I recently purchased a Wacom Bamboo and wanted to get it working in Ubuntu 10.04, but it did not work right away. After much searching (and realizing that I did not want to compile anything) I figured out an easy way to make it work by solving another problem.

Basically alls you have to do is open the Synaptic Package Manager under System>Administration search "wacom" and some packages pop-up (a grand total of 4 packages on my system, 2 were already installed and did not have anything to do with what I was trying to accomplish). I had to update 1 of them (xserver-xorg-input-wacom) and install another (wacom-dkms).

The tablet does not work perfectly, but it still works and is still fun to use. None of the touch features nor the buttons on the side work. Also after every time I tap the surface for a click or double click, I have to take the pen far enough away from the tablet that the light again turns white before I can move the cursor without dragging.

I'll still be doing my heavy photo editing in winBLOWS xPee, but I hope this can help someone else.