In a previous post I looked at the drivers for the Wacom Bamboo ‘Pen & Touch’ graphics tablet and installation on Ubuntu 9.10 which was quite a long-winded procedure to download and compile the drivers. Now I’ve updated to Maverick Meerkat 10.10 I’ve needed to go through the process again to get it working on my new installation! It’s better now though…
(Updated 30/04/2011: I’ve now installed 11.04 ‘Natty Narwhal’, more in a separate post, and it is working with the Bamboo with the same method as detailed below.)
Launchpad user “ripps818″ (Taylor LeMasurier-Wren) has created a PPA version that can be installed directly and will stay up to date when the kernel is updated (the problem with compiling it manually was that when a kernel update was released the procedure had to be done again) – I found it via a comment on this site (the main article on the site deals with compiling it manually, I didn’t do this, I installed the package version).
The commands below in turn need to be installed to use this package, they’re the same type of install as for any other software from the repositories (ripps818 is the software “repository” for this, the same as the mainstream Ubuntu ones are for most of the packages on the system).
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ripps818/wacom
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wacom-dkms
I am using Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat 10.10 and have tested it on my laptop and a netbook, both are working OK after a reboot for the pen functionality (including pressure sensitivity in GIMP when this is set up in the GIMP options) and the touch seems OK, but I don’t use it for “multi gestures” etc, just for general navigation, so can’t comment on that aspect. This includes a kernel update on the netbook, which I tested the tablet again afterwards and is still working fine.
It’s a bit disappointing that it doesn’t work “out of the box” as the Bamboo tablets seem to be quite popular although hopefully in a future version it might work more natively. In the meantime this seems fine and should work for the ‘Pen’ variants etc as well.
Hi there
i got the bamboo touch and pen and i have ubuntu maverick. i m pretty new in this and computers are not my #1 skill. i saw and i read your post above this space and i can read: sudo …. (3 lines beginning with sudo) and no clue. it came to my mind open a terminal and write: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ripps818/wacom
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wacom-dkms ?????????? no idea.could you help me with that? just remember that i don t have idea what is nothing here
best regards
fd
Hi Federico,
Thanks for the comment! Yes, you are right that these commands (the 3 lines beginning “sudo”) should go into a terminal window (send them one line at a time) – you can type them in or just copy and paste (Edit > Paste or Ctrl+Shift+V to paste into terminal window).
“sudo” broadly means to carry out the command as an ‘administrator’ user, rather than as a normal user (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudo) so you will need the password to proceed (the terminal will prompt you for this). To do tasks like update software you need to be in administrator ‘mode’ by doing them as sudo.
The meaning of the 3 lines is that:
#1 – adds the ripps818/wacom software source. The package manager needs to know this, so it ‘knows’ where to retrieve the package from. “ppa” is a personal package archive, which is where a developer can upload particular packages to a named location so that they can be downloaded.
#2 – updates the list of packages available by querying the software sources.
#3 – installs the wacom-dkms package which is what you need to get the bamboo running…
Does this help? Give it a try and if it still doesn’t make sense please post back
Thank you very much for sharing this information. I followed your steps and have managed to get my wacom pad working, although with some limited functionality. The pen does seem to track perfectly though which is after all what I really wanted it for. What I cannot seem to get working is the pressure sensitivity. You mentioned you set up the pressure for gimp in the options, could you possibly point me to exactly how you went about doing this? I can find reference to the pressure in the input section of options but nothing I seem to tweak has any effect.
Thank you once again!
Gimp -> Options -> Extended Input Devices – My Pen works much better on Linux than it does on Win$ 7, where there is a lot of lag..
[...] the Wacom Bamboo with widescreen monitor and portrait orientation In this previous post I installed a kernel module for the Wacom Bamboo tablet under Ubuntu 10.10. With my laptop this was [...]
Hi Guys!!
I just got a Bamboo pen and touch and right out of the box the pen works properly, but the touch is a mess!
sends my entire System to restart or logs me out.
The single touch is slow and not precise and the multi touch is what causes the big problem, because if I take the pen away the touch mode is enabled (which I find nice) but when I try to use it as a multi touch pad…
So guys, what is your recommendation I am using Ubuntu 11.04 and I need to work in the digital graphics business, can any one help me to solve this because I have no clue and I don’t want to change tablet every time.
Thanks in advance
Omar