Uh, I never used any specific driver for my logitech mice (mx518 and g5) on linux (both arch an ubuntu), and they worked smoothly, with no noticeable difference with windows. The extra buttons worked out of the box too.
And compiz is optional... I don't understand how something you put on top of linux makes linux itself bad to play nexuiz on. It is always possible to switch to another WM temporarily while playing nexuiz (on ubuntu w/ gnome for example, you just run metacity --replace&)
Also, linux != ubuntu. You can't blame it on linux, that pulseaudio is so hard to get rid of. It's just ubuntu.
I use neither pulseaudio nor compiz, and nexuiz works awesomely for me.