Struggling with stylus with Linux Mint

Framework Laptop 12 Linux
1

Specs:
OS: Linux Mint 22.1 Cinnamon
Cinnamon version: 6.4.8
Linux kernel: 6.8.0-08-generic
Processor: 13th gen Intel i5-1334U

This is my first time trying to use Linux on a device with a touch screen, so I’m not sure if I’m running into Linux problems or Framework problems. My Framework stylus successfully moves the mouse and writes on the screen with no setup, but I’m running into two major issues.

  1. I cannot seem to change what the buttons do, either in Linux as a whole or in individual programs. Currently, the buttons have no effect, and I can find no way to map them onto anything. I’d really like access to a right-click.
  2. The palm rejection when writing with the stylus is either terrible or non-existent. My hand resting on the screen regularly overwrites what I’m doing with the pen tip. I can’t seem to find any way to change that, either.

Under settings I’ve found “graphics tablet” but that seems to be referring exclusively to external devices because it doesn’t recognize the Framework stylus

2

As Linux mint isn’t officially supported and seems to have trouble with touch, try the stylus on Fedora. I think it should be enough to boot into a live-session

3

I have now tried both Fedora 42 and Ubuntu 25.04. Neither of them have any button functionality, any apparent way to remap the buttons, or any palm rejection. The stylus works fine as a pointer and can left-click by pressing it against the screen in all three distros, but it is miserable to use with any palm contact overwriting the tip and no way of right-clicking

4

I think i would contact official support in that situation

5

I know it’s an oldish post, but just wanted to add to this and say that the Framework stylus isn’t the only pen with the no-remapping issue. I’m seeing it a lot with other people using different styluses and distros, so it seems to be a general Linux issue. I feel like many distros simply aren’t equipped to deal with styluses for 2-in-1s, as the community putting Linux on Microsoft Surfaces seems to use a distinct kernal.

That said, I hope there is a solution on its way. I feel like I’m going insane with how difficult it is to find information on this issue.

6

@Rachel_Sandler I had the SAME. EXACT. ISSUE.

And I accidentally “solved” it.

(before you get exited, I have no Idea if this will fix the issue for anyone else)

(sorry for how dramatic this is gonna be, I’ve been staring intensely at the screen for an hour and i have a headache now.)

After an hour of running terminal commands such as evtest with no interpreted input from the buttons, I gave up, and started drawing in Krita without the nice buttons.

A few minutes in, I accidentally pressed one of the buttons–LO AND BEHOLD, IT DID SOMETHING. I tested both buttons, they BOTH WORKED.

My guess as to how this has occured is that the stylus needed a bit to connect? I actually have no clue.

After this, I have gone to the gui tablet thingy in settings to see if it would detect the stylus, but no luck there (there are already ongoing remapping issues (look here if you’re curious) with styluses and Linux, so I’m not going to bother anyway)

I also went back to the terminal, and ran evtest | grep 'BTN' (I’m piping to grep because otherwise the output is extremely messy) AND FOR WHATEVER REASON, IT’S NOW MAGICALLY BEING DETECTED NOW, AS THOUGH THE ISSUE NEVER EXISTED.

oh also early on in my attempts to fix the issue, I booted into BIOS to change the protocol from MPP to USI, which I say in case that is relevant to this for some reason, but switching protocols didn’t fix it at first so i KINDA doubt MPP is a factor.

Goodness, this stylus might as well be a magic wand with whatever wizardry allowed this to happen.

Moral of the story: Tech gets to choose when it works, not you.