This is a collection of graphics tablet drivers for the Linux kernel, produced and maintained by the DIGImend project. We maintain this package to provide newer drivers for older kernel versions which don't have them, and to allow users to test new drivers before we contribute them to the mainline kernel.

See the list of supported tablets on the project website.

Consider becoming a patron of the project maintainer to help make more tablets work with Linux.

Kernel v3.5 or newer is required. Kernel headers or the build tree for the running kernel are required.

On Debian-derived systems (such as Ubuntu and Mint) headers can be obtained by installing appropriate version of linux-headers package. On Red Hat and derived distributions the package name is kernel-headers.

Download appropriate files for one of the releases from the releases page. The "Download ZIP" link on the right of the GitHub page leads to the source of the current development version, use it only if you know what you're doing.

If you're using Debian or a derived distro, such as Ubuntu, please try using the experimental .deb package. If it works for you, this will remove the need to reinstall the driver after each kernel upgrade.

If you're not using a Debian-based distro, or the .deb package didn't work, you can try installing the driver using DKMS directly, if you know how, or manually as described below.

If you know how to use DKMS, you can try installing the package with it directly, employing the experimental DKMS support.

If you're installing Debian packages, or installing source packages with DKMS directly, you might hit a bug in DKMS which prevents some of the driver modules from installing. If you do, you will see a message like this while trying to install the drivers:

hid-uclogic.ko:
Running module version sanity check.
Error! Module version 7 for hid-uclogic.ko
is not newer than what is already found in kernel 4.9.0-5-amd64 (7).
You may override by specifying --force.

For details see upstream pull-request fixing the issue.

To fix that you can apply the patch linked above yourself, or execute the below command:

sudo sed -i -e 's/\<unset res$/res=()/' /usr/sbin/dkms

Be aware that the operation the above command does is inexact, and might not work, or might break DKMS. You've been warned. In any case, simply reinstall DKMS to restore it if something goes wrong.

To build the drivers run make in the package's directory.

Please disregard the possible "Can't read private key" messages. They don't affect the driver functionality, unless you set up kernel module signature verification.

To install the drivers run sudo make install in the package's directory.

Make sure the previous versions of the drivers were unloaded from memory with the following commands:

sudo rmmod hid-kye
sudo rmmod hid-uclogic
sudo rmmod hid-huion

and reconnect the tablet. Or simply reboot the machine.

Note that if you built and installed the driver with make and sudo make install as described above, you will need to do that again after each kernel upgrade.

On Ubuntu, and possibly other distros, the driver installation process attempts to cryptographically sign the modules being installed. Most of the users don't have the system configured to support this, so during the installation they get error messages similar to these:

  INSTALL /home/danghai/digimend-kernel-drivers/hid-uclogic.ko
At main.c:160:
- SSL error:02001002:system library:fopen:No such file or directory: bss_file.c:175
- SSL error:2006D080:BIO routines:BIO_new_file:no such file: bss_file.c:178
sign-file: certs/signing_key.pem: No such file or directory

The above basically means that the system tried to sign the module, but couldn't find the key to sign with. This does not interfere with module installation and operation and can safely be ignored. That is, unless you set up module signature verification, but then you would recognize the problem, and would be able to fix it.

If your tablet is supported, its pen will work after installing these drivers, and applications will be able to recognize the pressure after appropriate configuration. Refer to the application documentation for instructions on how to do that, but in most cases it is enough to simply enable the tablet in the application.

By default, your tablet will be handled by the libinput X.org driver (xserver-xorg-input-libinput package in Debian, Ubuntu, and derived distros, xorg-x11-drv-libinput in Fedora and derived distros). This driver will support reporting pen coordinates and pressure, and some frame controls.

However, it will not support configuring pressure curves, keyboard shortcuts for buttons on the tablet frame, or other advanced features. For that you will need to use the Wacom driver. To do that, make sure you have the package installed (xserver-xorg-input-wacom or xorg-x11-drv-wacom) and write the following to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-tablet.conf file:

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "Tablet"
    Driver "wacom"
    MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
    MatchUSBID "<VID>:<PID>"
EndSection

Here <VID> and <PID> would be the tablet's USB vendor and product IDs respectively, as seen in lsusb output. E.g. if your tablet's line in lsusb output looks like this:

Bus 001 Device 003: ID 256c:006e

then your /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-tablet.conf should look like this:

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "Tablet"
    Driver "wacom"
    MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
    MatchUSBID "256c:006e"
EndSection

Next, log out of your X.org session and login again, or simply restart your machine. To verify that the tablet is now handled by the Wacom driver execute xsetwacom list and check that your tablet appears in the output at least once.

After that, you should be able to use the xsetwacom tool to configure the advanced features.

For example, if xsetwacom list produces this output:

HID 256c:006e Pad pad                   id: 9   type: PAD
HID 256c:006e Pen stylus                id: 10  type: STYLUS

you can assign Ctrl-Z ("Undo") key combination to the fifth button on the tablet frame this way (note that buttons are numbered 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, and so on):

xsetwacom set "HID 256c:006e Pad pad" button 9 key Ctrl Z

and if xrandr output has this line:

HDMI-3 connected 1440x900+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 408mm x 255mm

you can restrict the tablet input to that display like this:

xsetwacom set "HID 256c:006e Pen stylus" MapToOutput HDMI-3

See the xsetwacom man page for more parameters and details.

Note that so far, in most cases, graphical Wacom tablet configuration tools won't work with non-Wacom tablets.

To uninstall a manually-installed package execute make uninstall as root in the package source directory.

If you're a developer, or simply want to install a development version of the drivers as a Debian package, make sure you have dpkg-dev, debhelper, and dkms packages installed, and run the following command in the source directory:

dpkg-buildpackage -b -uc

The resulting package files will be written to the parent directory.

If you've manually installed a version of this package before, please uninstall it before installing another one, using the sources you used for installation.

If you have any problems with the drivers, look through HOWTOs on the project website, and search for solutions and report new issues at the issues page on GitHub. Join the #DIGImend channel on irc.freenode.net to discuss the drivers, tablets, development, to ask for help, and to help others!