1d ago

The driver for my mouse occupies over 1 gb

And of course they had to shoehorn some AI bullshit in it

(why I installed this driver: because i can remap the two extra buttons as copy/paste)

142 comments

I have several Logitech peripherals. Why in the fuck does it need AI?!?!

We live in the age of bloated software.
- The Internet is so bloated because every page is bursting with telemetry and spa framework bullshit that over engineers a fucking music recital site.

X mouse button control
It can't detect some of the fancier buttons and gestures but it can often pickup buttons 4 and 5 for remapping, and it does chording and long press options to give you multiple functions without any AI bullshit.

i wonder if a open source driver alternative exists.
- Piper is less than 2MB, and allows reconfiguring Logitech mouse buttons. It's available in Debian and Ubuntu package managers.
  Screenshot:
  
  I had to use Piper to get exotic features like having mouse 6, 7, 8 buttons function as mouse 6, 7, 8, rather than the default of alt-tab and ctrl-v.
  
  I never thought to look for something like this, but it looks fantastic so i’m going to try it. Thanks!
  
  would be cool if it also worked on Windows and Macos
  
  Does it still allow macros? I have a couple of 502s and my older one has fallen victim to the common problem of rhe switch getting bouncey so one click becomes multiple. Supposedly macros can fix this.
  
  and if you install it via fatpak its almost 1GB

+1 for using space sniffer. It's the best of such apps I've found. Unfortunately doesn't seem to get updated any more.
- WizTree my beloved
- Windirstat or kdirstat for the win
  
  Windirstat crew represent
  
  Wiztree is much faster
  
  GNOME Disk Usage Analyzer
  
  Amateur! ncdu! 😂
  
  I can't stand the look of Windirstat lol.
  I use explorer++ now because it can show subdir sizes. Unfortunately performance suffers quite a bit because of no caching and unsmart file system lol. Maybe linux has this basic and essential feature in it's file explorer.

We detected you moved your mouse. Downloading 1GB of AI telemetry and 3GB of user experience optimizations…

Fuck electron, fuck "web first" apps, fuck the "all application in the future will be websites" mentality.
- The sad reality of the end of Windows dominance.
- Man, they really developed the most unfun layout system and then tried to force it to everyone

That's not the driver but some bundled configuration & update bloatware.
Back in my days, you had to overwrite some .exe with a "0" to disable Nvidia from spying on you. The overwrite, because they would just download it again if you deleted the .exe.
- I remember installing a fresh PC with win98. During installation, I disabled some windows bloatware (Imagine! You actually could do this!), and ended up with an unresponsive, non-windows app blocking the system. I killed that app and removed it from the system. Keep in mind that at this point, no network connection was set up, nor did I install any driver or program yet, this was straight from the windows install medium.
  After reboot, the app was back, and again blocking the system.
  Wiping the harddisk and starting installation over did not help either.
  Turned out this was some bloatware installed by the BIOS whenever it detected at boot that there was a) a Windows installation that was b) "missing" their "register your PC with us" app. This needed some Windows bloatware to work, and thus failed on this machine.
  This was the only time I angrily screamed at a hotline worker.

The mouse driver used with the Commodore 64's GEOS operating system uses 3 blocks on disk, less than a kilobyte.
- That driver was using 0.5% of system resources! I thought it would be worse when I saw "259 blocks free", but overall that's pretty good.
- Most of the reason why the Logitech driver is so gargantuan is a separate Chromium browser instance, because someone thought that apps should be all websites first, which lead to most GUI libraries being developed for javascript and most devs being taught to be web developers.
  
  VSCode is also electron with a 100mb download size and 400mb install size. I think it has 1000x more functionality than some shit Logitech UI where you change LED colors. This sounds more like incompetence on the Logitech team than a problem with electron itself.
  It's not like traditional methods of packing apps are without problems. If I want to install the qbittorrent flatpak on Ubuntu, it pulls in >1gb of KDE depenencies, so I really don't see how that's better than these dreaded electron apps.
- But did it support RGB?
  Didn't think so, checkmate!
  
  A lot of fancy early RGB mouse came with a companion app that needed 10MB at most, and that was ridiculed.

Don't look up how much space Nvidia drivers take then.
- Nvidia drivers at least do something that are fairly complex and heavy, and they're necessary. Whereas this thing is just some comically overdeveloped and extremely annoying piece of bloatware from Logitech to remap a bunch of buttons.

The driver for your mouse occupies a few kilobytes. The shitty app and AI garbage bloatware occupies the rest.

The driver:
- There's something inside you
  It's hard to explain
  They're talking about you, boy
  But you're still the same

Use the offline installer, which is for offline and airgapped machines. It turns off the AI prompt builder as well as all the telemetry shite:
https://support.logi.com/hc/en-us/articles/11570501236119-Logitech-Options-offline-installer
- AI prompt builder? What? It's a fucking mouse??????
  
  It is repulsive to me in its entirety but apparently the vibe coders dig it.
  
  But it has AI? If your mouse doesn't have AI, you're living in the past
  Edit: ~~post~~ past
  
  Logitech, the data company?!?!

holy fucking shit. I once programmed a mouse driver for an 8 bit computer with 32kb of ram. I don't remember the exact size of the compiled driver but it was under 1kb.
Today's tech companies probably couldn't even figure out a way to make a hello world in python without it needing 100gb of storage, an Intel Core9/AMD Ryzen 7000 or better, an internet connection and an online user account.
- The actual driver for an HID USB device, even on WIndows, is still just a few KB.
  Worse, the default driver for HID devices like mice, keyboards, joysticks, gamepads and so on is part of Windows since Windows 7 and all you had to do was give it an INF file that really just associated USB hardware devices that sent the PC a specific identifier (made up of a VID and a PID value) on USB protocol initialization, with that built-in driver - and that file is maybe 100 bytes. Even better, that INF file is not even needed anymore since Windows 10.
  A driver for a mouse (pretty much the simplest Human Interface Device there is) that in addition to the normal mouse thing also supports setting the RGB color of some lights is stupidly simple because the needed functionality is already in the protocol.
  Remember, modern digital electronics still uses really tiny processors sometimes with less than 32KB flash memory (and way less than that in RAM) only they're microcontrollers rather than microprocessors now, hence the protocols are designed so that they can be handled by processing hardware with little memory (after all, many USB Hosts aren't PCs but instead are things like USB HUDs which have microcontrollers not microprocessors)
  I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that almost the entirety of that 1GB is bloatware.
- Maybe a Docker or two, perhaps a VM in the cloud. Is that still hip with the kids?
  
  All the cool kids are running kubernetes

what the fuck?? why would a mouse need ai? ancient computer user here who is very confused lol
- You can configure you mouse to press a button and it brings up a prompt where you can type an AI query in there.
- ~~To better know everything you do and train it on AI.~~ i mean, To improve Productivity and convenience.
- To better track you. I mean, "enhancing your user experience."
- Maybe it can AFK my character in games for me
  
  The AI plays all video games for you, leaving you more time to work and be productive.
  
  It'll bring down your kd bro be careful.

The driver consumes a few KB. The bullshit software that you don't need to install is what's consuming the GB.

wtf AI in your mouse driver?
Oh yeah, totally not logging your every mouse movement, no sir, not at all!
- It’s training itself to pass those mouse based “I’m human” checks that some sites use.
  
  That’s hilarious. But might actually not be a joke.

maybe this will help, if you wanted to ditch the logi driver:
https://github.com/pwr-Solaar/Solaar
Solaar is a Linux manager for many Logitech keyboards, mice, and other devices that connect wirelessly to a Unifying, Bolt, Lightspeed or Nano receiver as well as many Logitech devices that connect via a USB cable or Bluetooth. Solaar is not a device driver and responds only to special messages from devices that are otherwise ignored by the Linux input system.
- piper is also great. openrgb works too if all you want is to change led colors.
- Saving this for later.
  
  take it to the bushes.
- I hope one day theres something similar to this, but for 8bitdo.
  I have an 8bitdo keyboard, and in order to map my buttons, I need to boot up a windows 10 hard drive, do my one time edits, save them to the keyboard, and THEN I can turn off the pc, swap back to my ZorinOS hard drive, and THEN I can go about as normal.
  And if for some reason somethings wrong, or didn't take, I'd have to repeat the whole process all over again.
  All because the keyboard manager doesn't work on linux. But it's not logitech.
  
  Sell the 8bitdo keyboard and buy one instead that is capable of running with QMK or ZMK firmware and is configurable by either VIA or VIAL.
  
  I have a Flydigi gamepad and I can use a virtual machine with tiny11 to change the configuration. The connection isn't super stable but for the few times I have to do it, it works.
- Does this mean I can finally stop going back a page when I nudge my mouse the wrong way??
- Does this require libratbag?

Baaack in my day we got a driver for our mouse on a single DD floppy...
- It wasn't too long ago that a USB mouse would store the divers on the mouse.
  
  That was actually never the case. The default USB mouse driver comes with the OS. And also today any modern mouse will work just fine with the default USB mouse driver in the OS.
  What this abomination is is a kind of extended driver that allows the user to e.g. remap buttons on the mouse or control RGB lights. You know, anything but the actual basic functionality of the mouse.
  
  You're thinking of the Titan submersible accident, I think. But they ended up stored on a Logitech controller, not a mouse.

Input Remapper on linux can get the job done without the need for this junk. I've used it for this exact purpose before.
- It mostly can get the job done. Mice that have more then just mouse 4/5 tend to be entirely fucked and good luck.

Please don't be Logitech, please don't be Logitech...
Damnit.
- Of Course it's Logitech. Their software has been shit for ages.
  
  I've been using the Logitech MX Master 3 mouse for a while now and the software has been alright. Lets me use my mouse across my desktop and laptop at the same time. It's been alright, but I go to check out my button mapping settings recently and saw "AI prompt builder" and sighed at how stupid that is. I really really want hope the adding of AI to everything is a fad like Pogs, but I somehow doubt it.
  
  I do like the hardware tho and mine works just fine on linux without their garbage software. Got one of those ergo trackball mice and a G502 for some gaming.

It doesn't contribute at all to the conversation but BOOOOOOO to them for that nonsense.
- That "logi" rebrand really shows how shit they've gotten.
  Logitech Gaming Software was the last good thing they made.

My first mouse driver was smaller than the picture you attached to this post

Narrator: It wasn't a driver.

The software, afaik there is no actual driver involved.

The driver itself is probably a few megabytes only. The rest is just bullshit in the name of rgb control and preset/dpi control. You seem to be using a Logitech device, you can enable the onboard memory of your mouse, then uninstall this thing and use Logitech's Onboard Memory Manager app instead.
- the driver itself is kilobytes in size. Megabytes is huge for such a simple thing

Driver for you mouse? What are you on? MSDOS?
- You need it to remap some of the buttons on the side. I have the same garbage just for this purpose.

I have a Logitech mouse. I just used a 3rd party app to remap.
Better mouse for Mac, but looks like you’re on Linux? There’s bound to be something
- https://github.com/PixlOne/logiops
- You can use Logitech's Onboard Memory Manager app which is under 20MB and doesn't require installation.

I like SpaceSniffer, it is almost 10 years old program and I still use it
- Windirstat is open source
  
  And slow as shit. WizTree takes maybe 10 seconds, whereas Windirstat will take several minutes.
- Same. A pearl in the sand.

Space Sniffer gang represent!

you could use autohotkey and remap mouse3/4 (or whatever they are) to C-c and C-v

My installation process for a new mouse is as follows: 1 - Attempt to plug it in. 2 - Flip the USB connector. 3 - Plug it in. 4 - Use the mouse.
Is there anything at all to be gained from installing the software that comes with the mouse? Even with extra side buttons, I've never had anything not work out of the box.
Edit: OP is remapping buttons. Got it.
- Lights, dpi configuration, polling rate settings, surface calibration, and (as you mentioned) button remapping. Yes it will work without that but it can work better (and personally that’s worth a little extra ram anyways)
- You skipped over the part where you attempt to plug it in, flip the USB connector attempt again, flip it again, and finally it goes in.

I love this program by the way!!!

Madness

Anyone have other brand suggestions?
- I have a M$FT "natural" keyboard (PS/2 and not running thru a USB converter either) and a M$FT USB mouse. Both around 30 years old. They're indestructible it seems, and both have worked great with every Linux distro I've ever used.
- I've been using a Redragon M690 Pro as my home daily driver, and I retired my Razer Basilisk x Hyperspeed to my office, although the latter started having issues with middle clicking. The 690 is nice so far though. I don't play any twitch shooters, more of a slow burn style, so ymmv.
  
  I also like my Redragon mouse, a "Griffin M602A-RGB". I picked it entirely because (a) the shape fits my hand well, with well-sculpted indentations for my thumb, ring, and pinky fingers, and (b) it's cheap, but not so cheap it isn't still decent.
- No, unfortunately. Logitech mice are the best performing in quality, battery life, and longevity at their price range. I've tried many other mice in the budget range, and they all fail quickly, eat batteries, or perform poorly in comparison.
  
  I bought a couple Logitech mice a few years ago and I gotta say, they weren't the best. The material they are made out of melts slowly over time. I use these mice and get sticky shit on my fingers. It's not food or anything I'm doing. I've scrubbed them with rubbing alcohol and no matter what a little bit of sticky stuff is always coming off. So the finish on them isn't great, at best. Never had other mice do this.

LOL.

Huh, neat

142 comments