Matt Woodward’s posterous

Matt Woodward’s posterous

Matthew Woodward  //  * CFML, Grails, and Java Developer
* Principal IT Specialist, US Senate
* Open BlueDragon Steering Committee Member
* All-Around Geek

Oct 10 / 11:51pm

Using Logitech Unifying Receiver on Linux

I recently got a Logitech Performance Mouse MX as well as a Logitech K350 Keyboard. Both these devices use Logitech's new Unifying Receiver, which is a great concept and since the receiver is so small it's ideal for a laptop setup.

Unfortunately if you have two separate devices that both use the unifying receiver the devices need to be paired to a single receiver using software, and of course there's no Linux version of the software.

Once the pairing of the devices with the unifying receiver is complete, however, it doesn't rely on the software to work. What this means is if you're using separate devices with a unifying receiver on Linux you can first configure the devices on Mac or Windows, and then plug the single unifying receiver into Linux and it will work.

A Linux version of the software would be nice but if you have a Mac or Windows computer laying around this is a handy workaround.

4 comments

Jan 22, 2010
 said...
Hiya,

So, with a logitech wireless keyboard and unifying receiver, if I plug into my linux box "as is" (vanilla from the box), the keyboard should work okay??? Yes? No?

I am guessing that the keyboard (and mouse for that matter) communicates with the OS as a standard USB keyboard, and that the proprietary bit is with the signals from the keyboard to the unifying receiver...

I use Mandriva, Suse, and PCLOS.

Presumably, the unifying receiver software should work under WINE or a windows guest in Virtual Box or another virtual machine software. Have you tried this with wine???

Jan 22, 2010
Yep, one device will work fine right out of the box. For a while I plugged two unifying receivers in, one for the keyboard and one for the mouse, and both devices worked without any issue. The only reason you need to go through the steps in this post is if you want to use one unifying receiver with two devices.

Since I do have a Windows box lying around I didn't try it in wine--would be interesting to see if the Logitech software worked under wine.
Jan 22, 2010
 said...
Great! Thanks for the info.

(I was hesitant to buy the wireless keyboard from TigerDirect in case it didn't work.)

Cheers.

May 27, 2010
 said...
Tested with VirtualBox (nonOSE) - it works (but you will need probably a second mouse).
Now, my K350 keyboard doesn't generate some events... Searching a way to fix it

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