Laptop 12 stylus in USI 2.0 mode randomly gets "stuck" in eraser mode linux

Framework Laptop 12 Linux
1

Which Linux distro are you using?

KDE Neon

Which release version?
(if rolling release without a release version, skip this question)

24.04 (latest)

(If rolling release, last date updated?)

Which kernel are you using?

7.0.0-29-generic

Which BIOS version are you using?

03.07

Which Framework Laptop 12 model are you using? (13th Gen Intel® Core™)

A3 (13th Gen Intel i3-1315U (8) @ 4.500GHz)

Not sure if this is a stylus issue or a KDE issue but the stylus when in USI 2.0 mode will randomly get stuck in eraser mode, requiring me to hold the eraser button to use the pen normally. I’ve tried “rebooting” the stylus by pulling the battery out and then reinserting it, but that didn’t help.

Community Survey: Framework Laptop 12 New Features Thread
2

It can be either one of those I think:

  • stylus (but you’ve been rebooting it so I think this is ruled out)
  • touchscreen controller itself
  • some internal driver/library (libinput for example)
  • KDE
  • software you’re using to draw (most likely)

I’m using:

  • Surface Pen 4
  • KDE (on Fedora Kinoite)
  • software: Krita and Rnote

and I’ve never had a problem like the one you describe.

BTW what stylus are you using and what do you mean by “USI 2.0 mode” - you’ve changed the touchscreen pen protocol from MPP to USI in bios?

3

I’m using the official framework 12 stylus and you can change the pen protocol from MPP to USI in the bios. The reason why I don’t use MPP is it relies on bluetooth to transmit battery information, which the stylus does not have, and I don’t want to reboot to the bios every time I want to check the stylus battery

4

This bios setting changes whether the screen “listens” for MPP or USI messages not what the pen “talks” in. From what I’ve read somewhere Framework stylus rapidly switches between MPP and USI so it kinda “talks” in both protocols simultaneously.

Actually this is not true for me in case of FW12. I haven’t paired my stylus via bluetooth and the battery level is shown anyway so I guess it should also work with Framework’s official stylus. But I understand why you’d think that way, with MS Surface I had to pair the stylus via bluetooth to see the battery level and it also surprised me that it’s not the case with FW12.

Anyway, so have you maybe tried other software with the stylus? Does the issue happen only when you set your screen to USI protocol and everything is fine on MPP?

5

The framework stylus doesn’t support bluetooth, so there is no way of seeing the battery level of the stylus when the laptop is in MPP mode without going into the BIOS and switching back to USI. It works fine in MPP mode, just no battery information. This bug happens on the system level, affecting all applications and system actions (like using the pen as a regular mouse).

6

Hmmm, so I guess the only thing you could try is another distro in live mode without installing it (for example Fedora KDE, I see it has newer kernel than yours) to see if it’s not some issue specific to the kernel or some library version in your installation of KDE Neon. Unfortunately I can’t help you much more beyond that. Maybe someone else who has Framework stylus could give some more information.

I think you should contact support and maybe give them a link to this thread.