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Why Drawing Tablet Brands Won't Collaborate on Linux Floss Drivers

232 points by Tomte

by ndiddy

4 subcomments

> Well, because it's true: many of the repositories are named after "Wacom". It's a historical legacy on GNU/Linux. It's also a decade-long debate that these repos should be renamed differently.
If the project being named after Wacom is actively causing other companies to not contribute because they believe it’s a Wacom lead project and they’d be helping a competitor, I don’t understand why this is even a debate vs. just changing the name to something vendor neutral.

by kouteiheika

1 subcomments

> Well, because it's true: many of the repositories are named after "Wacom". It's a historical legacy on GNU/Linux. It's also a decade-long debate that these repos should be renamed differently.
Okay... let's rename them then? I know it's silly, but, well, we've went through the whole pointless `master` -> `main` branch rename in so many projects which was much more disruptive -- at least this one could serve a purpose?

by giancarlostoro

1 subcomments

Feel free to reply to that email and let them know that your readers just discovered that instead of considering Wacom alternatives, they now believe that Wacom is the only brand they can use on Linux. It seems like the only valid response to that is to give money to the people who make their hardware usable on my software.

by egypturnash

0 subcomment

It’s not like they collaborate on closed-source drivers either. If you have two different brands of tablets in your life then you get to deal with weird bugs from their drivers fighting. And if you’re on Windows they may fight with MS’ attempt at default drivers, too.

by fouc

2 subcomments

fork and rename the https://github.com/linuxwacom/wacom-hid-descriptors project, strip all wacom references. then share w/ the other tablet brands. problem solved.

by edg5000

0 subcomment

All they have to do is publish a technical PDF with descriptors and stuff. That's it. Why not ask for that? They should see the benefit of their product "just working" with FOSS systems.

by abdullahkhalids

5 subcomments

by AlienRobot

2 subcomments

One thing I miss from Windows is the tablet driver GUI. "cinnamon-settings wacom" doesn't let me map buttons to keys (important for software like FireAlpaca, which pans with the space key instead of supporting the middle mouse button like everybody else in the planet), and it also doesn't let me remap the tablet area to arbitrary screen coordinates. These are things I could do on Windows that I can't do through the GUI.
I wrote a Python script to do it using xsetwacom, but I don't know if it would work for anybody else. I don't know if xsetwacom is only for wacom tablets, or if xsetwacom is only for X11 (I'm not on Wayland yet).

by edflsafoiewq

0 subcomment

"Oh gee, we'd definitely contribute to the open source driver if the repo name didn't have wacom in it." Yeah, uh huh.

by greatgib

0 subcomment

To me, this response shows that there is a great opportunity to convince them with things that will bring them good publicity. Things like "drivers" with their name, etc...

by jimmypk

0 subcomment

by pellmellism

0 subcomment

by TekMol

2 subcomments

Could AI do it?
Would it work to give the Windows driver to an LLM and tell it to analyze it and write a Linux driver?

by WillAdams

0 subcomment