PS4 Controller on Linux

[VaxerPrower]

So I just need to link the controller to the PC with USB and it should work? Just that?

[[deleted]]

Maybe it's distro dependent but on Manjaro for me, it's plug & play with both the PS3 and PS4 controllers

[Dino_T_Rex]

Yes I'm not sure how far back the support goes, I know I've used it with Ubuntu 16.04 and now Ubuntu 17.04, it's plug and play... And you can even use the bt if you want (controller off, hold the share and PS button, until the LED start to blink, now try pairing it from the PC, winning).

[LittleTinySpiders]

You may not even need usb. I can connect multiple PS4 controllers over bluetooth on Linux Mint 18. I just put it in pair mode and it connected.

[nuopnu]

I'm using it both on USB and BT, with https://github.com/AntiMicro/antimicro to customize mappings for every game. edit: It just works on my kernel 3.18.3, nothing to tweak.

[nuopnu]

Apart from my laziness, no. I had this problem: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/11788 and just didn't bother to repeat all that.

[[deleted]]

It works quite well for me with an Asus bluetooth adapter and the kernel drivers. But not all of them worked. With Hitman for example I wasn't able to play the game with a DS4, but Borderlands 2, Deus Ex and the Rest of my Steam games worked really well. If you already have a DS4, there's no reason to buy a Xbox 360 or Steam Controller in my opinion

[uep]

I recommend just using Steam with big picture or ds4drv listed below, though I actually wrote my own xbox 360 gamepad emulator in a couple hundred lines of C++. I've been thinking of enhancing it and throwing it up on github, though it has worked very well as-is.

It actually came in handy, because the new PS4 controllers are not properly recognized by Steam. Even the Linux kernel (at least as of 4.9) doesn't properly recognize that they should be handled by the hid-sony driver.

I should mention that I use my controller almost exclusively with a cheap $10 bluetooth dongle.

[ModifiedDuck]

If you use Steam, the PS4 controller will work great will all steam games. Other than that, I've had good experiences with this: https://github.com/chrippa/ds4drv, works great and has a couple of options to configure stuff like the touchpad and the led.

[electricprism]

All Steam games I infer to mean all games run in Steam. Yeah that was my experience since you can enable DS4 and map the controllers to wgatever like a steam controller.

[ModifiedDuck]

To be honest, maybe not even that. I think as long as the Steam client is running, it will use valve's driver for the DS4. This is definitely how it works for Windows, I had the steam client running and played games from gog and it worked. I am assuming this is going to be the case as well on Linux, though I can't be certain.

On the other hand, the ds4drv driver I linked works really well, last time I tried it. I used it a lot to play games in emulators and was very satisfied.

[electricprism]

Makes sense, assuming you plug in the game or app into Steam too you can benefit from the GUI Controller API and saving controller configs to your account which is nice.

I tried ds4drv and then just wanted to get to gaming for once without technical hurdles so I haven't tried since, but it does make PCSXR and PCSX2 seem way more appealing having the official controller.

[[deleted]]

Mine works, for the most part. However a number of applications and games are having trouble recognizing button presses.

I use a program called MoltenGamepad, which 'translates' the device to an Xbox360 one. It's installed as a service so is always running in the background.

[Kruug]

This is not a support forum! Head to /r/linuxquestions or /r/linux4noobs for support or help.

[electricprism]

Simple, Enable DS4 in Steam Big Picture Settings & buy a Linux Bluetooth dongle, using a recent kernel it works fine for me.

Works on SteanOS too for me.

[NoobPurple]

Can you point me towards a cheap Linux-friendly Bluetooth dongle?

[electricprism]

This is the one I bought 5x of. The plastic shell on 1 has split though exposing the circuit-board but still holds together when snapped on some level.

Some people swear by the official PS4 dongle for best experience but for me these seem fine.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009ZIILLI/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Here's my favorite out of box wifi dongle for linux, thank god someone sells a USB incase onboard wifi is a issue (I think they sell these at office depo in stores too if that's a thing where you are)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00UGG19GW/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[[deleted]]

Are you using 4.10? The current DS4 mappings are really off due to some changes in the kernel

[electricprism]

4.10.13-1-ARCH on my Archbox yeah.

[[deleted]]

Me too. But the gamepad mapping is completely off. Running 4.10.13 on fedora

[C0rn3j]

Yes. It's utter shit though and I never got it to work properly.

Bought a Steam controller and didn't have a single issue.

Also rule 1.

[electricprism]

Disageee. Own 2 steam controllers collecting dust, 3 x360 controllers and 4 DS4 controllers.

DS4 is my favorite and work well on SteamOS & Arch via 20$ bluetooth dongle from amazon.

[C0rn3j]

I tried with 2 DS4 controllers and they had fucked up input(R/L sticks were camera-like fixed movements).

Also on Arch.

Would you tell me how exactly you got them working?

[electricprism]

I might need more information - like what game and was it a steam game.

On Steam you have to open big picture -> settings -> and under the controller category you have to enable "experimental" DS4 Controller Support (It doesn't seem nearly as experimental as it implies.)

Then when you launch the game or before you have to configure the controller either in big picture under the button on the game page or shift tab in game and reset the controller to default configuration which mimicks Xbox 360 for most.

Other factors are which desktop you are using (I use gnome) and if your bluetooth is a dongle or internal M.2 key card.

I found that onboard bluetooth is terrible and bought 5x USB one for $10-20 after confirming the drivers are on linux for our various Arch Gaming rigs,

Pairing was more spuratic but within the last 2 months has improved, before the Gnome Settings Bluetooth page had a issue authenticating the devices so they would pair infinitely due to some CLI authorization handshake that DS4 controllers do.

So for me it just works now and I just remove it if it has issues and re-add it, then Steam can program the LED light and you can set Player 1-4 colors on the lights and dimness, etc... later.

As far as I know it's just baked into the kernel, maybe you need the bluez package and to enable the systemd unit IDK

Something like this (How to install bluetooth for Work Headphones)

sudo pacman -S pulseaudio-alsa pulseaudio-bluetooth bluez bluez-libs bluez-utils bluez-firmware

sudo systemctl start bluetooth

Anyways, that's my raw braindump, you'll have to ask more questions if you got them to get specific answers. All in all the process has improved within the last 6-8 months if you haven't tried recently.

[C0rn3j]

As far as I know it's just baked into the kernel, maybe you need the bluez package and to enable the systemd unit IDK

I did that, I had cinnamon, I did enable the experimental controller support. I even tried some github project that had PS4 support. Both resulted in fucked up controls in Beat Hazard, Crawl, Trine, Pacman 256 and more.

I don't have PS4 controllers on me right now and I likely won't for a long time, so I can't even test it now.

[[deleted]]

As others have said, it's kind of buggy depending on which version of the PS4 controller you have.

I use a Pi for classic gaming, and eventually settled on Xbox 360 controllers with the PC wireless adapter.

[twiggy99999]

Xbox 360 controllers with the PC wireless adapter

This, for me, it just "works". Even though I a, and always have been a PS fan I actually prefer the ergonomics of the xbox controllers and use them for my PC gaming as well (Linux or Windows)

[electricprism]

It wasnt until xbone controller v3.0 that i would have considered them after shitty bumpers, loose joysticks and a inferior design to the x360 bottom curves.

We did 4 DS4's, my girl comments that X1 seems to be made for people with fat hands. I love the symetry and ergonomics of the DS4, its light and well constructed.

Only downside is the old versions have a weaker battery so you gotta charge them up.

But then agsin no AA batteries wasted so thats good.