Logitech G13 - ELI5 - Hardware Help

Ask Fedora
1

Hi there :wave:

I am going through the process of migrating my workflow to Fedora 41 from Windows 10, currently dual-booting.

So far going pretty well, managed to get Davinci Resolve working (needs more testing) and took me 3 evenings to get systemd understanding to mount smb drives rather than using fstab.

That is just a bit of blurb to say, I am not afraid to search for and fiddle for the solutions - however this one, well its way above my head and I need some help to translate into something I can either understand or can duckduckgo.

I use a Logitech G13 for my gaming on Windows and love it and I would love to use it on Fedora - I am aware that this is a closed source product but I brought many years before I knew about these types of things, and I would prefer to use it rather than add to landfill.

Looking into it, someone did reverse engineer it and create a driver and another person has kindly built on that, to create something that me as a low tech understanding user would love to use.

But I do not understand the programmy stuff about building and using a make file for rpm etc. and I am so baffled by the details in the read-me that I do not even know what search terms to use to start the journey. Not the fault of the developer, I lack the understanding, however I feel like I am drowning at sea and would love a light house.

Fedora and RPM derivatives

Fedora and its derivatives have a wild and wacky build system for making RPM packages from .spec files. Thus, the Makefile kinda has to manage the build differently than other builds, and modifies things outside of the source tree, sadly.

First, you need to setup your system with the build tooling:

[user@lupin g13gui]$ sudo dnf install rpmdevtools rpmlint make python meson lsb-release git

Now, here's where things get wacky. The Makefile uses rpmbuild's rpmdev-setuptree to create the $HOME/rpmbuild directory. Unfortunately, this is entirely out of our control, and the rpmbuild tooling insists (rather stupidly) that it work out of this tree. So bear in mind, if you already have an rpmbuild directory tree prepped, the Makefile will clobber it.

You can build the RPM in the usual way above, with:

[user@lupin g13gui]$ make

This will produce an RPM package you can install in the build/ subdirectory of the source tree. Unfortunately, the rpmbuild directory will still hang around until you issue a make clean. You can install it using make install.

If you know of a better way of building RPMs, please send a pull request. June hasn't used Fedora or RPM-based distros since she was in high school, so the tooling is entirely foreign to her.

I did check dnf (ever hopeful lol) and it does not appear to be in dnf of the third party repo’s.

I have also searched in this forum for G13 (it only returns 4 results, these all relate to Mac systems and do not relate to the G13 Keyboard/Gamepad).

So can someone explain like I am 5, how to start to get this installed?

Thank you,

Mango

2

You could try the fedora instructions from the git page.

The source in git would need some updates to work on f41.
For example it assumes python 3.12 but fedora is on 3.13.
Small edit to the .spec file.

The rpmbuild i think will work then, but the spec file is hacky.
(They do say they are not Fedora users).

3

I don’t know if you’re using Gnome or Plasma, but in Plasma, Dolphin understands smb:// just like it understands ssh:// or sftp:// so you can simply create shortcuts and desktop links that point to something like smb://192.168.1.10 or smb://server.home.net. There is no need for complicated permanent SMB mounts unless you have a reason for it, like having them as part of your local filesystem or some specific application needs.

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4

Thank you for taking the time to reply.

The big problem is the instructions are not simple for me as a non-technical person to understand and I am looking for guidance on what to search for to obtain a guide so I can understand how to get it installed and then maybe even working :crossed_fingers:

Thank you for the information around the python version.

[quote=“Barry A Scott, post:2, topic:145159, username:barryascott”]
(They do say they are not Fedora users).
[/quote]

This is the main reason I thought it was best to ask, where there are Fedora users.

5

Hey, thank you for taking the time to reply.

I am using the KDE spin and have used Dolphin as you have suggested before - but have always typed the ip in manually (a shortcut would be much easier, thank you for the suggestion).

However, I went for a permanent mount for Davinci Resolve as it was very fussy in Windows about files stored on a NAS and I do not know if it will be, better, the same or worse in Fedora.

On the positive side - I learnt a load and that to me is fun, even if it probably takes others a lot less time. :grinning:

6

Yup, I have a file synchronization app that doesn’t understand smb:// internally, even though its Windows version understands sftp://. So I would need a permanent, local mount too if I wanted to sync from smb shares.

Though, if your NAS supports sftp, I’d imagine that the Linux version of Resolve would talk to it natively, over sftp, no? The fastest solution, from my experience is NFS though. If your NAS allows NFS exports then mounting it locally is just a single command. But yeah, it needs an entry in fstab to stay permanent, which you don’t want to use. But fstab is easy though.

Yeah, I’m fairly new to Linux too and I spend a lot of time getting stuff to work, or breaking stuff and then getting it to work again :rofl: It’s mostly fun though, even if it gets somewhat frustrating at times. One reason I like Fedora and KDE is that both communities are very helpful and there is almost no bickering usually present on Linux forums.