Logitech Gaming Keyboards Getting A New Driver With Linux 5.5

The Logitech G15 keyboards and related gaming keyboards from the company are seeing a new open-source driver queued ahead of the Linux 5.5 kernel cycle.

Red Hat's Hans de Goede who has made prolific contributions to the Linux desktop support over the past decade to numerous different areas has been focusing some time recently on this new Logitech gaming keyboard driver.

The new HID Logitech gaming keyboard driver addresses some HID issues around extra keys on the keyboard now generating proper key events under Linux. Besides all the keys now working on these gaming keyboards, there is also keyboard backlight controls working as well as the LCD backlight control. This does also support the LED_BRIGHT_HW_CHANGED bit allowing for GNOME Shell and other desktop environments to make use of on-screen displays while changing the backlight state. There is also support for controlling the LEDs under various macro keys on the relevant Logitech keyboards.

Besides the various Logitech G15 keyboard revisions, the G510 is another keyboard supported by this driver, including for its RGB backlight. Support for various other (newer) Logitech gaming keyboards is presumably forthcoming.

This new Logitech gaming keyboard driver is residing within hid.git until the Linux 5.5 merge window kicks off before Christmas while the stable kernel release won't be until Q1'2020. It's great seeing Red Hat continuing to work on these desktop hardware support improvements but a pity that Logitech still isn't contributing.