Orientation of Wacom Bamboo in Linux

As a left-handed person, I wanted to use my Bamboo graphics tablet on the left hand side of my keyboard (luckily I mouse with my right hand) without having the tablet’s cord running in the wrong direction. I was able to flip the orientation of the tablet in software using the xsetwacom utility. Here was my approach:

1. use a recent kernel and X.org which support the Bamboo. I’m running 2.6.37 and X.org 1.7.7 which seem to do the trick.

2. install the xsetwacom utility. In Debian, this comes as part of the wacom-tools:

sudo apt-get install wacom-tools

3. Identify wacom device to tweak according to xsetwacom. Through a quick process of trial and error, I discovered the device name to use when setting the orientation (step 4) :

xsetwacom --list

4. Issue command to rotate orientation:

xsetwacom --set "Wacom Bamboo Pen Pen" Rotate "HALF"

At this point the stylus motion should be working according to the new orientation. I wrapped this one line command in to a script to call from a keyboard shortcut, and it’s working great.