My Precious

New Toy: Wacom Graphire4 Tablet

February 2nd, 2007 by SmrtSkoso

For a long time I’ve wanted to have a graphics tablet to draw with. So, a couple of days ago I’ve decided to finally order one. Yesterday I received it. It’s a Wacom Graphire4 Tablet.

The Mandriva Linux 2007 operating system recognised it almost out of the box. All I had to do was to install the package named linuxwacom and restart the computer. After that the tablet worked almost correctly. In order to get it to work properly I had to open the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf and change the lines for three input device sections (Eraser1, Cursor1, Stylus1) from
Option “Device” “/dev/input/event0”
to
Option “Device” “/dev/input/event2“.

I’ve tried the tablet with three graphics applications: Krita (you enable and configure the tablet by going to Settings > Configure Krita > Tablet), GIMP (File > Preferences > Input Devices > Configure Extended Input Devices) and Inkscape (File > Input Devices). There is a bug in GIMP. When you draw with the pen and move over the rulers, GIMP crashes. Other than that it works quite well.

At first it’s a bit of a weird feeling drawing with the pen, but you quickly get used to it. It’s much more practical than using the mouse. All in all, I’m extremely happy with the purchase and I highly recommend Wacom tablet also because it works well in Linux.

   Post in Personal, Graphics