Using XBOX 360 & Other Controllers on Linux, Arch & Others

Using XBOX 360 & Other Controllers on Linux Arch & Others

Thought I'd make this post to share some info, now this information is available other places and relatively easy to find but may cause new users or new control pad users some frustration when they connect their devices to their GNU/Linux machines.

For the most part, everything works plug n play however X11 likes to let the control pads (being input devices) work like a mouse, and due to them having sometimes multiple analogue functions this can cause annoying issues like the mouse pointer constantly drifting to the top of the screen, controller buttons acting like mouse clicks, mouse cursor being controller by analogue sticks... etc.

• The Solution is either of the following, although one is a better method than the other.

First method is to remove the Linux "xf86-input-joystick" package, this is a quick n easy / lazy option which is fine if you only want to use an XBOX 360 pad as this has its own driver (xpad) in the Linux kernel, HOWEVER, can / will / may break compatibility with other controllers & joysticks, for example arcade sticks & flight sticks, or generic USB pads.

This package may be named differently depending on your distro but should be easy to find via your package manager. on Arch it's  "xf86-input-joystick"

• The Second and Preferred Solution:

Personally I use Manjaro as my main OS and I do use multiple game controllers so do not want to lose that functionality, again this is easy and involves creating 1 text file, you will need to do this as root(sudo is fine):


/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-joystick.conf

with the following content:


Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "joystick catchall"
    MatchIsJoystick "on"
    MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
    Driver "joystick"
    Option "StartKeysEnabled" "False"
    Option "StartMouseEnabled" "False"
EndSection


And that will stop your controllers / pads / joysticks from controlling your mouse input A reboot may be required for this to take effect.

If only using an XBOX 360 pad (other controllers can be made to work too) and you would like some more configuration options you can also use "xboxdrv" instead of xpad, this may require some more configuration but it is another good option, It can be used to make other controllers emulate an XBOX controller, buttons and analogue triggers / sticks can also be remapped.

Here you can download the file if you're too lazy to copy and paste some text ;) 50-joystick.conf