Thursday, October 9, 2014

Logitech K820 wireless keyboard and touchpad in linux Mint

SUMMARY
The Logitech K820 runs on Linux Mint 17 and the standard gestures function.


K820 ON LINUX MINT 17
I wanted to try a new wireless keyboard to give my tendinitis a rest, and i wanted to try something different from my old Logitech K400 with the built-in (but tiny) touchpad.

I had seen the K820 on Amazon, but didn't have a chance to try it until I was at Staples one evening grabbing some vinyl letters. The keys were an improvement over the K400 - they were typical island keys, and it has that gorgeous large touchpad. The only downside was that there was no HOME and END key. However, a quick Google informed me that the FUNC/Arrow keys did that.

I had a gift card from Best Buy for turning in an old tablet (my venerable Viewsonic G-Tablet), so I figured I'd give it a shot and see how it worked on Linux.

Here's my setup:
HP Pavilion dv6000
Linux Mint 17

I plugged in the K820, hit the little power switch on the keyboard and I was immediately able to use the keyboard and touchpad.

Here are the gestures that I have discovered so far:
single finger tap - left click
double finger tap - right click
single finger swipe - regular cursor movement
double finger up/down scroll window
three finger up/down - open the application/"start" menu

It also has the standard left and right click by pressing on the bottom corners of the touchpad.

I was unable to turn on/off any of these using the standard touchpad driver in Linux Mint, but that's OK. I think I'll try and learn these.

Oh, and my tendinitis feels better already.