wacom tablet help with GIMP in linux?

[delfinnium]

Hi everyone - I'm a newbie to Linux, and have installed linux mint 9 on my netbook so I now have a dual-boot OS (with Windows 7 Basic).

I also just obtained a wacom intuos 4, and have been reading this website to try and figure out how to get my wacom to have pressure levels and stuff in GIMP. So far I haven't been successful - I haven't even managed to find the x-server file or anything. I'm really really new to this (I've only managed to find the wacom package to install) so if anyone has any ideas on slightly clearer methods or simpler instructions to make the wacom tablet work like a wacom instead of merely a mouse?

I'll be so grateful - I really don't like firing up windows now, it takes too long.

Comments

[jana]

You might also want to ask over at gimp_gate, I know there are a few people who use GIMP and have experience with a wacom tablet under Linux.

[pixel]

I don't know the first thing about tablets or mint, so I'm just skimming the link you provided. You should have the xserver-xorg-input-wacom in the mint repositories (it's in ubuntu, and mint is derived from ubuntu so this seems pretty likely.)

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-wacom

You can log out/in to restart the x server.

Modern distros don't usually use the X.conf files anymore, so you're going to have more luck with these directions: http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/linuxwacom/index.php?title=Xorg.conf.d

You'll probably need to make the directory they're referencing:

sudo mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d

When it comes time to edit files in that directory, you're going to have permission problems...use gedit to edit with:

gksudo gedit /path/and/name/of/file

Not a lot of detail, but I hope it's enough to get you moving :)

[ratcreature]

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.