In a previous post, I learned how to compile driver support for my girlfriend's Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch. This is less than satisfactory for some, so I was pointed to Martin Owens Wacom drivers in his PPA.

Run the following in the terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal):
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:doctormo/wacom-plus
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wacom-dkms xf86-input-wacom

Then reboot.

Don’t forget to register your tablet at the Wacom website, because you can specify Linux as your operating system. We might get even better support if a lot of people do this.

Good luck!

I recently purchased a Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch for my girlfriend's birthday so she can transition her artwork from pen to vector.

Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch

I plugged the device in hoping it would be plug & play but unfortunately it wasn't. I found a post by Frank Groeneveld which compiles newer Wacom support, critical for the product to work in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx.

As of this writing, his post is more than four months old and two newer releases of the driver have been posted, so I decided to update his script and post it for others.

sudo apt-get install build-essential libx11-dev libxi-dev x11proto-input-dev xserver-xorg-dev tk8.4-dev tcl8.4-dev libncurses5-dev; wget http://iweb.dl.sourceforge.net/project/linuxwacom/linuxwacom/0.8.8-8/linuxwacom-0.8.8-8.tar.bz2; tar -xf linuxwacom-0.8.8-8.tar.bz2; cd linuxwacom-*; ./configure --enable-wacom; make; sudo cp wacom.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/input/tablet/; sudo rmmod wacom; sudo modprobe wacom; echo "modprobe" | sudo tee -a /etc/modules

You should be able to copy and paste the code above and it will install necessary software needed to compile the new driver, download and compile the new driver and enable the driver automatically for use immediately and after reboot.

I tested this script on my ASUS K72JR and my girlfriend's HP Pavilion 6000. If successful, your Wacom tablet should be able accept pen, touch (or combined if available) input.

As Frank states, "don’t forget to register your tablet at the Wacom website, because you can specify Linux as your operating system. We might get even better support if a lot of people do this."

Good luck!