Sparky Test drive

[uberzilla]

Wanted to post my experience with a test I did of Sparky. I tested Sparky after an excellent experience with SolydX. The latest Debian distros seem to have a very efficient mix of interface speed and low overhead. Many of the Debian based distros seem to be in the stable branch which doesn't work for me as a digital artist. I need many digital art tablets to work, and I know there is a group that keeps slowly adding newer model from all vendors - not just WACOM. So I took a look at Sparky and it was not using the stable branch and I also saw a multi media iso.
So I loaded it up on a test laptop and perused the interface - smooth, fast - as expected from the Debian branch. Then the bad news. I plugged in first an older Huion (p608n) art tablet - no response. Then and old UC Logic tablet - no response. Then a newer UGEE and nothing. I didn't have long to test as I have been testing distros non stop to narrow down to which are the best for digital artists. Alt tablets - alt meaning: other then Wacom - has gotten substantial. I am not sure if there was a download glitch in the iso that caused failure of the expected recognition of these tablets (all have been included in most releases). Is this something that is not included with the kernel - and distros elect to add or not? Or was there some sort of glitch in my test.

Outside of that this distro is what I expect from good Debian distros - fast, low overhead, nice to work in. Will test again somewhere down the road - would definitely like to move to a Debian distro, for a long term test, because of the seeming performance advantage.

Best regards,
Ron aka uberzilla - uberzillaart

[blaze]

Hi uberzilla, hope you are enjoying Sparky. Thanks for the write up, I confess that I do not know anything about those tablets.  But anyway, did you know that there are something called linuxwacom?

http://linuxwacom.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Yes, I guessed that you did, but decided to include the link anyway. :)

[uberzilla]

Hello and thanks for the info - actually I was unaware of that one. I left off using WACOMs when the last one I had started failing. On a lark I tried two tablets - one UC Logic (Branded Monoprice) and one Huion. The Huion was sort of a perfect fit for me - tablet feel. Anyway I was aware of this group:

http://digimend.github.io/tablets/

They support the alternative tablets - should say they add new ones as they can.

So maybe I will have to take the time to learn how to add drivers - once created (by someone who knows what they are doing in this regards) - into distros myself.

I had to remove Sparky after x-amount of time. I - in fact liked it so much I created a custom desktop for it - something I do when a distro seems like it will make it back for future testing. In this case - what appears to be the previously mentioned Debian speed and lower overhead advantage.

[blaze]

You are welcome uberzilla. :) I hope you will find what you need for your digital tablet artist projects.

Yes, Sparky has been a really positive experience for me too. My plan is to stay with it in one way or another. Personally I am looking forward to the possible Openbox stable release of Sparky/Stretch. :)