MSI SteelSeries Keyboard LED Controller for Linux | Hacker News Reader

MSI SteelSeries Keyboard LED Controller for Linux

github.com

44 pointsstevelacy52 comments

For anyone who wonder what it is it's for a the MSI gaming laptops with "SteelSeries Engine" supported keyboards.

It allows you to change the lighting and possibly do macro keys under Linux.

Why would anyone run Linux on a gaming laptop, given that this would pretty much preclude playing any actual games?

1) These are very high end machines I've seen people using gaming laptops as workstations before, they tend to be quite economical (compared to workstation / DTR laptops from the likes of Dell/Lenovo) especially if you are doing some GPU related work. But even if you aren't doing anything with the GPU gaming laptops are pretty much the only way of getting more than 16GB today even on a 15" laptop as they often come with 4 or even 6 soDIMM slots.

2) You can run some games on Linux too these days.

Take the Lenovo Y700-15isk for example. It can swallow up to 32GB of RAM, has quad-core CPUs and can have two hard drives (one M.2 and one normal SATA). The noise in normal office use is close to zero, and the keyboard, that is built for gamers, helps longevity for normal use, too. Did I mention the Nvidia GTX 960 with 4GB vRAM? This thing is what used to be the "workstation class" while still providing 6 hours battery life. Full Linux support. Costs 899 Euros in the base model without operating system (Germany). So: if you are a number cruncher and want to do some serious gaming, too, a gaming laptop with Linux makes a lot of sense.

There are more than 2000 games on Steam for Linux right now. Including a growing number of AAA games. Still small compared to the WIndows offering, but far from being negligeable anymore.

The amount of AAA titles that comes to linux is still negligible <1% of AAA titles end up on Linux within their first 3 years of release (Ubisoft, Activision and EA do not release titles on Linux). The only big publisher that releases games for Linux is 2K which has released several games on Linux including old AAA titles but they also don't do it directly the license it to another company and pretty much wash their hands of any support.

Overall out of those 2000 games a lot are borderline games, and out of those that are a lot are borderline playable on Linux since Steam doesn't really enforces strict rules.

So no the Linux gaming market is still pitiful it's not much better than it was 5 or even 10 years ago with Wine if anything it's worse since DX11/12 games pretty much do not run on Wine.

On the indie side things are much better so if you are only a very casual gamer or really like some old school stuff you'll have things to play, if you want to play AAA titles Linux isn't where you find it.

I don't agree with the points you raised.

- <1% AAA titles vs Windows ? There are less than 100 AAA titles every year on Windows, and I'm pretty sure we get more than 1 % based on the recent releases of Shadow of Mordor and Tomb Raider 2013. Of course the percentage is still small but certainly not in that range.

- there is more and more Day 1 AAA support than ever for Linux. XCOM2. Dying Light, just to name a few. Such ports are not always flawless but there were non-existent before. You can't say there is no difference at all.

- 2000: a lot of them are indie games. Whether those are borderline games or not is left to your opinion, but I personally have several hundred games on Linux that are actual games and not "mobile-games ported to Linux" kind of games.

- Not better than 5 years ago ? You must be kidding. 5 years ago apart from WINE there was basically close to no official Linux support. The earliest support before Valve jumped in were indie devs like 2D Boy. Since them the amount of official support has massively improved by ANY metric.

- WINE has improved a lot actually. First, DX9 translation is becoming extremely close to native Windows performance, and it's not rare to see DX9 games performing better on WIndows than on Linux. Then, DX11 support is actually coming by the end of 2016 (based on a recent interview with the main supporters of WINE, Codeweavers).

- Vulkan is now out there and since it will be a cross-platform API unlike DX12, you can imagine broader support for Linux in the future.

So, I don't share at all the level of negativity of your comments. There's never been any better time to game on Linux than now.

Earliest support, in the late 90s and early 00s way before Valve jumped in was from Loki Entertaiment who ported many AAA titles. Individual developers like id and Epic also released Linux versions of their titles back around the same time. Of course after Loki fell and it started to become apparent that Linux wasn't going to take over the desktop there was a very long period of virtually no AAA games on Linux.

There are now more games on Linux than there ever have been thanks to the rise of indie games, crowdfunding and Valve's efforts with SteamOS. Just a while ago Gaming On Linux noted that 8 out of 10 of the current most popular games on Steam are now available or coming soon on Linux.

I hope Valve really is in it for the long term as the Steam survey numbers (floating around 1% for Linux) are still very poor and most non-indie developers don't find the saler figures to be worth it. I don't think things would become as nearly as bad as they did back when Loki folded even if Valve decided SteamOS is dead though, thanks to indie games and Kickstarter.

Not having VR with HTC Vive on Linux/Steam machines on day one seems like a missed opportunity. It's a new platform where it would have been easier to get a significant portion or even all of the games also on Linux.

1) It is in the range of 1% and you've missed the rest of my sentence which is within the first 3 years of their release. Shadow of Mordor and Tomb Raider came out fairly late in their life cycle.

I've said that out of the big publishers only 2K seems to want to support Linux currently XCOM2 was the only "AAA" game that came out with day 1 support of Linux performance issues aside (Pretty much all the big games on Linux on Steam have considerably higher system requirements and do have performance issues, Shadow of Mordor is near unplayable).

2) 2000: a lot of them are indie games. Whether those are borderline games or not is left to your opinion, but I personally have several hundred games on Linux that are actual games and not "mobile-games ported to Linux" kind of games.

Again which games, I have 3714 (I have a Steam account since HL2 like most others, and on this summer sale alone I've spent nearly 400$ already on games) games in my Steam Library some of them do have Linux support (Valve and a few 2K games) but for the most part none of the games I or my friends play come with Linux support

3) Wine has improved but you again missing my point completely 5 years ago I could play most games on Wine today due to lack of DX11 support I cannot play any new games on it, yes DX11 support will eventually come but atm the library of new games I can play on Wine is smaller than what I had around 2006/7.

4) Vulkan is now but there isn't much to any support for it as of yet, it's too early to tell what's going to come of it, but I doubt it will get a large scale adoption it's just the matter of things, OpenGL tanked, Mantle tanked, like it or not DX is king currently.

5) Well I don't know about you but I remember when I could play WoW, Warcraft 3, and Call of Duty etc. on Linux using Wine on day 1 pretty much these days it's not the case so for me there are actually less titles I would want to play on Linux, but hey different strokes.

Seriously ?

1) Shadow of Mordor (2014). Tomb Raider 2013... 2013. Less than 3 years for both of them, and that's just a few. Saints Row IV, released in 2013, on Linux in 2015. I could go on and on.

2) There's about one game out of 5 that has Linux Support these days. Some on Day 1, most of them within a year or two of their Windows release. Of course there are 4/5 with no Linux support, but that's expected with a library that just started 3 years ago. And if you have 3714 games on Windows, you probably have a bunch of non-games in your library in Windows as well.

3) No, you could not play most Windows games 5 years ago on WINE. Tons of them failed miserably to even start. DX9 compatibility has never been better than now, so actually for most DX9 titles you can play more games than before. DX11 is a gap, but that's something that will disappear progressively as well.

4) OpenGL did not tank, it's still widely used in many industries. Oh and even the latest Doom on Windows actually uses OpenGL and NOT DirectX.

5) WoW, Warcraft 3, Hearthstone, Starcraft 2, DIablo 3 play fine on WINE nowadays. Overwatch does not, because it's DX11. but that's an expection.

No, really, it's better than it's ever been.

So you found a couple of games which I was the 1st to actually mention...

I really don't understand the slightest basis for your arguments.

Let's make it easy:

How many AAA titles (AAA in the industry is defined as games with budget of 50M$ or higher) are released each year? Out of those AAA titles how many games are released on Linux each year?

Out of the 3 big publishers (Ubisoft, EA, Activision) how many Linux titles come out each year? I've been the 1st to call 2K out so I'll give you them even still only a small portion of their games actually see the light of day on Linux

Out of the indie game titles what percentage comes out to Linux (hint much lower than you think)?

With games that come out on Linux and Windows which would perform better under the same hardware (A simple review of the requirements of both Linux and Windows game on Steam would hit to that)?

Also how comes that a partially closed source OS (SteamOS is not FOSS) that relies on a closed source platform (Steam) with DRM on top is somehow a champion of gaming on Linux? Give me a break... when games would start coming out to Linux with true multi-platform support let me know.

Until then I'll still use WINE which unlike you I had no troubles using even in 2006-2007, sure nothing worked perfectly but hey it doesn't work perfectly now either.

You can spin this all you want but let's face the truth gaming on Linux isn't "better than it's ever been" it's pretty much the same as it was because the ~2000 or so titles on a closed source platform like steam is still a drop in the bloody ocean, and it's really not how one would want to do gaming on Linux. If you are going to champion closed source and DRM then what do we even need an open OS to begin with? SteamOS is a black box running on top of Linux it's not any more open or free than some high end appliance you buy that uses some GPL software. Heck the PS4 and XboxOne probably run some GPL also.

> You can spin this all you want but let's face the truth gaming on Linux isn't "better than it's ever been" it's pretty much the same as it was because the ~2000 or so titles on a closed source platform like steam is still a drop in the bloody ocean, and it's really not how one would want to do gaming on Linux. If you are going to champion closed source and DRM then what do we even need an open OS to begin with? SteamOS is a black box running on top of Linux it's not any more open or free than some high end appliance you buy that uses some GPL software. Heck the PS4 and XboxOne probably run some GPL also.

You are mixing tons of different topics that are unrelated to your original point. So, Strawman tactics I guess.

The key point is, can a Linux gamer play more games now than 5 years ago ? The answer is clearly yes. That's all there is to say.

>>Shadow of Mordor is near unplayable)

Really because I have played over 200 hours, seems to work just fine in my Arch Linux system...

Run it 1440p/4K on high settings and come back to me.

I see so not only do you have to play exclusively AAA titles now you have to play at 4K in order for you to be called a "gamer" according to dogma1138

Talk about moving the goal posts

For the Record, Most windows systems struggle to play games at 4K unless you have 2 980TI's in SLI or the new 1080, my system could not play Shadow of Mordor @4K if I installed windows, linux has nothing to do with it

Further I am not selling out the money for a 4K display, I have 4 1080p monitors, and 1 1920x1600 hooked to my system, I play games on the 1920x1600

It runs just fine at that resolution on a couple generation old card.

I'm running Titan x's in SLI :) But even at 1440p I can't run shadow of mordor on high settings on Linux. Seriously let's stop pretending I said out of the bat that some companies like 2k release games on Linux but it's really a drop in the ocean.

Older games and some indies work just fine, some of the newer games require much stronger hardware on Linux.

But we aren't any closer to being able to download day 1 titles and run them on Linux today than we were 5 years ago.

Steam and SteamOS are nice but it's still not enough to dent the Windows domination of the gaming PC market. And considering that Valve and Ocullus seem to ignore Linux at this point is kinda sad since VR couldn't captured Linux gaming easily.

Linux support for oculus started to Decline when John Carmack joined the company and the final nail in the coffin was the Sale to Facebook, anyone that thought linux would be supported after those 2 events are ignorant to the history of computing

As for Valve and their Lack luster support of SteamOS, again you have to look at history, and why Valve started the SteamOS project, they do not have some Philosophical need to support an OpenSource Operating system, When Widnows 8 was announced it clearly looked like Ballmer was going to turn MS into Apple, and close the ecosystem. This was a direct threat to Valve's business model, so they responded as any company would with an attempt to diversify and at the same time control the platform for themselves.

With Ballmer Leaving, Windows 8 almost universally being rejected by consumers and business, and the release of the More Open and Traditional Windows 10 the "need" for SteamOS (in Valves eyes)has lessened considerably, which is why Valve has not pushed it as strong as they did a couple years ago. They still recognize the Risk being primary on Windows as such they will not kill the project but the "New Microsoft" seems to be embracing being more open than at any point in MS history so.... Including having their own Linux "distro" for Software Defined Networking, and working directly with RedHat and Canonical

"On the indie side things are much better so if you are only a very casual gamer or really like some old school stuff you'll have things to play, if you want to play AAA titles Linux isn't where you find it."

Indie games doesn't automatically mean casual games or old school stuff. I personally find triple A a bit of a misnomer seeing how the gameplay is seriously lacking in a lot of those games. In the end when I want to watch pretty pictures I will rent a movie.

Speaking as somebody who has been gaming on linux for many years, it is SIGNIFICANTLY better than it was 5 years ago. 5 years ago, the only games on linux were open source games (TeeWorlds, Battle For Wesnoth, Frogatto, Nexuiz (now Xonotic)), and some open source knockoffs of nintendo games (super tux etc.), some id games from before Dave Taylor packed his bags, and the meager handful of indies that the Humble Bundle ported. Now, we have many of the numerous indies on steam, and many of those who haven't already plan to have support. We have VALVE'S ENTIRE BACK CATALOG, for crying out loud. We've got Mount and Blade, Reflex, Transistor, Shovel Knight, Stacking, The Talos Principle, Shadow of Mordor, The Stanley Parable, technically Undertale, although no official support, and that's just a quick at my steam library and the storefront. Sure, maybe your game of choice hasn't been ported, but it's gotten SO much better. And Wine has gotten better too. We are long past the days when the Source 13 update made my copy of Portal 2 unplayable.

I guess we should all just give up and go home then, I mean it's obvious that nobody should try. Ever.

This is how you ensure that it only gets worse.

Ubisoft has released one game so far - Grow Home - on Linux. It's one of their smaller titles, but it's a start!

> The only big publisher that releases games for Linux is 2K

Warner Brothers, SEGA, Valve, CD Projekt Red, Deep Silver and Square Enix aren't big?

Microsoft has put out a couple of their smaller indie titles too...

No none them are big, 2K is the largest publisher that releases games on Linux not on day one usually but at least you can get some of their bigger titles within 3 years of release. But even they don't publish them directly they sell off the rights to publish to Aspyr they also do not provide support for their titles on Linux/MacOS everything goes through Aspyr.

CD Projekt Red is technically a developer (CD Projekt is the publisher ;)) and they've made 3 games only 1 of them The Witcher 2 got released on Linux ~4 years after it's PC/Console release.

Valve isn't a large publisher either, they are a big company but not a large publisher.

Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment has 2 Linux Titles

Sega isn't a large publisher either, only Total War was released on Linux and it wasn't published by Sega for that platform.

Deep Silver is a small Publisher.

Square Enix doesn't really publishes directly they release their games through various distributors like Bandai Namco, the Linux and OSX version of Tomb Raider has been published by Feral Interactive which also funded the development for those platforms.

Paradox Entertainment also puts out games with linux support on day one. The last ones were Hearts of Iron 4 and Stellaris.

Actually there was also another platformer (can't recall the name) from UbiSoft released back in 2015 or late 2014. Outland maybe.

> So no the Linux gaming market is still pitiful it's not much better than it was 5 or even 10 years ago with Wine if anything it's worse since DX11/12 games pretty much do not run on Wine.

It's MUCH better than 5 years ago.

> On the indie side things are much better so if you are only a very casual gamer or really like some old school stuff you'll have things to play, if you want to play AAA titles Linux isn't where you find it.

Those "AAA games" used to be casual, over-hyped walking simulators...

I bought a Clevo gaming laptop for bioinformatics work and occasional gaming. It houses a 4 core (8 multithreaded) CPU for which I am able to lock in clock rate at around 3.5GHz without hitting the 100C ceiling when utilizing 100% of all the cores, with stock fans. It also has 32Gb of memory, three internal SSDs, a CUDA capable GPU, and the total cost was under 1600$ (~2 years ago).

But that's peanuts compared to this: It boots CentOS with SElinux enabled and runs my steam games with a FPS comparable to what I had on MS windows.

In my case its because it was the most economical way to get a 13" laptop with 16GB of RAM and an i7. The fact I can add a second SSD with Windows on it and play games with the settings turned up is really just a pleasant side effect.

Where have you been living the past few years? I only game on Linux.

Playing Halo, Dark Souls, Forza... :-)

What exactly do you play i wonder, sure there are some games, some 1st party games from Valve come out to Linux, some 2K titles will get a Linux release on steam 3 years down the line (and usually be somewhat broken), and there are some indie games.

But please let's not portray Linux as a viable gaming OS.

Let see Top 10 Games by play hours, all on native linux (no WINE)

1. Borderlands 2

2. Shadow of Mordor

3. Cities Skylines

4. Civ V

5. Stellaris

6. Borderlands Pre-sequel

7. Space Run

8. X-Com

9. Wasteland 2

10. Race the Sun

Plus I just bought like 10 or so titles on Steam Summer Sale, all Linux but have not had time to play them. Solar2, universe Sandbox 2, Tropico 5, Portal 2 are a few of those.

>>But please let's not portray Linux as a viable gaming OS.

I game exclusively under Linux now, if the game is not available for Linux native I will not buy it.

I no longer own any Windows Computers.

Just to throw it in here since I don't see the games mentioned much, the Metro Last Light and 2033 remakes run natively on Linux, and are amazing games (and AAA).

Metro isn't a AAA title

Yes and you've just summed up most of the big games that came out on Linux in the past 3 years.

Not really... There are several I have on my wishlist but are still more than I want to spend..

Pretty much is, I have all of the big titles with Linux support on Steam in my library.

Also how come you don't run windows but somehow have no problem with a closed source OS (SteamOS) and a closed source platform (Steam) with always on DRM taking over gaming on Linux?

Wanna support gaming on Linux at least support GoG supporting steam is like shooting yourself in the foot...

P.S. of that list you big titles you've mentioned how many of them have "AMD and Intel cards are NOT supported." in their system requirements for Linux? ;)

>Also how come you don't run windows

Because I find windows to be technologically inferior

>but somehow have no problem with a closed source OS (SteamOS) and a closed source platform (Steam) with always on DRM taking over gaming on Linux?

While I do support open source, I do not choose Linux simply because it is open source. I work in a windows shop, if windows was not a steaming pile of shit I would not have a job. When I get home I want my computer to simply work, the way I want it to work, with out problems or having fucking update popups every 5 mins, or having driver issues (yes I infact have more driver issues on windows than Linux, party because I ensure I select hardware that is supported by the Kernel before I buy something so hardware is never an issue for me)

I choose Linux because for me it is the best computing experience for my workflow, not simply because it is open source.

I have only installed SteamOS once, and do not currently have any system running it, I use Arch Linux for any Desktop Systems, and some dev servers. CentOS for all Production Servers, and I dabble in all the others.

As for DRM, while steam does have DRM not all games use it, People often confuse SteamDRM with the other features of the Platform. Steam is a Application Library that has DRM, I have never had an negative experience in relation to SteamDRM so it does not really bother me.

You have seem to confused me with RMS or something.

This argument is about like asking why I use the Nvidia Closed source Drivers... Hell maybe that is your problem with Shadow, you are attempting to use the nouveau drivers

wow, you really have it in for gaming on Linux. Steam has absolutely made Linux a 'viable' gaming OS if it wasn't already. SteamOS is doing great things too.

http://store.steampowered.com/search/?os=linux

I have nothing against gaming on Linux, I have (well had it's the VR box now) a SteamOS machine since the first public OS beta release and quite a strong one (my old gaming rig 3770K & dual 780ti's, updated to 980ti for the HTC Vive).

None of the games I play are available on Linux, none of the new AAA titles are available on Linux. With Valve not fully supporting SteamVR on Linux currently through the HTC Vive that's not even an option either.

But the difference is that I don't have some bias and will not attempt to fool anyone by portraying that they can use Linux or SteamOS as a gaming setup, not unless they only play the few 1st party Valve games, bargain bin AAA titles and Indies because beyond that it's very slim pickens.

I doubt many people choose Linux primarily as a gaming OS.

Gaming sounds of primary concern to you, for others they want the development environment and freedom of Linux and gaming is a very pleasant bonus.

Were talking about SteamOS and gaming on Linux not about the merits of Linux as an OS. I use Windows, Linux and MacOS all for different reasons, I own both IOS and Android devices I don't limit myself and don't associate with any clubs. Every OS, device and software has it's uses but like all tools we need to admit that they have their niche and limitations in a pinch a screwdriver can be used as a hammer but let's not pretend it is one.

I fully agree, but there are trade-offs, dabbling with multiple OSes can make you "master of none", especially with the pace of open source development.

Ahh... the AAA games. The games I am told are the best because reasons. If you can't play the AAA games you aren't really gaming.

You say you don't have a bias and then finish off by saying you are biased against Linux because it only has certain games. You only like games that are "great" because they hold an imaginary title of AAA.

I admit I am biased towards gaming on Linux. The main reason being I don't like being forced to purchase and upgrade to a slightly different OS to receive the "best" gaming experience. A gaming experience that can be had on the older systems but is deliberately crippled by the software. Hooray for Direct X!

> What exactly do you play i wonder, sure there are some games, some 1st party games from Valve come out to Linux, some 2K titles will get a Linux release on steam 3 years down the line (and usually be somewhat broken), and there are some indie games.

You need to do some research.

> But please let's not portray Linux as a viable gaming OS.

I'm playing on steam+linux for years and I don't really miss anything. There are 1-2 games I'm running on wine+steam but all the others are on linux.

But please let's not portray Windows as a viable OS.

kek. Seriously fanboyism is getting a bit extreme.

What % of games that come out each year are playable on Linux?

What % of AAA games that come out each year are playable on Linux?

What % of games that come out from the big 3 are playable on Linux?

How come that Windows is bad and evil but somehow a close source platform (which constantly abuses its monopoly go listen to what devs and small publishers have to say about Steam) that runs on top of Linux with always on DRM is acceptable by the free folk?

P.S. How come Steam titles system requirements for Linux so often come with a warning "AMD and Intel cards are NOT supported."?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If you are an indie gamer like myself than there is enough stuff to play on a non Windows machine.

I've been an avid gamer for years but where 10 years ago I gamed only on Windows, that is definitely not the case today.

Many games run fine on Linux (most of the interesting ones), and I also use my gaming laptop for work and school.

Why would use a gaming laptop only for gaming?

I have an MSI with Linux and Windows on it. I prefer to do everything in Linux and mostly only use Windows for games.

I'm a programmer, and working in Windows sounds kinda scary to me.

I don't think your question deserves the down votes.

It of course depends on the games you enjoy, but of the games I play, many work perfectly on Linux.

This is using libusb from Node via https://www.npmjs.com/package/msi-keyboard / https://github.com/stevelacy/msi-keyboard.

Neat, but I always went for function over flash. Which is why I use the excellent Unicomp keyboards.

<shameless-plug type=semi-serious-parody>

They're (relatively) cheap, virtually indestructable, and as good as a gaming keyboard, if not better, and much less flashy. I would say they're the best keyboard on the market right now.

</shameless-plug>

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