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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Livescribe Pulse Smartpen with Linux

Livescribe Pulse Smartpen is a ballpoint pen with a lot of digital capabilities. But what first caught my attention before even buying one was wether or not it would work with Linux. In this blog post I will keep updating with solutions on how to use it with Linux.
photo: livescribe.com
So far I have only found one confirmed and working way to use it. This is via Windows virtualization software like VMWare. The biggest problem with this is the fact that VMWare costs money. Another con reported is a little lag when docking the pen to the computer.

Hopefully there will come more solutions on how to use it together with Linux, but sadly it seems to come last in the queue of systems who gets real support for it.

8 comments:

  1. VMWare server is free...

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  2. What about Virtualbox?

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  3. Virtualbox works - as well as vista did anyway :-) The first update bricked the pen via vista on virtualbox, so I installed on a "real" vista install but they didn't work either. A real XP install fixed it.

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  4. Livescribe spokesperson Michael said he would look into providing info to the Linux community in April 2008 .. I never saw a response.

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  5. Livescrive Desktop is listed as "bronze" support in Wine. Which mean the program installs and runs but you can do much with it.
    Logon to winehq.org and vote for Livescribe Descktop to increase the priority of getting it to fully work under Wine.

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  6. They dont care about supporting linux people. Dont hold your breath.

    Honestly, I have had a lot of people ask me about it. The pen is defective with modern hardware. it does NOT work with Vista 64 or windows 7 64.. the standard OS on almost all new machines. If they wont bother with making it work under Windows 7 64, they really dont care AT ALL about linux or OSX support. too bad they have no interest in selling their product.

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  7. There are two promising projects that work on Linux support for Livescribe pens:

    SmartPen-Browser: https://launchpad.net/~stevenrwalter/+archive/ppa
    AND
    LibreScribe: http://dylanmtaylor.com/2011/04/09/librescribe-my-latest-and-most-challenging-project/

    Just have a look.

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