Wacom Tablets
If you are running Ubuntu GNOME desktop environments, you have a Wacom control panel already. If you’re on Ubuntu MATE, or a number of other Ubuntu distros, you may not have a Wacom control panel at all. In any case, some graphics tablet settings are hidden on all systems.
Jason C. McDonald wrote a few scripts for controlling Wacom tablet settings. These are likely to be useful on any Ubuntu system.
Official documentation and information is available on each script’s GitHub repository.
Installing Wacom Scripts
We will install all of the special Wacom scripts from their respective GitHub repositories.
sudo apt install pcregrep
cd /usr/local/bin
sudo wget https://github.com/CodeMouse92/WacomRotate/raw/master/wacomrotate
sudo wget https://github.com/CodeMouse92/WacomTouchToggle/raw/master/wacomtouch
sudo wget https://github.com/CodeMouse92/WacomDisplayMap/raw/master/wacommap
sudo chmod +x wacom*
You can now run any of the scripts directly in the terminal.
Using Wacom Scripts
Touch Toggle
If your Wacom tablet doubles as a touchpad, you’ll often want to disable this feature before you start drawing. That way, your hand won’t throw off your pen.
Turning touch off is simple. In a terminal, run…
wacomtouch off
To turn it back on, run…
wacomtouch on
Display Map
Ubuntu and Linux Mint offer control panels to map your tablet to a particular monitor. On Ubuntu MATE and many other distros, however, you must do this via the command line.
Simply run…
wacommap
When prompted, select a display. LVDS is usually your laptop screen, while
VGA or HDMI is an external monitor. Just enter the number for the
display you want to map to.
Rotate
If you want to use your tablet in any orientation other than its default, you can rotate it via script.
Run one of the following commands in the terminal, depending on what you want…
# Set to portrait mode.
wacomrotate p
# Set to left-hand landscape mode (opposite the default)
wacomrotate lf
# Set to upside-down portrait mode.
wacomrotate pf
# Set back to the default.
wacomrotate l