# Wacom tablet recommendation

## Sloden

I'm thinking of buying myself a cheap wacom drawing tablet for drawing. Nothing expensive. Any recommendations? Will of course need it to be fully supported by gentoo and gimp.

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## Hayl

all the wacom tablets work.

when i got mine i got a graphire for cheap.  it is a consumer model, not a high-end artist model.

very easy to set up and many how-tos online if you run into problems.

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## CriminalMastermind

i picked up a 5x4 graphire2 tablet about a year ago.  it works in linux and gimp.  must have been pretty easy to setup, becuase i don't remember setting it up.  not really sure what to say.  i do a bit of playing in the gimp, but not much so i can't really comment.  i more use it as just a pointer in x.

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## jounihat

 *CriminalMastermind wrote:*   

> i picked up a 5x4 graphire2 tablet about a year ago.  it works in linux and gimp.  must have been pretty easy to setup, becuase i don't remember setting it up.  not really sure what to say.  i do a bit of playing in the gimp, but not much so i can't really comment.  i more use it as just a pointer in x.

 

Does it replace mouse well? I'm was thinking about buying a tablet for mouse replacement.  My wrist aches all the time with mice, and trackballs aren't accurate enough for my graphical work.

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## Hayl

the graphire one came with a cordless (batteryless) mouse that you could use on the tablet when you weren't using the pen.

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## CriminalMastermind

 *jounihat wrote:*   

> Does it replace mouse well?

 

i don't think that is an easy question to answer.  i'd say it is very much personal prefferance and i could see it going either way.  a few things to note though.. you can set it up two ways.  i don't remember there names but i'll call them relative positioning and absolute positioning.  relative would treat the pen like a mouse.  so when you pick the pen up and move it the pointer on the screen doesn't move, like when you pick up your mouse.  absolute treats the bottom left corner of the tablet like the bottom left corner of the screen.  so if you pick the pen up and move it to the top right then put it back on the tablet, your cursor will jump to the top right.  in this mode i'd say physical size of the tablet is probably more important.

that being said, i use it as a mouse replacement and love it.  friends that have tried it out don't like it.  one think they didn't like was the pressure sensitivity.  they were finding it hard to just have the pen on the tablet vs clicking, but that sensitivity can be set.

about the only thing i found hard to get used to would be changing virtual desktops.  i have my window manager set so that touching the left side of the screen would move the the virtual desktop to the left.  the problem is once that is done, your mouse is now on the left side of that desktop... so you are moving left another desktop.  not a problem, you just have to get quick on moving the pen when the switch happens.

last thing about a tablet, when using the mouse, the point of reference is the tablet, not the mouse.  for example, if you take the mouse, turn it upside down on the tablet and move it towards the left side of the tablet, the cursor goes to the left.  it's a minor thing, but if you have your mouse on an angle you will notice this behavior, where as with a normal mouse, having it on an angle doesn't matter.

the best thing would be to pick to try a demo somewhere in a store, or buy it somewhere that will let you return it if you decide you don't like it.

hope that helped.

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## Plexroth

I just got my wacom tablet hooked up , but it's acting really screwy under gimp 2.2.8. My tablet is an older graphire USB. 

When i set it up to use "screen" as recommended in the linuxwacom docs, it selects random tools and refuses to let me use my regular mouse, then it won't let me click away from the current gimp document. 

Anyone else having similar crazyness ?

Any suggestions for troubleshooting?

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## CNaylor

I have a Graphire 3, and it seems to work fine under Gentoo (using gentoo-sources because it has some necessary patches).   However, the GIMP never seemed to like it much, and that's the real reason to have the thing.  The problem with the GIMP seems to be that it see putting a stylus down as a click, when fails to release when it is raised (it's especially bad on the eraser side).  Of course, the GIMP has sometimes doesn't seem to register mouse clicks correctly either (mostly when switching tools).

Plexroth: The only thing I can recommend is to tap the table with the stylus repeatedly until the GIMP lets go.  And don't use the eraser side.

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## Plexroth

I finally fixed it by following the instructions.....

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## g4j

I have a KB Jam Studio USB tablet that I would like to use with Gentoo. I've compled module support for it, but I haven't a clue how to make Gentoo find it or how to configure it. Any suggestions?

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