Cherry keyboards

Cherry manufactures mechanical keyboard switches but also keyboards themselves such as the CHERRY MX BOARD series. They work like regular keyboards, but some have configurable backlighting. The original Cherry software does not support Linux. However there are community replacements.

Installing

The following commands can be used to identify the devices:

$ lsusb

Bus 003 Device 008: ID 046a:0079 CHERRY MX BOARD 3.0S FL RGB Keyboard

To allow regular users access to the device add a rule. You may replace the product id with the one from your model.

/etc/udev/rules.d/99-cherryrgb.rules

SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="046a", ATTR{idProduct}=="*", MODE="0666"

The package cherryrgb^AUR integrates one. It also allows for changing the LEDs.

Troubleshooting

Slow event processing after LED settings change

Issues with Cherry MX Board 3.0 S: endless keycode 248 presses were reported in the forums. The device tends to spam the system with ghost keypresses. As a workaround append the udev rule:

/etc/udev/rules.d/99-cherryrgb.rules

ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="input", ATTRS{idVendor}=="046a", ATTRS{idProduct}=="*", ATTR{capabilities/ev}=="10001f", ATTR{inhibited}="1"

or uncomment the line when cherryrgb^AUR is installed optionally setting the product ID.