What do you think are the best mice for use with linux?

What factors do you think are most important in selecting a mouse? (eg precision, build quality, comfort, other)

Price is optional

  • IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org
    2·
    5 months ago

    I’ll second the onboard storage, and add that any >3-button mouse should have buttons that map to actual key/character presses. I got a Razer Basilisk Pro on clearance, and it does have onboard storage, so once I turned off the RGB in the windows software on an old laptop, I could get rid of it. What I didn’t realize til later is that the nice little thumb lever can’t be remapped by anything but the Razer software (which has to be running all the time) because it doesnt register as any key combo, it had to be processed through their app to be used. Damn it.

    Edit: Have you tried looking at what keycodes the side buttons on your current mouse are mapped to? Sometimes you can intercept that input and make it perform correctly. I haven’t done it on linux yet, but I’m sure there’s an equivalent to AutoHotkey for Linux.

    • Chewy
      5·
      5 months ago

      Using wev (wayland event viewer, which shows pressed keys) the side buttons show up as extra mouse buttons, so it should be possible to remap them.

      button: 272 (left)
button: 273 (right)
button: 274 (middle)
button: 275 (side) <- side button
button: 276 (extra)  <- side button

      PS: My old Logitech G710+ keyboard has some extra buttons which show up as normal numbers, which makes them pretty much useless. A while ago I found the now abandoned sidewinderd project which adds support for them. It’s sad that those manufacturers don’t create proper standards for these kind of things and instead hack it together somehow.

      • IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org
        1·
        5 months ago

        I’m still on an X11 session, so I used xinput --test-xi2 to look at it, and yeah. The thumb key doesn’t register any type of event. Weird, right?