HOW TO Set Up a Wacom Serial Tablet in Ubuntu

**Steve_McNeil** · June 1st, 2015

I have compiled and I am using the wacom_serial5 driver. Thank you for your great work on these drivers. I have modified the driver such that the thumbwheel on my 4D puck mouse works as a proportional relative scroll wheel. I am an electronics engineer, not a software developer. If anyone is interested, I would be glad to post the modified code here or contribute it back to the active developers. I am also not sure the way I did this modification is the right way to do it. Thank you for your consideration and all the work to get these drivers going. Ubuntu Studio 14.04 LTS XFCE 4.12 Wacom Intous GD-0912-R tablet with stylus and 4d puck mouse.

**tokenrove** · June 3rd, 2015

Originally Posted by Steve_McNeil

I have modified the driver such that the thumbwheel on my 4D puck mouse works as a proportional relative scroll wheel. I am an electronics engineer, not a software developer. If anyone is interested, I would be glad to post the modified code here or contribute it back to the active developers. I am also not sure the way I did this modification is the right way to do it.

That's great! Probably the easiest way to contribute changes back to the wacom_serial5 driver is to open a pull request on roaldfre's repo: https://github.com/RoaldFre/wacom_serial5

Github has some help documents on their site that guide you through the process, but if you find the process a bit daunting, I could take a patch from you and open a suitable pull request. I know the wacom_serial4 driver made it into the kernel but I'm not sure if there has been an effort to get wacom_serial5 in, so I'm not sure how active the maintainership on it is.

(On that note, if anyone here has a PenPartner and could verify whether the current driver ships with the kernel works for you, please let me know; I got one bug report about it, and I suspect I know what causes it, but I need to interact with someone who can try patches and report what is happening.)

**Steve_McNeil** · July 29th, 2015

I have created a github account and created a pull request with my modified version of the code.

I have been using the 4D mouse as my daily driver for over a month now.

Thank you again for your work, this tablet is serving me well.

**helgacecil** · March 11th, 2016

I'm using the wacom_serial5 driver since nearly 3 years for a wacom intuos2 on different hardware with also different distributions and it always had worked.

Its really great and I want to say big Thank you to the people who have been involved.

Since some time the wacom_serial4 four- driver is integrated into the kernel and I think this is a long overdue progress.

Unfortunately the serial5 -driver doesn't work since this happened anymore just like this.
Everytime I use the inputattach- command (sudo inputattach --wacom_v /dev/ttyS0) the wacom_serial4 modul kicks with in and the tablet isn't recognized(unknown wacom-model is shown in dmesg)

So if anyone else is running into this problem with a newer kernel,the solution is to blacklist the wacom_serial4 module.

**Ti-nérisson** · December 22nd, 2016

It works ! I had abandonned after the last time but today I thought Ï'd give it another try. What's different this time is I'm using debian Jessie instead of Wheezy and I only followed instruction from the first page of this thread and not from http://www.cipht.net/2011/07/02/waco...l-release.html . The first page of this thread doesn't use the command that didn't work for me the last time :

Code:

dpkg-buildpackage

Insead it uses :

Code:

make

sudo PREFIX=/usr make install

Don't know if that made any difference.

I was surprised that the tablet didn't need any additional configuration. I used to have to configure it in the xorg.conf file when it still existed.

Edit : By the way, I tried using the latest version of linuxconsoletools but it didn't work so I tried with linuxconsoletools-1.4.2 and it worked. Didn't try the versions in-between.

**Brent_Santin** · December 24th, 2016

Originally Posted by Ti-nérisson

It works ! I had abandonned after the last time but today I thought Ï'd give it another try. What's different this time is I'm using debian Jessie instead of Wheezy and I only followed instruction from the first page of this thread and not from http://www.cipht.net/2011/07/02/waco...l-release.html . The first page of this thread doesn't use the command that didn't work for me the last time :

Code:

dpkg-buildpackage

Insead it uses :

Code:

make

sudo PREFIX=/usr make install

Don't know if that made any difference.

I was surprised that the tablet didn't need any additional configuration. I used to have to configure it in the xorg.conf file when it still existed.

Edit : By the way, I tried using the latest version of linuxconsoletools but it didn't work so I tried with linuxconsoletools-1.4.2 and it worked. Didn't try the versions in-between.

Congratulations.

I've been trying for years. Now that Ubuntu 16.X.X. is out and the driver for serial tablets is supposed to be included in the kernal, I thought I'd give it a try....but honestly....that first page of this thread is a daunting mess for anyone who is not an advanced Linux user to try and understand. I am not new to computers. I grew up using the command line in many operating systems since the 1970s, but wow....I wish someone could write things out a little more clearly. The information on the first page is old and the author assumes the reader knows what all the terms mean (for instance....what is wacom_serial.ko? Where do I get it? Do I still need it now that the kernal is included?).

**xd0912r** · February 15th, 2017

I had the same problem to keep using a serial Intos2. Why has it not been integrated into the kernel yet ? Where to ask for its integration ?

**tokenrove** · February 16th, 2017

Hans de Goede was instrumental in getting the protocol IV driver integrated in the kernel, so perhaps you could contact him and persuade him to help get the protocol V driver in.

Also, it's worth noting there's a bug in the driver that ships with the kernel that prevents it from working with PenPartner devices, but I haven't tracked it down yet, not having one myself. Hopefully I'll have the time to work on this again soon and perhaps if someone was interested in doing a lot of testing, I could try to get the protocol V driver into the kernel as well.

**helgacecil** · October 18th, 2017

@tokenrove

Sorry, I saw this the first time today.

It's a long time ago, but if you still have the time and still are interessted to get the protocol V driver into the kernel I would really like to help with testing.
I'm no linux-expert , but wouldn't give up, as long you have the patience.

My wacom is a intuos2 .

**tokenrove** · October 18th, 2017

Hmm, this forum is a little janky and it's not clear to me if I've managed to respond to some private messages, so I'll also say here: I'm happy to help get the protocol V driver into the kernel; please email me at julian@cipht.net instead of contacting me through this forum, though. Thanks!