WACOM pen not working with Krita

Support and Help
,
1

Ubuntu Version:
26.04

Desktop Environment (if applicable):
GNOME

Problem Description:
I just recently installed Ubuntu 26.04. I am always excited to be an early adopter, despite of the risks. I have a Lenovo Yoga 7 2in1 16 inch. This uses a WACOM screen. I have purchased a Lenovo Precision Pen 2. It is a WACOM compatable pen and have been happily using it in Ubuntu 25.10 without issue. After the upgrade, I installed the snap of Krita and the pen is not recognized in Krita. It works fine outside of Krita. It lets me click icons to open apps. It draws fine in other apps downloaded from the App Center such as Drawing. I just have issue with Krita. I saw that there was a Krita deb package in the App Center, so I removed the Krita snap and installed the deb package. Made no difference. Any suggestions?

Relevant System Information:
$ sudo libinput list-devices

…

Device: Wacom HID 53FE Pen
Kernel: /dev/input/event5
Id: i2c:056a:53fe
Group: 4
Seat: seat0, default
Size: 345x215mm
Capabilities: tablet
Tap-to-click: n/a
Tap-and-drag: n/a
Tap button map: n/a
Tap drag lock: n/a
Left-handed: disabled
Nat.scrolling: n/a
Middle emulation: n/a
Calibration: identity matrix
Scroll methods: none
Scroll button: n/a
Scroll button lock: n/a
Click methods: none
Clickfinger button map: n/a
Disable-w-typing: n/a
Disable-w-trackpointing: n/a
Accel profiles: none
Rotation: n/a
Area rectangle: n/a

Device: Wacom HID 53FE Finger
Kernel: /dev/input/event6
Id: i2c:056a:53fe
Group: 4
Seat: seat0, default
Size: 345x215mm
Capabilities: touch
Tap-to-click: n/a
Tap-and-drag: n/a
Tap button map: n/a
Tap drag lock: n/a
Left-handed: n/a
Nat.scrolling: n/a
Middle emulation: n/a
Calibration: identity matrix
Scroll methods: none
Scroll button: n/a
Scroll button lock: n/a
Click methods: none
Clickfinger button map: n/a
Disable-w-typing: n/a
Disable-w-trackpointing: n/a
Accel profiles: n/a
Rotation: 0.0
Area rectangle: n/a

…

2

since the tablet works in general but not in Krita, it may be an issue with Krita and Wayland.

3

Thanks to pavlos tip, I did more searching and found that Krita needs an environment variable set to work with Wayland.

‘‘‘

QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland

‘‘‘

I still have the deb package installed, so I first tested by launching Krita from the command line including the environment variable.

‘‘‘

$ env QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland krita

‘‘‘

This worked wonderfully.

Next I tried editing the gnome menu .desktop file for krita, but couldn’t get it to work. I tried just adding the “env QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland” to the existing Exec line. Didn’t work. I removed the references to the X11 system. Still didn’t work.

Got frustrated and I wrote a stripped down .desktop file for krita and got krita to launch and function correctly. WOOT! I based it on the original file provided in the deb package, but removed all the superfluous lines. I saved this file in ~/.local/share/applications.

’’’

$ cat .local/share/applications/krita.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Krita-Fixed
Exec=env QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland krita
GenericName=Digital Painting
MimeType=application/x-krita;image/openraster;application/x-krita-paintoppreset;
Comment=Digital Painting
Type=Application
Icon=krita
Categories=Qt;KDE;Graphics;2DGraphics;RasterGraphics;
StartupNotify=true
StartupWMClass=krita

InitialPreference=99

‘‘‘

I then attempted to get the snap to work too. However, I am still rather new to snap and was not able to get any of the commands I found to add the environment variable to the krita snap.

I am writing this up in hopes it helps someone else until Ubuntu or Krita fixes this issue so that it works out of the box.

1 Like
4

Thank you so much for your find. Finally I got my wacom intous also working in krita 6.1 under Ubuntu 26.04.

The current version of krita on snap is 5.2.
Krita added wayland support on version 5.3 and 6.0. (https://krita.org/en/release-notes/krita-5-3-release-notes/) So it will probably not work right now.
For some reason, I couldn’t get krita 5.3 to work. When I try to launch it with the parameters, I get the error: “This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.”
Not sure how to fix it.

5

Thanks for the feddback. I have Huion Pro 16 2,5K and have the same issue on Krita. Pen doesn’t work with Flapak, Snap, Apt on Ubuntu 26.04. I tried official driver, open_tablet_driver from Flathub and sources. Tablet does work on any other software (Gimp, office, Files, etc). Not on Krita. Just for feedbacks. Any complaints here.