So for the past couple of years (… coming on a decade?) I’ve liked the 8bitdo controllers a lot. Build consistency is a bit of a shitshow but you can tell almost instantly if you have one of the bad ones (and it is usually a matter of just loosening one screw unless the PCB itself is cracked). And the Ultimate Pro Whatever The Hell With Charging Dock is really nice and I love that I never have to worry about my controller needing new batteries when I am on my PC. In theory I can just plug it in but that gets into a mess with games that auto-detect what is connected and so forth. The charging dock that doubles as a receiver is delightful.
But when I switched to linux for fulltime gaming a while back… things got messier. 8bitdo has no linux support whatsoever. Mostly that is “fine” because the controller is a controller and I can use a phone app when I want to change what the rear buttons do. But I can’t update firmwares. Which, again, is “fine” except I finally wanted to get back into Crosscode and have learned that shitshow of an html5 engine ONLY supports xinput on PC and apparently the functionality to tell the 8bitdo to present as an xinput might only be in a beta firmware? So all the joys of debugging but with very non-technical resources on google.
Not the end of the world (was mostly planning to moonlight to my xbox anyway) but kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back as it were. Because Crosscode is a mess of a game technically that even the devs acknowledge was a mistake (AMAZING experience though) but what happens the next time I run up into a corner case? Not ready to throw this in the bin and rage purchase a new gamepad but very much ready to start browsing what my options are. Especially as (some) third parties are actually pretty good these days.
So what gamepads do you folk use?
I use an 8bitdo Ultimate Bluetooth with Hall effect thumbsticks – which may be what you’re using – but in wired mode.
It, unfortunately, has a Nintendo-style button layout rather than an XBox-style layout, but at least when I bought it, and maybe still, you couldn’t get both an XBox-style layout and Hall-effect thumbsticks. They did sell replacement button caps and you could replace them, but Steam Input allows remapping.
I do think that it’s a little obnoxious that Linux doesn’t have One Unified System for creating up virtual gamepads or other controllers out of other controllers. Like, the technical plumbing to create virtual devices is there – you can create virtual libevent devices. But there isn’t a great backend for doing that systemwide and in a persistent fashion, no
controllerdthat takes some sorta description file setting up controllers both systemwide and on a per-application basis. Like, I should be able to have a virtual controller where if a program wants to fiddle the LED color, I just have, I don’t know, colored keyboard LEDs change or something like that. Or remap buttons, or set up macro functionality – which is what you want – or set up buttons to switch between multiple settings in-game or whatever.It’s great that Valve’s doing some of that with Steam Input – and they do offer some neat things, like people sharing Steam Input configs on Steam – but I feel that we shouldn’t really need to rely on Valve for something like that.
Various controllers that I’ve used on Linux in the past:
Playstation 2 controller. Worked great, used until it wore out. Had some kind of USB adapter, IIRC.
A Logitech F710. The D-pad rolled to diagonals too easily for my taste, but other than that, perfectly fine, worked well for quite some years. Took removable AAs, which I liked (though that does come with some weight). Unfortunately, it uses a proprietary wireless protocol on 2.4GHz, and at some point, something in my environment started occasionally disrupting it. Bluetooth and wired controllers aren’t affected. I had to switch, couldn’t stand every now and then the controller not functioning for a brief period.
Various XBox controllers. I don’t really like the XBox layout as much as the Playstation layout, but, eh, not a huge deal; they’re reasonably interoperable. And most vendors had adopted the XBox layout. However, I have something like three different controllers using potentiometers that have drift issues. Yeah, probably possible to hide that in software, increase size of the dead zone, but goddamn it, I want to have a controller that just works correctly. Prompted me to get a controller with Hall effect sticks, which have been fine.
A PS4 controller. IIRC that worked, but in 2024, too many games on the PC recognize and set themselves up properly for XBox controllers, but not Playstation controllers. There’s another issue that could have been fixed with a
controllerdexposing a virtual XBox controller…I also have various non-gamepad controllers floating around, like a HOTAS setup and pedals. I would not buy a HOTAS setup these days unless you are really in love with a flight sim that uses it – gamepads with thumbsticks are “good enough” for analog input axes on the PC, and widespread enough that a lot of games will only support those.