Rodents (mice)

[Ben Scott]

Hi list,

  It seems all my stuff is falling apart at once.  My Logitech
MouseMan Optical Dual, after roughly eight years of faithful service,
is exhibiting wear in the middle button (scroll wheel).  (It is
occasionally but with increasing frequency sending multiple "clicks"
per press.)  The problem with hanging on to hardware forever is that
one has no idea what's current when it comes time to replace it.

  I'm probably going to buy some sort of feeping creature, with with
ten or so buttons, adjustable DPI, 2-axis scroll wheel, staple
remover, etc., but I'm wondering if it's possible these days to get
all those features to work under Linux without writing your own device
driver?  Is it too much to hope for that it "just works" in a
fast-moving distribution like Ubuntu or Fedora?

  I weakly attempted Googling but found a brazilian hits.  I'm hoping
someone here knows the answers already and can spare me yet another
research project.  :-)

-- Ben