xorg-x11 hackery for a Logitech RX1000 Mouse

The Logitech RX1000 mouse has a scroll wheel that can tilt left or right. This generates HWHEEL events by default, which are pretty much useless. I find it more useful to have the tilt generate WHEEL events (scroll up and down), so I can press and hold left or right rather than repeatedly spinning the mouse wheel.

The wheel can also be pressed to get a middle click, but if I don’t concentrate I end up scrolling as well as middle clicking. There’s another button with a magnifying glass icon on it just below the scroll wheel which is more useful, which usually shows up as button 8. By making this button 2 we can use that for X11 paste, open-in-new-tab in Firefox and so on.

So I don’t forget how to get this working:

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Mouse1"
    Driver      "evdev"
    Option      "Name" "Logitech USB Optical Mouse"
    Option      "HWHEELRelativeAxisButtons" "4 5"
EndSection

Unfortunately, evdev doesn’t seem to have a ButtonMapping equivalent, so we have to fall back to xmodmap to do the button remapping. Doubly unfortunately, this makes pressing the middle mouse button useless.

pointer = 1 6 3 4 5 2 7 8 9 10

Thanks Nicolas.

xorg-x11 keycodes for a Logitech 350 Keyboard

To save myself from having to mess around with xev again in the future: here’re the keycodes for a Logitech 350 USB keyboard with xorg-x11 on Linux:

keycode 129 = XF86AudioMedia
keycode 236 = XF86Mail
keycode 178 = XF86WWW
keycode 161 = XF86Calculator
keycode 162 = XF86AudioPlay
keycode 174 = XF86AudioLowerVolume
keycode 176 = XF86AudioRaiseVolume
keycode 160 = XF86AudioMute

These go in ~/.Xmodmap. And in ~/.fluxbox/keys, we can use:

XF86Mail                 :ExecCommand claws-mail
XF86WWW                  :ExecCommand firefox
XF86Calculator           :ExecCommand xterm
XF86AudioPlay            :ExecCommand mpc toggle
XF86AudioLowerVolume     :ExecCommand amixer set PCM 2-
XF86AudioRaiseVolume     :ExecCommand amixer set PCM 2+
XF86AudioMute            :ExecCommand amixer set Master toggle

Hardware Vendor Hate List

• Logitech. You helpfully claim to be able to provide replacement feet for keyboards free of charge — presumably, breakages are not exactly uncommon. Then you claim not to keep track of whether or not you have any spares for my year-old G15 keyboard, so you can’t give me any. And no, you won’t go and have a look to find out whether you do have any.
• Whoever makes the push pins found on LGA 775 CPUs. Especially the kind that require so much force to lock that it’s a race between the motherboard and my finger to see which will break first.
• Abit. You should be ashamed of the F-I90HD motherboard for all sorts of reasons, but today’s gripe is about the heatsink on the integrated graphics chip. I shouldn’t have to install a cooling fan onto the heatsink to stop the screen from going black when the CPU is under load.