I'm attempting to install linux on my aging Socket A PC and running into problems with this new keyboard and mouse I have. Its a desktop set from Microsoft (Wireless Optical Pro 2.0) and its USB or PS/2. I have it setup as USB and don't plan to change this because I have a USB KVM Switch and I need USB to supported the extended functionality of my Mac and Windows machines. So if someone could please help point me into the direction of a distro that has good support for USB Mice and Keyboards (keep in mind it is using 1 USB port for both) that would be awesome. Even better would be drivers that work with Microsoft USB Input Devices. I have been told that support for USB input devices is still not that great but I know there has to be a distro that supporst them. I mean crap the bios has a keyboard driver that works just fine...

I have used USB input devices extensively on Gentoo Linux as well as Debian and Ubuntu. In all cases, they essentially worked straight out of the box. Maybe I've just been lucky or it works well.

I've been trying Slackware and Fedora. So I will give Kubuntu and Gentoo a shot (if I have to since I like to avoid the 1 day process of installing).

I tried usign Kubuntu and the result seems bad. The device keeps disconnecting when it tries to load the USB drivers during the probe stage. I don't know if this is just because its trying to load the wrong drivers or what. Seems like this issue is showing itself with every distro but Kubuntu provided more detailed debug output.

Still having the same issue.

*bump*

I've toyed around with the problem a bit more and determined that it is most definitely a linux driver issue not a hardware one. I tested this by attempting to load LiveCDs on my windows PC with the same keyboard and mouse (which works fine for windows) and it chocked in exactly the same way. Apparently Linux just doesn't like like USB devices plugged through the KVM. I'm gonna try test and see what sort of results I get when plugging the set directly into one of the machines but currently it seems kind of lame that Mac OS X and Windows support my setup but Linux distributions are all falling short.

I'm kind of hoping you guys can help me find a solution because being the Computer Science major that I am I don't want to have to tell all my friends that I don't use Linux because it just doesn't support the hardware that every other OS does... So please lets try to solve this problem

Ok this will probably be my last post on this issue. I tried plugging the devices directly into USB and still the same problem. Linux just doesn't support my USB devices. Unless someone knows of a good distro since right now it seems that almost all Linux distros won't support my devices. I'm not gonna buy new devices just to get them working in linux. I requirer a keyboard that is USB because the extended functionality of Mac OS X requires straight USB, plus thats what my KVM switch uses. So I probably will end up ditching linux for good. I mostly was using it for web development anyways since its a pain in the arse to develop applications that even are cross-compatible with different distributions.

However I'm debating if I should let this go to rest or blog about my experiences. I think the world needs to know that Linux has the worst USB support in the history of any Operating System out there. When it tries to probe shit goes wrong. I am somewhat stunned that my BIOS and my Xbox have better USB support then Linux. So I most likely will end up blogging about this and submitting it to digg and slashdot since the world has a right to know. I guess the irony in all of this is I just had commented on digg yesterday about how stupid Linux flame wars about the best distro and windows manager is when linux can't even support all the hardware out there. Then this started happening to me after I bought these new devices.

OK well lets start with this. I'm having the exact same problem. The wireless keyboard/mouse combination from microsoft does not load in ubuntu/debian/slackware using usb. The PS/2 function works just fine, but not the usb. This is not a universal problem with usb support on linux, it seems to be a very localized problem on this one subspecies of keyboard.
There are a couple of solutions you might want to look at.
1) Buy the PS/2 cabling for you KVM, I've no doubt that your USB KVM switch probably has PS/2 cabling for it.
2) Buy a new keyboard. Almost anyone but this one seems to work.
3) Fix the problem. If it is bothering you so much then fix it, that is the beauty of open source.

I for one would shower you with praise and admiration if you could fix this very minor annoyance.

Best of Luck!

Oh I forgot
4) Buy a bunch of these kick ass keyboards and start mailing them to kernel developers. If they like them and use them then support will follow naturally.

The availability of drivers for Linux depends on the manufacturer's willingness to support Linux, not Linux itself. Perhaps you should convey your thoughts to Microsoft.