Ubuntu – Wacom tablet: slow tracking speed – Ubuntu 17.10

17.10mousetablettouchpadwacom

I got an Intuos Wacom tablet and am trying to use it as a touchpad on Ubuntu 17.10, but the cursor speed is too slow.

I tried the settings but even if I set it to the fastest possible, it is still not fast enough (like half or 2/3 of what I got with the default speed for this same tablet on Windows or macOS, so I'm assuming I'm not asking something too far-fetched).

I found this answer How to change pen movement speed on wacom tablet? , but there's nothing related to speed on 'xsetwacom –list parameters' and the 'xinput' command outputs nothing – I'm asking myself if it has something to do with the switch from X to Wayland on 17.10, but, still, any ideas on how to solve this?

For you to have an idea, it takes me about three complete downward gestures to go from top to bottom on my screen. I'm using this because of RSI, but this way it'll probably end up getting worse…

Best Answer

You need to adjust the X server's pointer acceleration options for the device. The Wacom driver stopped providing its own (redundant/crude) acceleration options all the way back in late 2009.

There are three pointer acceleration options of interest that can be adjusted at runtime with the xinput utility:

$ xinput set-int-prop <device> "Device Accel Profile" 8 <int>
$ xinput set-float-prop <device> "Device Accel Constant Deceleration" <float>
$ xinput set-float-prop <device> "Device Accel Adaptive Deceleration" <float>

You can see the current values of these and other device properties by running xinput list-props <device>. You'll may notice a "Device Accel Velocity Scaling" property in the output as well -- this knob doesn't do what you might think and should generally be left alone. (For the curious: it should be set to 1000.0/ExpectedRate where ExpectedRate is the rate in Hz at which the input device sends events; the Intuos tablets send touch events at ~100Hz).

To speed up your pointer, first try decreasing the "Constant Deceleration" value. If necessary, you can make it less than 1. At some point this should cause the cursor to move fast enough. If you loose the ability to position the cursor precisely with slow movements afterwards, try increasing the "Adaptive Deceleration". If no amount of tweaking seems to let you both move the pointer quickly across the whole screen and move it slowly in a small area, you should try reseting both properties to 1.0 and then changing the acceleration profile.

These options are more fully documented in the man pages (run man xorg.conf and search for the "POINTER ACCELERATION" section, or try reading this online copy). You'll definitely need to experiment to find a good setting, since it's more than just a single "faster/slower" knob.

Once you find the settings you like you can either save the commands to a script that you can run whenever you want, or create an "xorg.conf snippet" which will automatically apply the settings whenever the tablet is connected. Such a snippet might look like the following and be saved as "/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-wacom-overrides.conf":

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "Wacom Tablet Overrides"
    MatchDriver "wacom"
    Option "AccelerationProfile" "<int>"
    Option "ConstantDeceleration" "<int>"
    Option "AdaptiveDeceleration" "<int>"
EndSection

Note that it is possible that the desktop environment may override settings specified in xorg.conf.d. If this happens, you may have to use the script instead.

Solution #1

I'd suggest you check first if your tablet supports the xsetwacom speed parameter. To do this enter the terminal command:

xsetwacom --list parameters

This will output a list of possible xsetwacom parameters to set. Look for one called Speed or SpeedLevel. To slow the cursor movement speed down, set this parameter to a fraction of 1 (it is recommended not to go to far to down to 0), and to speed it up set this to a multiplication of 1. So for example to half the movement speed you'd do:

xsetwacom set <device id> Speed 0.5

You can find the device id by executing xsetwacom --list devices. To have these changes set every time you boot, add that line to your .xinitrc file located in your home folder.

Solution #2 (worked for me, Intuos S)

If xsetwacom doesn't work, another, probably better way to do it is by using xinput. First detect the id's of your tablet again, by executing:

xinput list | grep Wacom

You should now see a couple of id's, the most important are stylus and eraser. Then, find the attributes that set the constant deceleration, by executing this for as many device id's as you have (to exit press Ctrl+C):

xinput watch-props <device id>

You should see something like this in there:

Device Accel Constant Deceleration (284):   1.000000

The attribute's id is that number (in this case 284) at the end of the name. Now in order to slow down the tablet movement, increase this number by executing:

xinput set-prop <device id> <attribute id> <deceleration factor>

An example:

xinput set-prop 13 284 2.5 && xinput set-prop 15 284 2.5

In this case, my stylus movement was device id 13 and my eraser id 15 so I set them both to 2.5, which as far as I could tell about halved the movement speed.

Again, these settings aren't saved at shutdown, so the best way is to have these settings be applied every time you boot. There are many ways to accomplish this, but an exapmle would be adding this command to you .xinitrc in your home folder. If this doesn't work, look for another way to have a command executed at boot on the internet.

Sources and credits:

EDIT #1: Added 2nd solution which worked better for myself.

EDIT #2: Grammar and sources

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Wacom Intuos Pro PTH-451/K “Tablet not detected”

Ubuntu – How to change pen movement speed on wacom tablet

Solution #1

Solution #2 (worked for me, Intuos S)

Related Question