My venerable Logitech Mouse a is nearing the end of it’s life and I’m thinking about a replacement. Since I have no plans to switch my Gaming PC to Windows 11 I would like to have a mouse (and eventually a keyboard) that properly supports Linux.

I looked at the sites for Corsair, Logitech and Razer and the corresponding software is available for Windows (and sometimes MacOS for some reason) but no Linux Version.

Since I actually use some of the fancy Gaming-Gear functionality like setting up macros and variable DPI I’d like to use the software that is used to set these things up.
How do you guys deal with this?
Is there a manufacturer that offers their software for Linux?
Do these things run properly under Wine?

  • Onno (VK6FLAB)
    12·
    2 months ago

    I’ve been using Linux for almost 25 years and I’ve never once considered mouse or keyboard incompatibility, and that’s including ADB, PS/2 and DB9 devices, let alone USB.

    As far as I know, you can intercept any signal from any such HID device and map it to whatever action you want to achieve at whatever level you need it.

    I’m happy to be wrong, but I’d be surprised.

    • HouseWolf@lemm.eeEnglish
      13·
      2 months ago

      A lot of newer big “gamer” brand peripherals are coming bundled with proprietary software you gotta run to get full functionality.

      A friend of mine recently tried Linux and had his scroll wheel not work because it was tired to the software on Windows for some stupid reason…

      I saw this trend starting nearly a decade ago when Razers software bricked my Win7 PC by booting before the login screen, I’ve avoided any devices with mandatory software since, but seems the issue has only grown lately.

    • astrsk@fedia.io
      2·
      2 months ago

      While generally true, I believe there’s a lot of weird custom wireless communication out there. Plenty of mice and keyboards refuse to communicate over a standard HID protocol which leads many to not work for enterprise type devices / appliances. Anything with an HID / Console port (like some KVMs) for management will just not respond properly to key presses even if the downstream usb host can detect presses properly. This is extremely nuanced and not at all the same as something like Logitech G-Hub only being windows so customizing the buttons / RGB on the M/K is a questionable adventure for normal users.