The TC4200 works well in Linux. I've only tried it on Kubuntu 7.10 so I can't speak for other distros but most everything worked fine out of the box. Hibernate and Suspend "just worked". To get the pen working I just had to uncomment the wacom related lines in xorg.conf which are marked clearly as to what they are for.
Screen rotation was kind of odd though. KDE's screen rotation worked, but I wanted to be able to press the presentation button and have it rotate into tablet mode. I found and modified a script and this was the result:
Code:
#!/bin/bash
# On the HP, rotation is (normally) CW or NORMAL
x_min=0
x_max=24700
y_min=0
y_max=18520
function ROTATE() {
curr=$(xrandr | grep LVDS | cut -d " " -f4 | sed -e 's/(//')
case $curr in
normal)
TABLET
;;
*)
NORMAL
;;
esac
}
function PORTRAIT() {
#xsetwacom set eraser BottomX $x_max
#xsetwacom set eraser BottomY $y_max
echo portrait
}
function LANDSCAPE() {
#xsetwacom set eraser BottomX $y_max
#xsetwacom set eraser BottomY $x_max
echo landscape
}
function NORMAL() {
xrandr -o normal
xsetwacom set stylus Rotate NONE
xsetwacom set eraser Rotate NONE
PORTRAIT
#killall xvkbd
}
function CCW() {
xrandr -o left
xsetwacom set stylus Rotate CCW
xsetwacom set eraser Rotate CCW
LANDSCAPE
}
function CW() {
xrandr -o right
xsetwacom set stylus Rotate CW
xsetwacom set eraser Rotate CW
LANDSCAPE
}
function TABLET() {
xrandr -o right
xsetwacom set stylus Rotate CW
xsetwacom set eraser Rotate CW
LANDSCAPE
#xvkbd -no-jump-pointer
}
function INVERT() {
xrandr -o inverted
xsetwacom set stylus Rotate half
xsetwacom set eraser Rotate half
LANDSCAPE
}
case $1 in
-l)
CCW
;;
-r)
CW
;;
-n)
NORMAL
;;
-i)
INVERT
;;
-t)
TABLET
;;
*)
ROTATE
;;
esac
This script should be reasonably self explanatory. If it isn't let me know and I'll try and explain.
Lastly, the pen has a button to right click with which didn't work right out. I had to add
Option "Button2" "3" to the stylus, eraser, and cursor wacom sections in my xorg.conf file.
I still don't have the eraser working, when I turn the pen over it just draws another line same as the tip. However, from what I've been reading it can be done but can act strange when using the erase end in non-pen aware apps.
One last thing, if you want to have good hand writing recognition take a look at
Cellwriter. It isn't in the apt repos but their deb package works on Kubuntu just fine and I imagine on Ubuntu too.
All in all it's a good little laptop with Linux. I'm pleased with it.
