December 29, 2023

A new mouse = Death Adder Essential

I made this purchase in December of 2023. This is advertised as a "gaming mouse" with 6400 dpi resolution. I am not a gamer, I just want a decent quality mouse.

Up to now I have used whatever cheap Logitech mouse I could lay my hands on. As long as it has a wheel and the usual left and right buttons, I figure I am good to go. The one I am replacing with the Razer Death Adder is marked "Logitech M-BJ58". It is ancient (but still works) and I see used ones selling for $15 on Ebay (who would buy a used mouse?). New ones sell for about $30. I paid only $25 for the Razer.

The Razer seems to work just fine on linux. The wheel and logo light up, which I may or may not enjoy. If I plug it into one of the USB slots on my monitor, it will get turned off when I shut the monitor off at night, which might work out well.

The Razer has two buttons on the left side, which I am happy to report, don't do anything. There is software for linux for fiddling with the mouse, in particular connecting macros to those buttons.

The Reddit thread mentions "openrazer" and "polychromatic" to change DPI and key bindings.

The software from Razer is called "Synapse" and allows you to change lighting effects, sensitivity, and "other features".

So far I am happy to just plug it in and ignore the side buttons.

I run XFCE and in the XFCE settings there is a "mouse and touchpad" section that has an Acceleration slider. I reduce it from the default value of 5.0 to 2.0 and am very happy.


Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!