Today at the grocery store a sweet older lady approached me and asked if I knew anything about computers. I said yes I do, and she produced a mouse saying that her son set up Linux mint for her and she was wondering if the mouse was compatible. It needed kernel version 2.6 or newer so I said that the mouse should work, guessing mint itself was probably newer than that kernel. Happy with my answer, we chatted a little, then she thanked me and left.

It was a nice experience, so I thought I should share!

  • @[email protected]
    9•1 year ago

    Maybe this is possible, but typically you’re lucky to even find Linux support mentioned at all.

    • @[email protected]
      2•1 year ago

      Kind of surprisingly, but kind of not, I’ve often seen it mentioned for such rather basic hardware.

      Thing is:

      • The chip manufacturer sells in extremely high quantities (to many mouse manufacturers).
      • They probably hardly have to do anything for Linux support, because it’s such basic hardware. Write a driver once and slightly maintain it over the decades.
      • Aside from low cost, their only real sales argument is reaching a bigger market with their chips, and the Raspi crowd + deals with organizations running exclusively Linux, isn’t that irrelevant either.