Logitech G5 Review Under Linux
Tuesday, June 20th, 2006 at 8:05 amAbout five years ago, my mouse of choice, a Radioshack re-branded trackball, with pretty good precision, two wheels, and half a billion buttons, died. Just flat out quit working. So, I didn’t feel like tracking down a new replacement mouse, so I bought a $5 Compaq optical midnight special, so I can go buy a better mouse later on.
This temporary mouse, originally bought for my Pentium 133, ends up being plugged into my new workstation, the Pentium 3 550. So, you know, the mouse still works, might as well keep using it, right? It’s got two buttons, and a clickable wheel, and it doesn’t suck, right? Wrong.
I finally gut my computer, and put a Sempron 2600+ in it, and did so about 9 months ago. This mouse is still around, and whoever built the mouse (it wasn’t Compaq, they don’t actually build hardware), they did a pretty decent job.
About the time I upgraded my computer, I started playing the classic Quakeworld, the father of all online multiplayer first person shooters, again. And I kept playing, and playing, and playing, and I notice that the sensitivity on my mouse is so bad, I can’t even aim the lightning gun properly… so one day, I got tired of it.
A week ago, I decided to finally order a new mouse, and I chose the Logitech G5. I went from a crappy, old, 200 DPI, three button with wheel mouse to a 2000 DPI, four button with tiltable wheel.
This mouse, my loyal readers, is a monster. It is a God among mice. It is the Cadillac of input devices.
And now on to the review
The Logitech G5 is the next generation flagship product of their gaming mouse line. Here’s what it can do:
- A high resolution sensor (measuring 30×30 pixels) rated at a sensitivity of 2000 DPI allows maximum precision with the included ability to change the DPI (between 2000, 800, and 400) on the fly, using two buttons located below the wheel, without needing to install the included driver.
- The ability to change precision on the fly without needing a driver allows you to do so on literally any platform that supports USB mice, including Linux and OSX.
- The G5 can poll the sensor at 500 times a second on any platform that supports it (such as Windows 2000/XP or Linux) providing increased precision and lower input lag.
- The G5 also uses an expanded protocol allowing higher precision output (16-bit, vs what most mice use, 8-bit or 12-bit). This allows you to use 2000 DPI mode, and move the mouse very fast without precision loss.
- Four buttons, one smooth scrolling wheel, and Logitech’s “TiltWheel” functionality, allowing you to press the wheel left and right to do application specific functions.
- Braided fiber wire covering, to reduce wear and tear on the USB cable.
- A weight cartridge, allowing you to weight your mouse however you want.
- Last, but not least, very smooth feet, allowing the mouse to move smoothly, even if you load the weight cartridge with all 36 grams of weight.
Now, first, I want to actually get to the feet. This is probably the best feature of the mouse. Sure, current and upcoming gaming mice will have 2000 or higher DPI, but these feet, even with all 36 grams loaded into the weight cartridge, glide smoother than any mouse I’ve ever used. This impresses me very much. To put this in perspective, three alkaline AA batteries, or two rechargable AA batteries weigh about 36 grams; that is very heavy.
Now, onto the more important stuff: I earlier mentioned that I couldn’t use Quakeworld’s lightning gun precise enough to be much use due to my mouse. Well, now, with 2000 DPI at my command, I can precision hit fast moving targets at long distances with ease.
Not impressed enough? The lightning gun in Quakeworld requires more precision than any hitscan weapon in any game ever. You thought the Quake3 lightning gun was hard? QW’s is even worse.
Another neat feature is the tilt wheel. You can press the wheel left and right, and generate input events. In Firefox, I can tilt the wheel left, and it goes back in my history; tilting the wheel right goes forward in my history. Other applications can be configured to do other things.
How to get it to work in Linux
As a USB HID device, it already works in Linux; however, to get the full use out of the mouse (such as being able to use the tilt function correctly) edit your/etc/X11/xorg.conf‘s InputDevice section for your mouse to say:
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "evdev"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Name" "Logitech USB Gaming Mouse"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "false"
EndSection
… which should allow you to use the fourth/thumb button, and the tilt function correctly. Buttons one through three and the wheel already corectly work without this. Also, on Ubuntu, make sure xserver-xorg-input-evdev is installed, as it is not installed by default.
Update: In newer versions of X, the above code doesn’t entirely work. Run cat /proc/bus/input/devices and look for the device named Logitech USB Gaming Mouse. It will list a line under it called Handlers, look at which event it uses (for me, this is event6). Add a line in the above xorg.conf lines below Name, as such: Option "Device" "/dev/input/eventn" where n is the number of the event.
Also, in some versions of X, tilt left and tilt right may be backwards. To fix this, create a file called ~/.Xmodmap and put in it:
pointer = 1 2 3 4 5 7 6 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
and run xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap to update your map. On logging in again, Gnome will ask if you want to load this file: click on the file, click “Load”, and click “Ok”.
See chuck’s comments on May 1st 2008 (on page 5) below, newer X’s require that config.
Summary
Compared to all the mice I’ve used in all my years of computing, I don’t think I’ve ever been happier with a mouse. Actually, I didn’t even know it was possible to be happy with a mouse. Most people overlook the importance of a mouse in both gaming and other environments, and now that I have this mouse, I don’t think I can ever go back to ‘normal’ mouse. The only way they could possibly improve this is tighten up the wheel a little bit as to make clicking the middle button and not accidently scrolling a little easier.
Note: I have not reviewed the included drivers or software, as I don’t game in Windows.
Score: 9 out of 10.
Well, I did explain in the article how to do it.
and how would that work through xmodmap? assuming I’d rather have the 2 thumb buttons perform the actions than the tilted mouse wheel.
The question is vague. If you’re doing it through xmodmap, you can, but you can’t have it share both buttons.
If you’re doing it by whatever software you’re using, it is up to the software itself.
sorry, I may be a bit slow on this .. so I can’t assign the action, that is now assigned to the tilted mouse button, to the thumb buttons instead?
No, especially since most programs don’t have a forwards/backwards concept. Such things are just not readily configurable in Linux desktops, and they should be.
can’t that be configured as a default behaviour for all programmes, like the tilted scroll wheel that has this funciton? under WIN, the thumb buttons perfom next/previous as default action.
Thats up to whatever program you’re using. If its Firefox, I’m not sure, Firefox isn’t readily configurable for stuff like that.
thanks for the answer, but I still don’t get it. so what would I have to do to assign the actions next/previous to the 2 thumb buttons (G5 mouse)?
The order of buttons are usually the same on most mice regardless of manufacturer or model, but aren’t documented anywhere that I know of.
The order usually goes: Left, middle, right, scroll up, scroll down, scroll left, scroll right, and then everything else follows. On my mouse, only one more button follows: the single thumb button; the rest of the numbers aren’t used.
Most likely, 8 and 9 are the two thumb buttons for you.
you saved my day! I tried for quite a while to get this mouse to work properly.
2 questions:
- how do I know which number in the Xmodmap has which function? I’d like to configure the 2 thumb buttons as next/previous.
- and generally: I’d like to learn how to do that sort of stuff myself. any advice on how to start?
[...] get the mouse to work well in Linux, I followed these instructions from a Linux gamer. To get the horizontal scroll wheel working in Firefox, I followed these [...]
The tilt-inverse map thing worked like a charm, thnx a lot
Follow the above instructions, but use
pointer = 1 8 3 4 5 7 6 2 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20for your .Xmodmap
Hey. Nice guide.
How would I set program to use the third button (side)? I have never used xmodmap or done much in terms of configuring my xorg.conf file. Any help you can offer here? Thanks.
Do you know if the new 2007 version of the G5 works under Linux as the previous one? Would like to buy one…
[...] a bit of searching I found this reveiw of the G5 mouse by Patrick McFarland at [...]
I’m surfing with my G5 right now. I haven’t had one problem with it and I absolutely love it. The customizable buttons are by far the best part.
I mapped my tilt-wheel to do “next” and “previous” for Winamp and the back button is “pause”. Its fun trying to find new things for all the buttons to do with all my programs. A little adventure of sorts.
There is no single tilt button, tilt left and tilt right generate their own mouse events (same way scroll up and down generate their own unique events).
You can play with xmodmap to map any event to any other event… just make sure each of the 20 numbers appear exactly once, not more, not less.
is there anyway to bind the tilt button to mousebutton3?
2000, 800, and 400 are the defaults without the Windows drivers. On boot, it sets the middle mode. It cycles between the three levels by pressing the sensitivity buttons. (Thus, I simply tap the top sensitivity button before starting Quake).
Yes, you can easily tell the difference between the three. I have Gnome’s mouse acceleration set right in the middle, and sensitivy set to low, and 800 works well; while 2000 is hyper sensitive (works well in Quake and other games), and 400 works well for precision work in Photoshop/Gimp/whatever.
I am thinking about getting one of these but wasn’t sure it was worth the extra cash compared to the optical. Since the dpi is adjustable I assume the 2000dpi is only with the Window’s drivers? What do you think the dpi is without drivers, 400? Or does it change with the sensitivity buttons on the unit and can you tell a difference between the levels? Thanks.
Well, technically it is up to your applications to make use of the thumb button.
Currently, I remapped it to be a middle button (which has the unfortunate side-effect of not letting the middle button stay the middle button, but hey)
In the above .Xmodmap, change 2 to 8, and 8 to 2. That will make your thumb button be a middle mouse button.
Otherwise, if you don’t want to do that, just map your thumb button to something useful in the programs you use. Programs often don’t have any defaults for that button.
Thanks for this easy to follow linux setup! My G5 running Fedora Core 6 and you Xorg setup makes the tilt forward and backward and my thumb button doesn’t do anything. Any suggestions on how to fix this?
You don’t really have to follow how it works, just do it. Its almost all jibberish to people who don’t already understand how it works. This is one of the few major flaws of Linux desktop usage left.
As for sensitivity controlled by the mouse itself… I wouldn’t have purchased it without that option. (Just as a message to future mice designers and all…)
Thanks for trying to help us newbs out. I appreciate that.
I’ll be honest though… didn’t really follow how to make the tilt work and the extra button. I’m ok though, at least SuSE detected as a scroll mouse with no issues.
It’s a great mouse isn’t it? And it’s awesome that the DPI sensitivity is controlled at the hardware level so that works too.