Learning with Linux - Adding a Logitech MX Master Mouse
I am slowly and hopefully surely teaching myself Linux, both at home and at work, which means that at times, I run into problems that I find solutions to that may be helpful for you too, so I thought that I would take you on my journey with me.
Some quick background info first though, I spent some time at the beginning distro-hopping, as we all probably did (and do?) until we find where we want to be, probably Arch from most of the posts that I’ve read but I’m not quite there yet. So I have two “main” distro’s right now. One is Linux Mint, that is running on an old Apple iMac and the other is Pop OS that is running on a Dell Optiplex 7050.
Why two? Well I initially fell in with Pop at the beginning but then when I got some old Mac hardware, I found that Mint runs on it really well and does a good job with the drivers. That being said on my kids computers (also old iMacs), they’re running Zorin so…
But on to the reason why we are here, I have two Logitech mice, an L800 or whatever it’s called, I use that with a dongle on Mint. Literally plug and play there, at least for basic pointing functionality, I haven’t tried anything else with it yet.
The MX Master 3 from the title is being used with Pop on the Dell. Here I had some fun, hence this article.
The Adventure
The Dell has been switched off for a while, as I havent had time to do anything with it but today I did. However due to some changes I made to my desk, I no longer had a keyboard and mouse connected to it (I used to use a KVM), no problem I thought, I’ve got wireless dongles. So I plugged the dongles for my Nuphy Air75 v1 and my Logitech Master into the back and booted up.
The Nuphy was, relatively easy, just held down FN+4 for 3 seconds and although I didn’t see anything on screen, it started to work.
The Logitech wouldn’t budge however. Stubbornly just sat there. I have also been using it with a M4 Mac Mini, so I switched the channel, just in case and tried again. Wouldn’t do anything.
So I went into terminal and tried lsusb, it found the dongle. Hooray. Still no mouse.
By now the system was complaining about being out of date and yadda yadda. So I updated it, thinking that would maybe also solve my problem and it would recognise the mouse. Unfortunately my optimism was not rewarded and I was still stuck with an unmoving pointing device.
After a quick consultation with ChatGPT i web-mode, I found out about Solaar (yes it really has two ‘A’s’ it’s not a typo), which as I understand it, is essentially Logi options on Linux.
I installed it from the terminal (sudo apt install solaar) if you’re following along at home and in a few seconds it was installed.
Still no mouse to click on it though, so launched it from the terminal (exec solaar) and it popped up a message, stating that it found the dongle but was unable to access it. “What about if you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in, it helpfully suggested?”. As we all know if you spend any amount of time in IT, switching something off and on is the single biggest secret of the whole universe and probably the solution to saving it. So of course of followed it’s advice and it was sound advice indeed. It immediately popped up that it found the dongle, could access it and it showed the mouse was previously paired with it.
Great! Finally, off we go I thought and moved the mouse. The mouse just sat there, silently judging me and not moving.
Ok, now what? Luckily for me, Linux and in this case, Pop, allows you to navigate with the keyboard, so I moved over to the pair button, (tab and arrow keys to get there) and clicked on it by hitting enter. “Do you want to pair another mouse?” it asked, “absolutely!” I responded. “Ok, you now have to enter, the super secret code to make this magic happen” (it actually just said enter the following code but my head lives in the cloud with unicorns, so I’m sticking to my story).
“Ok, I’m ready” I said, feeling like Tom Cruise in the first Mission Impossible, dangling by a rope.
“Heres the code - click the following buttons - left, left, left, lddddeft, left, left, right, right, left, left and right”.
Ok, I’ve got this I thought, adrenaline pumping and proceeded to enter the code.
Wouldn’t you know it, the moue finally gave in and started to work! Success!
It still showed that there were two mice paired to the dongle though, so I deleted the old one, not sure if that was the right move or not. We’ll see when I try to use it with something else. It’s paired via bluetooth with the mac though, so it should be ok.
TLDR:
Do this
Check for and perform system updates (sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade)
Install Solaar (sudo apt install solaar)
Plug in your dongle
If you have another mouse (with a cable), use it to click pair a mouse, otherwise press tab and use the arrow keys to move to the button and enter to select
Choose your logitech mouse.
Further Notes / Next Steps
While writing this, it looked like the computer froze but it seemed more like the DE crashed? I was getting graphical glitches in all apps. Was lazy to troubleshoot, so just rebooted but feels like I took the easy way out.
I noticed the Nuphy is behaving oddly. Some keystrokes are not being picked up. Others are too frequently (i.e. it will add in 3x A when I typed just one) and KB shortcuts are different to muscle memory, plus it only works in Mac mode, not Windows mode. And the media keys aren’t working.
The Pop shop is showing me that there are a bunch of runtime updates to install and app updates, plus also NVidia drivers? Not really understanding why when I updated the entire system beforehand. I assume because Pop has different apps in the store than in the repositories? Something to look into.
