, so I'm not sure what the plan is 
with this.

I have to admit I haven't really looked at what the buttons do yet. I'm 
sure they must be useful for something!

Twinview set up works fine, I didn't have to do any extra configuration. 
My monitors are not exactly the same size, but fairly similar.

So, I'd give it a 6/10 so far. It's definitely an area without much 
support and is certainly not plug it in and off you go. Using the pen 
has been surprisingly useful for some aspects of work (eg flicking 
through brain scans in 3-D projections using a programme called fslview 
- it's what I do for a living!). I would love to get the touchpad 
working. If I did, I'd probably get rid of the mouse, but I'm not there yet.

If anyone has got the touchpad working on the most recent models, I'd 
love to hear about it.

All the best,

Tim