Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Getting graphics tablets to even be detected is sometimes a problem with Linux. So it’s nice to see not only a tablet that’s detected out of the box, but one from a company that’s developing a Linux driver.
Contents The box is very nicely presented. The lime-green inner sleeve is visible through small notches cut in the outer sleeve. Inside the inner sleeve is the tablet itself, USB cable, a hard tube, a rubber stopper, a free drawing glove, and the usual licenses and such like. The tablet itself is 14” x 8.5” x 0.5”, and the drawing area is 10” x 5.5”. The drawing area being ‘widescreen’ is perfect for most modern desktop resolutions (even multi-monitor like I use). Having a square drawing area (like I have with my Wacom Bamboo Touch) on a tablet with a widescreen monitor can cause problems with ratios. and the feeling that the pointer is moving too fast, or sliding. Middle left on the tablet is a silver ‘wheel’. This can be used with your finger and rotates smoothly. The provided lime-green stopper can be inserted into the hole of the dial to give you a more precise dial. Above and below the wheel are three buttons.
Inside the mysterious metal tube is the pen. You unscrew one end to retrieve the pen, and this cap can be used as a pen holder. The other end of the tube is unscrewed to reveal eight spare nibs. Spare nibs are always a good thing with a graphics tablet. The tube is an excellent pen protector. The pen is hexagonal and shaped to look like a pencil. This is one feature that I love about the pen. As in most cases, the pen includes a single button. One end of the pen has the drawing nib, the other end has the eraser. Installation
Connecting the tablet is as simple as plugging one end of the USB cable into the tablet, and the other end into a free USB port.
Whether your distro will detect the tablet automatically is a bit hit-and-miss, but don’t despair. Running:
lsusb
may show the tablet in a list of USB connected devices. For me, it just shows the ID number (28bd:0803). Fear not! Running:
xinput list
did it for me, and I can see it listed (previous page, bottom right). Remember those ID numbers (10 and 15 in my case) as you may need them if you want to run an xinput command to tweak the tablet or pen.
If, for whatever reason, you don’t see your tablet connected with lsusb or xinput, it may mean you need to install some drivers. There’s a Deco 01 driver in the current (as I write this review) DIGImend pack. You can grab this from: https://github.com/DIGImend/digimend-kernel-drivers/releases/tag/v8 DIGImend is a set of drivers for a vast range of tablets. It doesn’t include the Deco 02, but it does include the Deco 01 which I believe is enough to get the Deco 02 running on some distros.
Simply download the .deb file and double-click on it to install. You may need to reboot your system to have the drivers take effect.
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
So, what works in Linux? Well, the main things work: the tablet pressure sensitivity, and the pen nib. What doesn’t: the wheel, the buttons, and the eraser.
Pressure sensitivity is usually adjusted in the software you’re using. So if it’s GIMP, or (in my case) MyPaint, you’ll find the pressure settings in there. Tweak them to get to a comfortable level for you.
The DIGImend site has some excellent pages showing how to edit and enable pressure sensitivity in the most popular pieces of software: https://digimend.github.io/support In The Works
I’ve submitted the tablet data to the DIGImend team in the hope that they can get the Deco 02 fully working with their drivers. I’ve also been in contact with XP-PEN who currently have a beta driver on their site. It works only with Qt5.10 though. Ubuntu currently comes with Qt5.9 and won’t run the beta drivers. XP-PEN have told me that they’re still beavering away on the driver and want it to fully work in Linux. Conclusion
Even with the buttons and wheel not working, I give this tablet four out of five. The makers are supporting Linux and, to be honest, I never use shortcut buttons on a tablet. I always use keyboard shortcuts with my non-drawing hand.
Once I tweak those pressure sensitivity settings, I can see this tablet nudging out my trusty old Wacom Bamboo…
Digimend drivers: https://github.com/DIGImend/digimend-kernel-drivers/releases/tag/v8**