Best Graphics Tablet For Linux

One major chink in the Wacom armour is that they do not support the use of Linux out of the box. It does seem incredible to me, that a company with such a massive lead in this industry would ignore the Linux users, possibly a large chunk of their market.

However, they are helping an open source development of linux drivers for a selection of Wacom tablets – so they are not all evil after all.

Although applications such as Adobe Photoshop are not compatible with any other OS apart from Windows and OS X, there are other apps such as GIMP that work just as well on the “nix platform” and would benefit from the use of a tablet.

After all, a Mac and a Linux computer are essentially using the same guts to get things working, so there should be no excuse for not using a tablet on your linux distro.

But if you want to use a graphics tablet on your Linux machine straight away, which one do you go for that support it straight away without messing with potentially dodgy and unsupported drivers? Check out our list below of the best graphics tablets thaty work with Linux.

Linux Graphics Tablet – Bestsellers Right Now

The Bestselling linux graphics tablet Right Now Is The:

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  • This tablet is small and cheap enough for kids to use and learn their way into the world of digital art. You won’t need to worry that they are using an expensive product that they may break, as the PenPad is available at a really low price.
  • This graphics tablet is very slim, lightweight and portable – great for using every day, anywhere.
  • Don’t be fooled by it’s cheap price compared to more advanced tablets by Wacom. This product is very capable, with some people calling it “one of the best tablets ever”.
  • If you are a laptop user, the VT PenPad is ideal for you. Connected via USB, you don’t need to worry about plugging it into the mains. Also, it is designed to be lightweight and portable – perfect to pop into your laptop bag between meetings or lectures.
  • This tablet is a gift that would be great on the list of any traveler, professional, student or artist.

Top selling graphics tablets that are compatible with Linux out of the box:

  1. VT PenPad 7.7-Inch Graphic Pen Tablet (Black)
  2. DigiPro WP5540 5.5″ x 4″ USB Tablet with Stylus (Black)
  3. 8″ x 6″ DigiPro WP8060 USB Graphics Tablet w/Cordless Pen (Black)
  4. Adesso CyberTablet 6400 6″ X 4.5″ Graphics Tablet with 2 Button Pen and Wireless Mouse

The above list is the bestselling linux graphics tablets right now according to Amazon. All of the tablets listed above are available at incredible deals via the website, you just need to click through to see more information, reviews, technical specs and details.

Purchased already? Let us know in the comments section below which model you went for and which version/distribution of Linux you have.

7 thoughts on “Best Graphics Tablet For Linux”

  1. On the basis of your review, I got one of these tablets, and it seems great, so thank-you for the post, but I haven’t got it to work yet on my linux machine. Clicks are registered, but not movement of the pen tip across the tablet. Do you have any suggestions?

  2. You are right about the wacoms. I received one as a gift for my kids to use but they have a linux machine. Bemused: we already have a touch screen with drawing pen interface that works well… but thought i’d try the tablet anyway.

    wacom provide no Linux driver on their site for the device, but refer to an ‘archive package’. What archive package? – there isn’t one there appropriate. They also refer to a manual. What manual? No manual is there that i can see to download. No manual came with the device!

    Glad I have a receipt… Thanks for confirming my suspicions about wacom too. I now Know not to push anything too brown and sticky any further up this hill!

  3. I got the VEIKK model A50 from banggood for my daughter as she has a windows 10 nextbook convertable tablet and is following her parents down the path to starving artist-dom. Turns out that nextbook WONT run Sketchbook (the defacto raster drawing software in our house for the past few years. The windows drivers and button configurations ware installed on her system but no pressure sensitive programs will run on it…So I’m looking into getting her a surface pen system, meanwhile I would like to figure out how to get this working with Ubuntu 18.0.4. Just plugging it into the usb port gets the stylus working (without pressure support) and the most non-intuitive mismatch of button and touchpad programming out of the box. I’m becoming infatuated with Krita and doing a lot more in Gimp and can almost see the finish line. Meanwhile, the Spen on my Samsung Note 4 remains my favorite digital art tool, but mobile art software versions are sorely lacking by comparison..

  4. XP-Pen has an in-house linux driver, and up until last month (November 2021), it was pretty clunky, more like a beta, and it didn’t support tilt. Now it not only supports all features, it’s easy to install through package manager and easy to configure (or just take the defaults). Truly a plug’n’play experience now. My Artist 15.6 Pro is the right size and right price, works great with loads of linux apps including Krita, GIMP, MyPaint, Inkscape, Blender, and OpenToonz. They have RPM and Deb packages; my personal experience is with openSUSE. I’ve owned the thing for a year and had to mess with Digimend to get tilt support, finicky to get working, kernel updtes broke it, and had to assign button functions via config file. So I started using the beta driver from XP-Pen when it wouldn’t autostart and needed to open as superuser, and didn’t support tilt. At that time I’d still have recommended it given the choices for linux users but with the new driver I don’t feel like the step child anymore.

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