Windows definitely isn’t the solution for all use cases. There are some use cases for which it’s completely ineffective. There is no one operating system that’s perfect for all use cases.

I emailed the dev who makes Solaar less than a month ago after my most recent attempt. They said clicking and holding would be on Logitech’s end, in their firmware. As the firmware stands currently, it’s not possible to rebind those particular buttons and click and hold them unless you rebind them to other buttons already on the mouse. Works in Logitech Options + on Windows, does not work through Solaar on any Linux distro.

I attempted to contact the Logitech devs, but there doesn’t seem to be any open avenue for doing so. I tried talking to Logitech support, but they weren’t able to put me in contact or even forward a message.

So yes, I have tried this recently. And literally the person who makes the software I’m trying to use has told me that my use case is not currently possible without some sort of workaround.

This is a bit unrealistic. Games may work better than they did in the past, but performance isn’t 1:1 yet. More importantly, device drivers can be a lot more dicey.

Personally, the main thing keeping me from actually using my Linux partition most of the time is that my mouse buttons can’t be properly rebound. Yeah, I could find some janky work-around, but that would be eating into my workflow.

I also do, in fact, need Windows for development.

GNU is great, but pretending it’s a viable Windows replacement for every use case is just disingenuous. It doesn’t help anyone and it only makes GNU supporters seem that much more out of touch with the average user’s experience.

There are literally people who will think the internet is broken if they accidentally delete their browser shortcut or just straight up can’t find it in the sea of icons on their desktop. These are the users that Windows is protecting from themselves. The same users probably wouldn’t be able to figure out how to use the command line if their life depended on it.

There’s a place for Windows, and there’s a place for GNU. I’d love to see the place for GNU expand and the place for Windows shrink, but that doesn’t make it so.