LOL… I did not get to that part. Thanks @easyt50 for clearing that up. ::
Sheila
ARCH owes no heritage or allegiance with Canonical / Ubuntu. It doesn’t have any Debian heritage either (Ubuntu is a Debian derivative) AFAIK. It’s it’s own thing… own package management system (pacman / AUR)…
I think OpenSUSE used to leverage SLES (Suse Linux Enterprise Server) off Red Hat (not corporate Red Hat, but open source “free” version) hence why they use the RPM package format.
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Well, got the 1st of 2 pens ordered and despite the lack of instructions, the pen worked perfectly in Xfce and Cinnamon. I have the Lenovo Digital Pen 2 coming tomorrow, and it was half the price of this one, but wasn’t as highly reviewed, so we will see.
Bottom line, Linux absolutely works on a touch screen with pen/ink on this Yoga 6. I have 60 days to decide if I am keeping it so will be using it a couple of weeks to know for sure, mainly due to the larger size, but so far, I do think I could get used to the size. Am still tempted to look at the Starlink since I found out it supports pen & ink, but not sure if the AMD version is offered yet.
Thanks for everyone’s help.
Sheila
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Just an update on this thread after my last post. YES, pen and ink work in any distro I have tried. Open up Xournal, Rnote, etc. and pen instantly works to draw onscreen. NO, touchscreen/tablet mode fails to auto rotate screen as well as provide the pop up onscreen keyboard (OSK) necessary to type in tablet mode. The only complete working desktop is GNOME on Linux Mint. Even Xfce did not rotate the screen nor provide the OSK.
So while it will take me a while to be able to navigate this layout (very different from Cinnamon & KDE), I successfully completed an estimate today, walking the customer’s property, drawing, measuring, etc.
The only other issue I am sometimes having is system freeze on suspend, but after the estimate today, I did not close the laptop to ensure it stayed on (it was plugged in to ensure it did not die) yet when I got home, the drawing had disappeared and I was unable to get the system to respond without a restart, which, of course, lost my drawing. Thankfully, I remembered every measurement and was able to recreate it at home.
When the system stops responding in these instances, you see the login screen, but all icons are displayed as boxes and no OSK; and/or the time is displayed like a screensaver but it will not return to the login.
There were several forum mentions and github issues with the same complaints on the last model of my Yoga 6, but most were with desktops other than GNOME. This tablet is new enough that I probably should add my specific driver, etc. to the issues on this page or start a new one as my Wacom HID is 52FB vs 52FA. But I do not know enough on how to do that yet.
Sheila
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If I were walking around a project and making pen notes on a drawing, I’d set an autosave (every 5 minutes) or do it manually, to prevent this. Glad you remembered your data–the HDD between your ears works better than mine!
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Tablet support on Linux has always been a bit dodgy… I bought an external pen tablet display (HDMI and USB C) in 2021 - “XP Pen” - they had actual Linux drivers (in DEB and RPM) I was able to download and install… But it leaves something to be desired - i.e. far from perfect. And just after I bought it - Wacom slashed their prices on the base model pen display (none of these have touch - just stylus).
Prior to this - I had a Lenovo “hybrid” (it’s a tablet - AND - a laptop) Thinkpad X221 and the only distro I found that supported (to some extent - far from perfect) was Xubuntu - “Ubuntu” itself wouldn’t boot - and I couldn’t be arsed to figure out why…
I also have a ThinkPad X61 - which was Pen only (no touch) - my daughters got it for me back in the late 2010’s off e-bay… Only ever ran Windows XP or 7 on it (that was when I still dual booted) and used Autodesk Sketchbook Pro software on it.
I used to draw and doodle all the time…
Something happened to me - I blame a head injury in early 2017 - and I just don’t have the mojo or muse to draw or doodle any more… Can’t explain it… I’ve bought drawing tablets (e.g. the XP Pen above, I have 2 iPads and an Apple Pencil). My Avatar on here was a “self portrait” caricature I did around 2013 / 2014 on a Galaxy Note Pro 10.1" tablet (using AutoDesk Sketchbook Pro) ** .
** AutoSketch was originally developed by Alias WaveFront, who were owned by Silicon Graphics, now defunct, but at one time, famous, for their GRAPHICAL UNIX workstations (see Jurassic Park) - anyway - SGI got trounced and sliced in half, drawn and quartered - Autodesk bought Maya and got the code for SketchBook in the deal…
Serious hollywood studios, and the likes of Industrial Light and Magic (not to mention Pixar) - only used UNIX (and some Apple gear) for CGI - NOBODY used shonky DOS systems - except for the studio that did “Lawnmower Man” - they used “high end” 486 systems, and Autodesk’s “3D Studio” to render the shonky CGI used in Lawnmower Man… IT was so bad, Stephen King sued the studio to have his name taken off the movie title…
TL;DR - pen stuff is usually, mostly okay on Linux systems - touch is still pretty dodgy and I wouldn’t rely on it (to be honest, it’s pretty shonky on MS Windows too - touch only seems to work on interfaces designed for it - i.e. iOS and Android).
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