Reference

Drivers & Components

Tablet data is (or can be) handled by numerous components beyond the scope of this documentation. What follows is a list of other Linux drivers and components which may be relevant in some scenarios. Issues with how the tablet performs may be triggered by any of these components.

Component	Role	Used By	Status	Relevant Maintainers / Developers	Purpose
hid-generic	Kernel driver	Linux kernel	Active	Jiri Kosina, Benjamin Tissorires	General-purpose input driver. Handles keyboards, mice, tablets, etc.
wacom	Kernel driver	Linux kernel	Active	Ping Cheng, Jason Gerecke, Aaron Skomra	Wacom-specific input driver. Handles USB, Bluetooth, and I2C Wacom devices with VID = 0x056A.
w8001	Kernel driver	Linux kernel	Deprecated	Ping Cheng, Jason Gerecke, Aaron Skomra	Old Wacom-specific input driver. Handles old tablet PC devices which connect over serial / UART
wacom_i2c	Kernel driver	Linux kernel	Active	Tatsunosuke Tobita	Wacom-specific input driver. Handles tablet PC devices which connect over I2C on older Linux kernels, especially on Android.
wacom_serial4	Kernel driver	Linux kernel	Deprecated	Julian Squires, Hans de Goede	Old Wacom-specific input driver. Handles old peripheral devices which connect over serial / UART.
input-wacom	Kernel driver	Linux kernel	Active	Ping Cheng, Jason Gerecke, Aaron Skomra	Out-of-tree backport for older kernels which would benefit from up-to-date versions of the wacom and w8001 drivers.
xf86-input-libinput	Userspace driver	X.Org server	Active	Peter Hutterer	General-purpose input driver. Handles keyboards, mice, tablets, etc. Used when running an Xorg desktop.
xwayland	Userspace driver	X.Org server	Active	Peter Hutterer, Jason Gerecke	General-purpose input driver. Handles keyboards, mice tablets, etc. Used when running X11 programs under Wayland.
xf86-input-wacom	Userspace driver	X.Org server	Active	Ping Cheng, Jason Gerecke, Aaron Skomra	Tablet input driver. Primarily designed for use with Wacom tablets, but also compatible with some non-Wacom hardware.
xf86-input-evdev	Userspace driver	X.Org server	Deprecated	Peter Hutterer	Old general-purpose input driver. Handles keyboards, mice, tablets, etc. Replaced by xf86-input-libinput.
Xorg	Display server	GNOME, KDE, etc.	Active	Peter Hutterer, Ping Cheng, Jason Gerecke, Aaron Skomra	Display server used almost universally on Linux systems until about 2018. Slowly being replaced by Wayland-based compositors.
Mutter	Desktop compositor	GNOME	Active	Carlos Garnacho, Bastien Nocera	Compositor for X11 and Wayland environments which underlies the GNOME desktop.
KWin	Desktop compositor	KDE	Active	KDE	Compositor for X11 and Wayland environments which underlies the KDE Plasma desktop.
Sway	Desktop compositor	Sway	Active	Drew DeVault	Compositor for an i3-like tiling window environment for Wayland.
Chrome OS	Display server	Chrome OS	Active	Google	Display server for the Chrome OS operating system. Not entirely clear what the name of the responsible software is.
Android	Display server	Android	Active	Google	Display server for the Android operating system. Not entirely clear what the name of the responsible software is.
libwacom	Helper library	GNOME Control Center, KDE Wacom Tablet	Active	Peter Hutterer, Ping Cheng, Jason Gerecke, Aaron Skomra	Provides access to a database of tablet properties. Used to e.g. get button layout by control panels.
libinput	Helper library	Mutter, Sway, etc.	Active	Peter Hutterer	Provides access to a database of tablet properties. Used to e.g. get button layout by control panels.
GTK / GDK	Toolkit library	GNOME, GIMP, MyPaint, etc.	Active	Carlos Garnacho, Bastien Nocera	Toolkit library most closely associated with the GNOME desktop, but also used by applications like GIMP and Firefox.
Qt	Toolkit library	KDE, Krita, etc.	Active	The Qt Company	Toolkit library most closely associated with the KDE desktop, but also used by applications like Krita and Google Chrome.
xsetwacom	Configuration tool	Any X11 desktop	Active	Ping Cheng, Jason Gerecke, Aaron Skomra	Command-line utility for configuring the xf86-input-wacom driver in any X.Org desktop environment.
GNOME Control Center	Configuration tool	GNOME	Active	Carlos Garnacho, Bastien Nocera, Jason Gerecke	Graphical utility for configuring the xf86-input-wacom / libinput driver in the GNOME desktop environment.
kcm-wacomtablet	Configuration tool	KDE	Active	Valeriy Malov	Graphical utility for configuring the xf86-input-wacom driver in the KDE desktop environment.
Wacom EKR Settings Utility	Configuration tool	Any X11 desktop	Active	Wacom	Graphical utility for configuring the xf86-input-wacom driver in any X.Org desktop environment.