How to get a Wacom Tablet Fully Working in Ubuntu Linux

UPDATED for HARDY HERON. Thanks to bigdee973. ^^

I mean, FULLY WORKING not those half working tablets where the pressure don't work 100% and the expresskeys and the touch strip not working. I mean this guide is to help non-programmer artists get their ubuntu system working with their wacom tablets. Just like they do in their Apple Macs and *shudder* windows.

The first thing I'd like to point out is that, this guide is not intended for programmers. This guide is for computer dummies like myself who wanted to escape to a free OS. If you're just trying out to see if wacom works under ubuntu, don't waste your time. The tablet is not as easy to setup as in a Mac or Windows. No complete installer is provided by wacom. However, your tablet will work with Ubuntu out of the box. There's no extra setup needed. But the expresskeys and the touch strip will not work by default.

To get a wacom tablet fully working, the only mental faculty you need is already present if you have ever finished a Legend of Zelda game. Except zelda II that one just sucks. I'm sorry if you ever played that one. Or the CD-i Zelda.

Now, some of the instructions presented here will be in the form of codes. It'd be nice if you try to learn and understand what they mean. They will be very useful to your Ubuntu future. But if you're intimidated by strings of nonsensical characters randomly strung up by an evil genius geek deep in his dragon infested dungeon, just think of it as looking for a particular icon in other OSes like OS X or windows. Or just looking for the any key. Only, in this particular OS, it's already provided for you to copy paste.

I hope you're running Ubuntu 7.10 or higher. The codename for that version is Gutsy Gibbons. If you're not, please run your automatic software update till you run Gutsy. (If you're already running previous version of Ubuntu, you wouldn't need to read the dumbingdowness parts of this guide)

So, anyway, let's begin.

Although Wacom tablet runs out of the box in Ubuntu, you'll need to enable it in Ubuntu. That's just how linux works. If something is unnecessary, it just won't load it. Unlike windows which becomes bloated because it loads practically everything at starts up.

Part 1. Running a wacom tablet.
This part is lifted from ubuntuguide. You might want to use that one if you already know what you're doing. And return here for the second part.
First, you'd have to fire up the terminal. Go to Applications > Accesories > Terminal
And boom! You got this terminal window:
Hooray! You've just prepared yourself everything that is necessary to complete this howto guide. Isn't that easy? Even mere mortals can do it. Most people are just too chicken to try.

Now let's open the editor and edit xorg.conf. All you need to do is copy this:

gksu gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

And paste it to the terminal by pressing Ctrl-Shift-V. Then just press enter to open the editor with xorg.conf. You might be asked for password now. Just put in your login password and it'll open the editor.
Look for the part that says:

#Section "InputDevice"
#Driver "wacom"
#Identifier "stylus"
#Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
#Option "Type" "stylus"
#Option "PressCurve" "50,0,100,50"# Custom preference
#Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"# Tablet PC ONLY
#EndSection

#Section "InputDevice"
#Driver "wacom"
#Identifier "eraser"
#Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
#Option "Type" "eraser"
#Option "PressCurve" "50,0,100,50"# Custom preference
#Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"# Tablet PC ONLY
#EndSection

#Section "InputDevice"
#Driver "wacom"
#Identifier "cursor"
#Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
#Option "Type" "cursor"
#Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"# Tablet PC ONLY
#EndSection

And remove the # sign before each line until the three parts looks like this:
Then save.
And we're done with part 1! All you have to do is restart and you'll have a fully working tablet now! Or, if you're smart, just press Ctrl-Alt-Backspace.

Part 2. Getting to drive the expresskeys.
If you restarted as told, and done playing with your working pen, you'll notice that the expresskeys and the touch strips don't work. If you have a Graphire 3, then you can immediately draw in Gimp. Have fun! But the rest of us, we have to increase our productivity by utilizing these touch strips.

The first thing is to launch the Terminal as we did in the first part.

Then you paste this code:

sudo aptitude install xlibs-dev

Run it by pressing enter, and it'll display a jumble of things. Don't worry about it. After it's done, just paste in and run this code:

sudo aptitude install wacom-tools

Those two codes will ensure that your computer is fully prepared to compile the program that will run expresskey and touchstrips.

Now, launch your firefox browser, and head to Expresskeys. And get the latest tar/gz thing. As of this writing, it's expresskeys-0.4.1.tar.gz.

Then you just right click on it and select extract here . After that, in your terminal, go to the folder that you've just extracted. In short, paste and run this code:

cd Desktop/expresskeys-0.4.1

Change the version number as necessary.
And inside that, run these commands line by line. Don't try to do it all in one go, copy one line and past it then run it, after that run the next line. It's maybe tedious, but if anything goes wrong, you'll know which part went wrong and it'd be easier to fix.

./configure
make
make install

After that, we'll need to open xorg.conf again, so like before, just run this command:

gksu gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

And add this section immediately above or below (it doesn't matter) the three we edited in the first part.

Section "InputDevice"
Driver "wacom"
Identifier "pad"
#c~b Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
Option "Type" "pad"
Option "USB" "on"
EndSection

Then look for the part that says

Section "ServerLayout"

And immediately below the line, add:

InputDevice "pad" #c~b Intuos3

And that's it, we have set up the necessary programs to get the touch strip and the expresskeys to work.
Just save and reset your machine or press Ctrl-Shift-Backspace.

Part 3. Near instant gratification.
Just like in part 1, start your terminal. And run this code:

expresskeys -d

If you did everything right, it wouldn't spit out any thing and returns to the terminal like nothing happened.

Fire up gimp and try out your touchstrips and expresskeys!! :)

But wait, what if you want to customize the expresskeys and the touchstrip?

It's easy, you just need to know the key combination and edit the expresskeys config file.

To edit the config file, first you must be able to see it.
Go to your home folder: Just select Places > Home Folder. If you're running ubuntu, I don't need to illustrate this anymore. In your home folder menu, press Ctrl-H to show some hidden files and folder (Ctrl-H again to hide them. Look for a folder named .expresskeys (with the . (dot) before the expresskey) and inside, you'll find a file named intuos3.conf1. Just double click to open it.

Follow the instructions in the file to edit each and every function of the expresskeys and touchstrip.

Oh, and one more thing, to get the keycode, start your terminal and enter:

xev

A small window will appear and your terminal will be spitting a bunch of code. Put your pointer inside the small window and leave it there. Don't move even for a pixel. If you're using the tablet, just lift your pen.
Press the key that you want the keycode of on your keyboard, and immediately it will appear on your terminal as marked:


Good night good luck, and most of all, have fun with your fully functional tablet! :)

UPDATE for Ubuntu 8.04 HARDY HERON:
***FOR THOSE OF YOU USING UBUNTU 8.04 HARDY HERON***
before you install expresskeys u have to edit a file before you compile and install. its not that hard... what u have to do is download the latest version of expresskeys which is of today 5/23/2008 expresskeys-0.4.1 (here is the link...if link is broken just google expresskeys-0.4.1 and download file).
http://freshmeat.net/projects/wacomexpresskeys/
after u download the tar/zip file, you will untar/unzip it into ur home folder...and then Change line 462 of the file src-expresskeys/get_device.c from:

if (xdevice_list[i].use == IsXExtensionDevice) {

to these two:

if (xdevice_list[i].use == IsXExtensionDevice ||
xdevice_list[i].use == IsXExtensionPointer) {

after that save the file and close it. and proceed with the installation as described in the tutorial...but if ur too lazy to back track like me then just open terminal and copy and paste below...

sudo aptitude install xlibs-dev

...this installs the files u need to configure and install express keys...then in terminal...you cd into the directory of the expresskeys folder that u untared/unzipped into. which should be your home folder and

sudo ./configure
sudo make
sudo make install

restart your PC then open terminal type in

expresskeys -d

your keys should work...u could also add this to your startup session by going into system>preferences>session
u restart your computer and then open terminal again and....

expresskeys -d

and ur expresskeys should work play with the strip to see