A Linux Driver Is In Development For The Corsair Vengeance K90

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Gaming on 29 August 2015 at 11:42 AM EDT. 10 Comments
LINUX GAMING
The Corsair Vengeance K90 is a gaming keyboard featuring Cherry MX Red mechanical key switches and a whole lot of other extra functionality suited for gamers and tailored for MMO and RTS titles. A open-source Linux driver is in the works for properly handling this high-end keyboard.

The Corsair K90 is hard to find these days but has sold for $130+ for this mechnical keyboard with 18 macro keys, backlight illumination, and other features. Of course, the standard keyboard functionality works under Linux, but all of the extras do not out of the default Linux HID driver.

Independent developer Clement Vuchener has been working on implementing a Linux HID driver for the K90. He explained with the initial driver, "This keyboard has a backlight, macro keys (G1 to G18) and some other special keys (macro recording, profile switching, changing the light level or disabling the super/meta/'windows logo' keys). The macro playback can be switched between hardware or software (from the driver not a key). Using the generic HID driver, the macro keys and special keys send wrong key code or no key code at all (because of the HID usage code used by the keyboard). The purpose of this driver is to fix the behaviour of the keys using incorrect HID usage codes and expose the other features to the user space."


Once Steam Machines start materializing and SteamOS is ready, it will be interesting to see if more gaming peripheral manufacturers (primarily of gaming mice and keyboards) begin submitting Linux drivers for exposing all of the device functionality under Linux or whether it will continue to be left up to the community. To date one of the few peripheral vendors backing good Linux support is Roccat with Linux software for Logitech, Razer, and other devices being left up to the reverse-engineering community.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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