I mentioned the only minor gripe I had using it was that while it worked out of the box - if you're on a dual/more monitor setup, the tablet surface will interact with the entirety of all of your monitors instead of just your primary monitor. This was a non-issue on my #SteamDeck setup since I only use a single monitor for that. On my main #EndeavourOS/#ArchLinux based PC though I do use a dual monitor setup with it. The good news is, if you do use a dual monitor setup or more, there's an official driver by XP-Pen you could install from the #AUR called xp-pen-tablet.
I installed it, restarted my PC, and now the XP-Pen Driver UI utility starts upon boot and through its nice GUI, I was able to easily configure the tablet to only interact with my primary monitor instead of both my monitors. For a cheap lil tablet to have THIS working THIS well on Linux, I couldn't be happier 😭 There are other configuration options I could tinker with in the app such as setting the pressure sensitivity of the pen, or what the buttons on the pen are binded to, but I just couldn't be bothered and really only needed this. Big W XP-Pen.
Dude. I've always used the default (on #Plasma, I think) #Okular app for my PDF needs on #Linux, and it's been fine and I'll continue to do so. But annotation isn't its best quality.
I needed to sign some documents today and was looking into any apps I could use my cheap "drawing tablet" with to annotate. You could sorta make do with Okular for that but it's "drawing" annotation isn't really designed for anything but to draw lines - so everything will be "blocky" or "jagged" rather than appear natural/free flow.
Looking up online people kept recommending #Xournal, I ignored it too many times just bcos of its very Linuxy name lmao but IT'S SO GOOD and is exactly what I (and YOU) need. You could use it to draw/write notes as you would on say, an #iPad, or even to draw/annotate on PDFs. I've just started using it at the time of writing this but I love it already and can see that it's very capable, and intuitive.
I literally just connected my drawing tablet to my #SteamDeck dock, installed the Xournal app from the #Discover app store as a #Flatpak, open up my PDF with Xournal and started writing and exported my doc as a PDF. People need to know about this app.
If anyone's curious, the drawing tablet (I keep italicising this because IDK if it's actually good enough for REAL artists lol instead of a casual user like me) I use that I find very affordable, and that is definitely way more than good enough for me is the #XPPen Star G640.
I got it 2 years ago for 103 MYR (~22 USD), but today without any discounts I see that it's come down to just 79.99 MYR (~17.27 USD). I initially got it just to play the game, #OSU, and it's been perfect for that. Since then I've doodled around with it here and there on #Krita and I honestly love it. I definitely would have loved to use it more tho to digitally annotate documents, so I'm super happy I've the perfect app to use it with now!
It works perfectly on my main #EndeavourOS (#ArchLinux based) PC, and also my #SteamDeck pretty much plug and play. The only complaint I have is that when used on a 2-monitor setup, the surface of the tablet is then shared/used for the entire length of the two monitors (so left most area of the tablet interacts with the left monitor, and right most area of the tablet interacts with the right monitor) which makes it awkward - but I'm sure that's not specific to this tablet but a #Linux thing in general I haven't figured out yet. If you're using a single monitor setup though, you're golden.
Honestly, I've never needed an #iPad but I've always wanted one to use for note taking or annotating PDFs - I never ended up buying one cos it's too expensive for my very minor need. Happy to report I'll likely never own an iPad now 🥳