General tips and resources I’ve come across. I will update this page every now and then. If a section grows large enough, I will make a separate post for it.
Steam Big Picture
Launch games from Steam Big Picture. A controller you thought wasn’t compatible with a game may actually work. When you launch a game using that controller (via BigPicture), Steam will attempt to send an appropriate button mapping of that controller to the game when launching it. This worked, for example, with LIMBO. Of course, the game has to support this and your controller must be known or configured in Big Picture.
XBox One Controller
Support was added in Linux 3.17. I have yet to upgrade my kernel and try it, but I did pick up a controller when they were on sale with that intention. (I don’t have an XBox One, but the controllers are so nice….)
Wii U Pro Controller
Great controllers with AMAZING battery life. The Wii U Pro controller appears to only use the USB cable for charging, so they can only be used wirelessly via Bluetooth.
Requires: Linux 3.11, bluez-4.101* and a Bluetooth dongle.
I’m currently using Ubuntu 14.10 3.16 Bluez-4.101-0ubuntu13. I’ve tried to pair my controller and been been prompted to enter the device PIN. Apparently, this means the BlueZ Bluetooth stack is *not recent enough. Even though 4.1 is quite old, not many distributions ship with BlueZ 5 because it broke some APIs. Luckily, this shouldn’t be an issue too much longer, as Ubuntu 15.04 may finally have BlueZ 5. You could also try upgrading manually if you feel comfortable doing that.
Games that Require a 360 Controller
These are the most stubborn games I’ve encountered, and you must at least make them think that a 360 controller is connected, using xboxdrv. Great games too! :-/
Other Resources
- ArchLinux has a really comprehensive wiki page on using Gamepads on Linux.
- More information on Using xboxdrv to emulate an XBOX controller
- Valve’s Steam for Linux Bug Tracker
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