Free software friendly (Wireless) Gamepads

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danieru
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Iscritto: 01/06/2013

onpon4 has a fine reply[1] to what type of gamepads/game controller avoid, which are basically those that only support DirectInput. And what type of gamepads should work on a Linux kernel without blobs (eg: Linux-libre, Debian GNU/Linux kernel, etc...) which are basically any standard USB HID. But, I'm still wondering not for wired USB gamepads, but wireless Bluetooth gamepads.

Does someone has a working wireless gamepad on Trisquel or any other distro without blobs?

How can I be sure that it will work before buying a wireless gamepad?

And, what would be the procedure to setup the controller if it's Bluetooth?

[1] https://trisquel.info/es/forum/free-software-friendly-gamepads#comment-55967

jxself
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Iscritto: 09/13/2010

Anything that identifies itself as device class 03h - Human Interface Device.

See, for example,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_human_interface_device_class
"Modern game controllers and joysticks are often USB HID class devices..."

danieru
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Iscritto: 01/06/2013

So, literally ALL I need is a gamepad "class 03h - Human Interface Device" and a free-software-friendly Bluetooth dongle?

Can I safely assume that if a wireless gamepad works on some GNU/Linux distro and/or Mac OS X, it's a device class 03h? Or there are more reliable ways of knowing this?

Pardon my disbelief but that's way more optimistic than what I originally thought. I was expecting that from all the gamepads available in the market, only a reduced number of them would work on Trisquel (like with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi dongles). I just don't want to buy something that will require non-free blobs and I will be in a temptation to install them in order to not lose the money invested in the device.

onpon4
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Iscritto: 05/30/2012

That sounds about right to me. I know Wiimotes work just fine with Linux, for example. I don't think proprietary firmware blobs for input devices even exist. Either it's a standard input device, or it's something that requires a special (proprietary) driver entirely, and the former is much more common.

Magic Banana

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I am a translator!

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Iscritto: 07/24/2010

First of all, I have never had any gamepad.

But that would not surprise me if most gamepads would work on Trisquel as long as the underlying data exchange system (e.g., bluetooth) works as well. After all, aren't those peripherals "ergonomic keyboards" (with few keys)? If so, I would not expect any need to load firmware that would be in the kernel: it would already be in the gamepad and never updated (hence the equivalent of a circuitry). The situation would therefore be far different from that of supporting Wifi/Bluetooth.

Software that comes along the gamepad to caliber it and map the buttons to keys (of the keyboard) may be Windows/Mac only. However, several packages in Trisquel's repository promise those features. "jstest-gtk" looks like the most user-friendly option.

Looking at the results of the "gamepad" search in the "Synaptic package manager", I actually discover the existence of "xboxdrv", a userspace driver, alternative to the "xpad" kernel driver, for Xbox 360/One controllers. So, I am apparently wrong: modern gamepads are more than magnified keyboards and writing a driver for them may not be as trivial as I expected. But I still doubt that any firmware has to be loaded. It would be safer to choose a "popular" gamepad though.

Arch has quite a nice documentation that confirms the usual absence of problems:
Unless you're using very old joystick that uses gameport or proprietary USB protocol, you will need just the generic USB human interface device (HID) modules.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Gamepad

onpon4
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Iscritto: 05/30/2012

> Software that comes along the gamepad to caliber it and map the buttons to keys (of the keyboard) may be Windows/Mac only. However, several packages in Trisquel's repository promise those features. "jstest-gtk" looks like the most user-friendly option.

I don't think jstest does this. The best option for mapping joystick input to keyboard that I'm aware of is QJoypad.

Turtleman
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Iscritto: 05/22/2013

Antimicro maps gamepads to keys and is cross-platform.

vita_cell
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Iscritto: 07/19/2015

Xbox360(wired and wireless) and XboxOne(wired with minimum 3.19 kernel) gamepads work without blobs. I have wireless adapter for XboxOne gamepad, but doesn't work at this moment. I must to try it with more time.

Be sure, that Xbox360 works fine wirelessly.

t3g
t3g
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Iscritto: 05/15/2011

I use steamos-xpad-dkms from https://launchpad.net/~mdeslaur/+archive/ubuntu/steamos because it uses the latest xpad driver from SteamOS. The latest version has support for the wired Xbox One Elite in addition to wired/wireless Xbox 360 and wired Xbox One (original and Covert Forces) controllers.

alucardx
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Iscritto: 02/29/2012

I have a logitech f310 that works perfectly under trisquel. I think it is seen as an xbox gamepad. I am able to calibrate all the analog inputs also.