I only remember that with my current Ubuntu 10.10 my Wacom tablet (sadly only a small, ratty Bamboo) worked pretty much out of the box unlike what sometimes happened in older distros in the past. I installed the xserver-xorg-input-wacom in the GUI package manager that the commenter above mentioned, and then the tablet mostly worked once I plugged it in, including pressure sensitivity. I didn't have to fiddle with config files, iirc.