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Razer DeathAdder Essential

1532:0098. Plain USB-HID mouse on Linux — no vendor software required, and almost nothing to configure. The one surprise: its logo LED is single-colour green, regardless of what the firmware protocol claims.

Overview

property value
USB ID 1532:0098 (Razer calls it "DeathAdder Essential (2021)")
driver needed none — usbhid handles it
buttons 5: BTN_LEFT 272, BTN_RIGHT 273, BTN_MIDDLE 274, BTN_SIDE 275, BTN_EXTRA 276
side buttons 275 / 276, wired as browser back/forward by default
onboard remap none — remapping lives in Razer Synapse (Windows only)
LED single-colour green ("Single-color green lighting" — Razer spec sheet)

Details

The LED cannot change colour

The firmware implements the full Razer RGB protocol, which is why OpenRGB reports Modes: Direct Off Static Breathing Spectrum Cycle Reactive and two zones, and why OpenRazer exposes logo_matrix_effect_static accepting 3-byte RGB. But the hardware has only a green emitter:

  • printf "\377\000\000" (red) → LED goes black (no red emitter to drive)
  • printf "\000\377\000" (green) → lights normally
  • Brightness and on/off work; colour does not exist

Unplug/replug restores the factory green. There is nothing to fix and no software that helps (OpenRGB 1.1's CLI -m/-c is also a no-op — verified: no SetMode/SetColor ever reaches the device, in standalone or client mode).

OpenRazer (if ever reinstalled)

  • Needs the openrazer group (sudo gpasswd -a $USER openrazer + re-login) or the user daemon refuses to start: CRITICAL | User is not a member of the openrazer group.
  • sysfs controls (root): /sys/bus/hid/drivers/razermouse/0003:1532:0098.0009/ → logo_led_brightness, logo_matrix_effect_{static,breath,none}, device_mode, dpi, poll_rate.
  • device_mode is binary, 2 bytes (buf[0]=mode, buf[1]=param). Driver mode is printf "\003\000"; echo 3 sends ASCII 0x33 0x0A and is rejected — which silently disables the extended colour packets.
  • Coloured writes go through razer_chroma_extended_matrix_effect_static(VARSTORE, LOGO_LED, rgb).

DKMS trade-off

openrazer-driver-dkms was the only DKMS module on this machine, meaning every kernel bump can break it. It was removed (2026-10-24) so kernel upgrades stay boring. Keep /etc/udev/rules.d/99-razer-no-autosuspend.rules (hand-made, unowned by any package) — it stops USB autosuspend and the first-movement lag: see [[Razer Mouse Dead at Boot]].

Remapping the side buttons

No onboard option; do it at the input layer:

  • Hyprland bind: hl.bind("mouse:275", …) (see [[Hyprland Tweaks]])
  • or input-remapper (AUR: input-remapper-git) for per-device, per-app presets/macros
  • [[Razer Mouse Dead at Boot]]
  • [[Index]]