Legacy USB and serial graphics tablets (Aiptek, Hanwang, KB Gear, Wacom serial)
Drivers for early consumer pen tablets from the late 1990s and 2000s, including Acecad Flair, Aiptek HyperPen and Genius G-PEN, Hanwang Art Master III, KB Gear JamStudio, Pegasus Notetaker, and serial-era Wacom Cintiq, Graphire, and PenPartner models using Wacom protocol 4. Artists plugged these into PCs over USB or RS-232 serial before modern Wacom and competing tablets took over.
recommendation
Worth keeping but flagging as legacy, since the hardware has not been sold new since around 2010 and current Wacom devices are served by separate, modern Linux drivers. The directory still sees occasional small fixes and there is no visible removal effort on the mailing lists, so the handful of users still running these vintage tablets can keep doing so. A note in the Kconfig help marking the legacy status would help distros decide whether to ship the modules.
repository signals
sources
- cateee.net
Kernel still ships support for Aiptek 6000U/8000U and Genius G-PEN tablets via this directory; hardware IDs are legacy USB tablet products.
- cateee.net
Kernel still ships Hanwang Art Master III support from this directory; devices are specific legacy USB tablet models.
- cateee.net
Kernel still ships KB Gear JamStudio USB tablet support from this directory; device is a single old JamStudio tablet.
- cateee.net
Kernel still ships Wacom protocol 4 serial tablet support from this directory, explicitly for serial-era Cintiq/Graphire/PenPartner devices.
- support.wacom.com
Current Wacom Linux support exists for modern hardware, indicating ongoing market demand is served elsewhere than these serial-era drivers.
- en.wikipedia.org
Aiptek is described in the past tense as a former manufacturer associated with HyperPen-era graphics tablets, reinforcing the legacy status of that hardware family.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Directory inspection via shell showed six concrete driver modules for named legacy tablet products/vendors, not a helper library. lore_file_timeline(path=drivers/input/tablet) and lore_subsystem_churn(scope=path:drivers/input/tablet/) both returned zero lore hits, so I found no evidence of an active public removal series or sustained mailing-list discussion for the directory itself. The prompt's static metadata still shows 10 substantive commits in the last 5 years with a latest touch on 2025-10-18, so this is not abandoned enough to justify deprecation/removal. Web search produced LKDDb pages for Aiptek, Hanwang, KB Gear, and Wacom serial4, all pointing to very specific early-USB/serial tablet models; Wacom's current Linux-support page suggests modern deployments are handled by current Wacom stacks, not these legacy subdrivers. Recommendation is keep-annotate: niche legacy hardware, low present deployment, but still receiving occasional maintenance and no visible removal push.