Comment 0 for bug 38336

The version of the Wacom driver currently in Dapper (0.7.2) does not support adding and removing tablets while the X server is running. This is a major annoyance on laptops and when trying to move tablets from one running computer to another. Because it fails user expectations concerning USB devices (plug them in and they are available), this alone should be considered a bug, now that input device hotplugging is supported by the Xorg server.

Furthermore, older versions of the driver (certainly the one in Breezy) freeze the computer and thus force a reboot when a tablet is removed while the X server is running. To the best of my knowledge, this is still true of the driver version currently in Dapper, but unfortunately I could not test it myself because the Wacom X driver is not included on the Dapper Flight 6 live CD and I lack a free computer to perform a harddisk install of Dapper Flight 6 on.

Thirdly, the current Dapper Wacom driver (0.7.2) does not explicitly support the Dapper kernel (2.6.15), whereas the newest available upstream version (0.7.3 beta) does.

The solution for all of the above should be to update the Dapper Wacom driver to version 0.7.3 beta, available from the Linuxwacom project. Please compare the comment of Ralf Hölzemer on the related bug #4773 in which he attests to the stability of the 0.7.3 beta driver and affirms that it does, in fact, fix several severe bugs.