On a number of occasions in the past, Razer has promised to support their mice under Linux. However, they have yet to properly provide any level of support. Their latest excuse for this lack of support is FUD saying that all of their secrets are within their firmware on this mouse and if they want to provide Linux support that will be opened up. Of course, that is not exactly the case. However, soon enough we hope they will learn and begin to provide support for alternative operating systems.

There are a number of third-party open-source programs for adjusting settings on Logitech mice, but unfortunately very few for Razer mice. Back in 2006 there was RazerTool for adjusting profiles, upgrading the firmware, toggling the DPI/frequency/button settings, controlling macros, and other options, but that open-source program had a short lifespan. The most recent release of RazerTool was in May of 2006 and its support is limited to Copperhead. We were also working on Diamondback and Krait support for RazerTool. This program did even have a GUI interface for controlling the settings. It should not be too much work in theory to get RazerTool running with the Lachesis, but we have yet to start hacking on any of that code.

While right now the Razer Lachesis goes without any official or third party support on Linux, eventually we hope there will be configuration support for this mouse. Even with no modification support and just using the stock settings and then controlling the DPI through the two buttons, we were still very pleased with this mouse. As we mentioned in this article already though, the two buttons on the right hand side aren't associated with any X event.

You can read the entire article at Phoronix.