> I reboot, log into Epic and GOG, and start downloading The Outer Worlds, a game from 2019 I’ve been playing a bit lately. It runs fine with Proton, and I can even sync my saves from the cloud. I play it for a few minutes with my trackball, remember I hate gaming on a trackball, and plug my gaming mouse back in. It works fine as long as I’m in the game, but outside the game, mouse clicks stop working again. It makes sense — the bug is on the desktop, not in games — but it’s very funny to have a gaming mouse that only works for gaming.

What is it with mice and OSes?

Windows is the only OS I can seem to configure to get low latency, high accuracy, linear movement with, and it's not for lack of effort.

I struggled for several years to do SWE work on a Mac and no 3rd party program could get it working the way it does on Windows. I tried Linear Mouse and many others. I eventually gave up, went against the prevailing (90%) culture where I work, and exchanged my mac for a windows laptop. I haven't measured it, but I feel more productive simply because I can click what I want to click marginally faster.

Is something in Mac drivers performing non-linear mapping? Why?

Based on the quote above it seems like Linux hasn't even gotten up to par with Mac for mice.

The best litmus test for an OS for me is whether I could play an RTS or FPS competitively with it, even though I haven't played either for years.