I’ve got a small backlog of games on my laptop (running Arch Linux with KDE) through Lutris. I usually play with a keyboard and a mouse, but since I sit pretty close to my screen (ik bad habit), it starts getting uncomfortable after a while. So I’ve been thinking about picking up a gamepad for some more relaxed, couch style gaming.
I’ve never actually owned a gamepad or a console before, so this would be my first time. From what I’ve seen on Reddit, a lot of people seem to have good experiences using Xbox controllers on Linux. I just wanted to get some more insight before buying one to make sure I’m making the right choice.
I’m also planning to grab a second controller so my girlfriend and I can play some local multiplayer games together.
Update: I went with 8BitDo Ultimate C wired as it was cheaper and a lot of folks below suggested it over the original Xbox Controller. It worked out of the box. I have only tested it with Marvel’s Spiderman 2 from Fitgirl repacks installed and running via Lutris. Worked w/o any issues.
As a veteran of gaming on Linux for several years, I have to admit I keep a small collection of various usb bluetooth dongles, because honestly, built-in bluetooth support still remains questionable and unreliable in many cases, at least for me and the systems I use it on. I don’t necessarily blame Linux as much as I blame the manufacturers of the chips and devices, but unfortunately we have to live with the chaos that their reverse-engineered-firmware-reliant devices create. Any cheapass bluetooth dongle is probably fine, the cheaper and more ubiquitous it is, the more likely it uses the same shitty chinese chip that all the others use and that a bunch of someones already hammered out drivers for, but honestly even with multiple different models and brands it still seems like a crapshoot which one feels like working properly at any given time, but usually one or the other will work and get things to connect, and it’s usually perfectly reliable once all the drivers have loaded and it’s all paired up and things start working. The struggle is real, though.