I was testing a HP EliteBook 2730p with Linux Mint 17.2. The laptop/netbook/tablet comes with a touchscreen and stylus. USB booting did not work for me but I was able to network/pxeboot an installation.
When it came to drawing on the touchscreen I was able to get up and running after installing Gromit i.e.
sudo apt-get install gromit-mpx
To begin using the stylus for drawing rather than a pointing device press the ‘Pause’ keyboard button.