Live data from Hacker News

Solaar is a Linux manager for many Logitech keyboards, mice, and other devices

github.com

141–150 of 274 posts

Re: Solaar is a Linux manager for many Logitech keyboards, mice, and other devices

#141
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bolt is logitech's newer wireless protocol (with devices using a dongle rather than bluetooth) that's supposed to be more secure than the older one.

I think the real highlight of the Bolt receiver is being able to pair up to 6 devices with just a single receiver.

The old unifying receiver was also able to pair up to 6 devices.

Re: Solaar is a Linux manager for many Logitech keyboards, mice, and other devices

#144
I use for pairing etc and it's great, but the rule editor is just completely bonkers. I tried several times to add a gesture move for the 'gesture' button on my 3S, and eventually gave up!

Seems you need to know the exact keycodes, or names, or whatever key you want to use. Like XF86_MonBrightnessUp. Want to add a combo? not sure how to do that either.

Re: Solaar is a Linux manager for many Logitech keyboards, mice, and other devices

#145
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not cross platform, difficult to theme or style to Logitech brand guidelines?

Do the users care about that? Or just the management? And mouse drivers aren't typically cross platform anyway, right?

Users: maybe, but probably not many of them.

Management absolutely cares, they have a whole design guidebook why wouldn’t they follow it??

And the drivers likely aren’t cross-platform in the sense of “the windows DLL is just dead code on a Mac”, but the UI of the software can be the same across platforms. The executable is likely a tiny bit of platform-specific launcher code and then cross-platform electron fun.

Re: Solaar is a Linux manager for many Logitech keyboards, mice, and other devices

#146
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also they've been very slow to adopt optical switches compared to other brands, a handful of their high end gaming mice have them, but the vast majority of their range still uses the same old mechanical switches that tend to start erroneously double clicking after a while.

If your mouse starts double clicking, play a game of Quake 3 for an hour, or just click a bit more aggressively for the next hour. It clears the problem, per my experience. What I understood is, the switches on these mice (I have G700) are practically abuse-proof. However, they don’t like to be used lightly and start to glitch possibly from fine dust. Using the switches more aggressively cleans them up. My first gene…

Their switches are just crap. They use Omron switches mostly due to their low cost, even on supposedly "high-end" mice. People routinely replace them with better alternatives (e.g. TTC Gold or Kailh, but there are lots of them) and get years of heavy usage after that without any problems. The switches can be obtained on aliexpress, you do need a soldering iron though.

Re: Solaar is a Linux manager for many Logitech keyboards, mice, and other devices

#147
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your mouse starts double clicking, play a game of Quake 3 for an hour, or just click a bit more aggressively for the next hour. It clears the problem, per my experience. What I understood is, the switches on these mice (I have G700) are practically abuse-proof. However, they don’t like to be used lightly and start to glitch possibly from fine dust. Using the switches more aggressively cleans them up. My first gene…

That sounds like a job for contact cleaner, assuming it’s possible to non-destructively get a tube next to the switches. I’m about to open my second bottle. My first bottle is from the 1990’s.

No, it's a job for a sewing needle or a toothpick. Logitech switches can be temporarily fixed by disassembling the switch and adjusting the contact plate inside because it gets bent out of shape and stops registering the clicks correctly. But it's easier (and more reliable) to replace them with higher quality alternatives while you're in there.

Re: Solaar is a Linux manager for many Logitech keyboards, mice, and other devices

#148
post #3

I've had an MX Master mouse (the "2" for maybe 8-9 years then the "3" for 2-3 years now) and love it. Great performance, great battery life, fantastic design and feel. On Windows I definitely do not love the 150Mb program to manage it (surely sending a torrent of unnecessary telemetry data back to Logitech. I found Solaar a couple months ago after getting repeatedly frustrated with bluetooth connection issues. It rea…

Logitech's might be a large download, but their Windows software still seems far more optimized than Corsair's. After a few days of uptime, Corsair's processes would have nearly an hour of CPU time. Logitech's would have a couple minutes at most. I replaced all my Corsair equipment with Logitech or others after seeing that.

Bruce Dawson has a blog post about Corsair. Apparently their processes constantly leak handles.

Re: Solaar is a Linux manager for many Logitech keyboards, mice, and other devices

#149
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with using the UI the OS provides?

Not cross platform, difficult to theme or style to Logitech brand guidelines?

That would be great if it were cross platform.

I use Solaar because there wasn't a Linux application.

Re: Solaar is a Linux manager for many Logitech keyboards, mice, and other devices

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, I deployed Logitech for ~300 users in a manufacturing environment for years and they were just fine. You got unlucky or are beating the shit out of them.

Agree. It's rare to find a failed Logitech mouse.

It is actually quite common for some mice because logitech uses the wrong switches for a 3.3v logic level mouse.
Post reply on HN