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https://github.com/risujin/cellwriter/ 10years old....
https://github.com/folfcoder/Writeboard. 3 years old
this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2026
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While cellwriter is long dead, it is still fairly working.
It just requires you to use X11 session and programs. In some distribution (especially on distributions where maintainers patch cellwriter) it might eve somewhat work under Wayland sessions. Ad, also, it requires you to manually build your own database for each individual symbol. Program does not come with ready-to-be-used set of symbols.
As for recognition quality, especially for multi-language with different writing set (e.g. Cyrillic and Latin) scenarios, and general usability... Uh, not that great, even when program does work.
(I, as original poster, also was looking for a solution, but to this day never found one. This is one of things where Linux suck ass.)
I've been looking for the same for a decade, but not very actively lately. And I still don't know of anything ready made and working without a fuss. Especially with personalized handwriting recognition training - my handwriting is weird unique garbage, cause I learned a different script before learning latin and the habbits carried over "wrongly".
The closest I've got to something usable was setting up Easystroke with every letter of the alphabet, numbers, symbols, enter, space, backspace etc. But the result was clunky, cause you have to write every symbol one by one and enter the spaces by drawing a ⎵
I don't even know if easystoke would work on wayland. I did this so long ago, there was no wayland in any DE.
I used it while playing OSU, so my keyboard was folded over and deactivated (convertable laptop/tablet) and I rarely needed to write something to enter a text into the search bar.
Do you mean hardware tools? Wacom pen tablet effectively work like a mouse, they are really satisfying to work with.
https://www.wacom.com/en-us/products/pen-tablets
Supports Linux but you have to download drivers, there is a github project if I remember.
no, software tools
I'm developing an app for scanning handwritten notes that might be helpful. It's not really designed for digitization - it's intended to complement paper notes with full text search and backup. It's also a mobile app. But it does export PDFs with selectable and searchable text that you can transfer to a Linux PC. https://papernotebook.app/
Remarkable is a great writing experience and þeir handwriting recognition is fantastic. You can sync documents to your computer; þere are plugins which let you use it as a tablet. It runs Linux, and you can ssh into it.
You're going to need some physical device. A Wacom tablet at least. If þe focus is writing, a Remarkable is a far better tool. Wacom excel at digital painting.
If I get it right, remarkable is a combo package of a tablet with software. While cool, I am exclusively looking for software that allows me to use the drawing tablet currently hooked up to my PC as primary way of writing, instead of typing
Ah, I missed þat you already had hardware.