Huion Inspiroy H610X - review on GNU/Linux

Table of Contents

• Hardware review
• Out of the box situation
• The proprietary driver
• The FLOSS driver (udev-hid-bpf)
• Still Work in Progress!
• Issue: Second Stylus Button Hardcoded Erase Mode
• Customization
• On Plasma Wayland
• On GNOME Wayland
• On X11
• Conclusion: contribute?

Hardware review

The full test of how the overlay surface feels, pressure sensitivity, tilt, as well as a scratch and pressure test can be found in the video below:

Direct video links:

• On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkZ-sSz65rU
• On Peertube: https://peertube.touhoppai.moe/w/7hiPUYqJVAnpAfSsS5oQzo

This article accompanies my video review of the Huion Inspiroy H610X, a medium-sized screenless pen tablet. The video provides my in-depth look at the device's hardware. This blog post, on the other hand, focuses on the information and technical aspects of installing and configuring the device on a GNU/Linux operating system.

Official links:

• Huion store: https://bit.ly/3F6Xa9O

Out of the box situation

What features are available out of the box? Basically, all primary functions are operational. In the absence of a dedicated driver, the Huion H610X emulates two standard devices: a generic pen, similar to those used with laptop-tablet PCs, and a standard keyboard for key input.

Modern versions of GNOME and KDE, running under Wayland, can accurately detect the stylus coordinates and set the screen aspect ratio (with a bit of tweaking for Plasma, see screenshot later). Under X11, the xsetwacom command line utility can achieve similar results.

The limitation of this emulation is that most of the shortcuts for the stylus buttons and pad buttons are hard-coded and cannot be changed without a dedicated driver. The default key mapping is shown in the figure below (see image). While not ideal, the default shortcuts are still useful. However, you will need to get used to using a pen without a second top button (eg. to put a right-click on it), as an "eraser mode" is activated and hardcoded by holding down the button instead.

Erratum: the picture shows a Ctrl+Z on the last button, it's a Ctrl+Alt+Z by default (thanks to Erika in the comment section).

Default buttons layout when connected to a GNU/Linux machine

The proprietary driver

I have not tested or used the Linux proprietary driver provided by Huion, for ethical reasons. However, I am aware that many users may find its existence beneficial and may choose to make an exception to use this binary blob, prioritizing convenience. I do not judge their choice.

Link: https://www.huion.com/download/

The FLOSS driver (udev-hid-bpf)

Still Work in Progress!

I reported the device here: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libevdev/udev-hid-bpf/-/issues/61 , but due to a line-break issue in the export of Konsole, I'll have to redo it.

Issue: Second Stylus Button Hardcoded Erase Mode

As a device compliant with a Microsoft stylus standard, one of the two buttons of the stylus will switch to a eraser mode by default. On Linux, this behavior was implemented at a kernel level and no graphical or cli tool can customize this behavior. That's why the button might appear as customizable on the GUI of Plasma on Wayland, or GNOME on Wayland, or X11 xsetwacom CLI tools, but it will not be possible to change this hardcoded eraser mode into, let say a simple right-click.

When this new behavior appeared, every tablets started to receive a custom fix: remove the hardcoded eraser mode and replace them by a customizable button. But after too many devices reported, it was decided to handle the problem differently: a merge request for libinput with a code that would allow the user to make the hardcoded Erase Mode map-able as a button. Unfortunately, it might take a long time before reaching the end user: the merge request needs to be accepted on libinput and merged, then a libinput release needs to be made with the new code, then the distribution needs to package this new version of libinput on their update, then the desktop environment like GNOME or WAYLAND will probably need to adapt their System Settings GUI for the tablet to offer this new option.

In short, while it's probably a change that is brilliant on the long term, it will probably benefit the Fedora and Arch user first in a optimistic 6 month from now, and 2 years for Debian or Ubuntu-based users.

Customization

On Plasma Wayland

On Plasma Wayland, the tablet went totally undetected. Worst: the active area was detected as a square. While it was possible to manually resize this area, it was difficult to setup a "set proportion" to the display.

The device could still be used, but not in a professional way.

screenshot of the tablet system settings of Plasma 6.3

On GNOME Wayland

I was surprised to see the device listed on the tablet settings (Fedora), but there was a problem: two devices were listed, and the "button 2" has no effect (that was predictible). The buttons of the pad were not listed for customization.

The device could still be used, but not in a professional way.

Huion Inspiroy H610X on GNOME Wayland.

On X11

That's what I used for the review and for the demo videos and I could get a good enough comfort to start working with the device.

For this part, I'll directly redirect your to the Inspiroy H610X review and technical blog post made by Raghavendra Kamath AKA ‘raghukamath’ , a well known Krita contributor (and friend).

His post is a gold mine for setting up the Inspiroy H610X on Linux, X11. Just mind that since Raghukamath wrote it, there was some update with the recent kernel and the Microsoft specification for tablets (what I already detailed here before). So the second top button of the stylus will be a hardcoded "eraser mode".

Conclusion: contribute?

That's all, this guide can be of course continued or updated! You can send me your tips via comments, or on various threads mentionned in this article or via email.