Sony Now "Officially" Maintaining The Linux PlayStation Input Driver, But Leads To Interesting Problem

[CochainComplex]

Btw which person of the Kernel maintainers has to be informed to solve this potential harm of the Kernel Licensing?

[kpedersen]

He doesn't like maintaining the 3rd party controllers because they hijack their hardware IDs.

... surely they only have to do that because the Playstation (and most games consoles) are almost criminally locked down. If Sony fixes this, then the 3rd party ("knockoff") controllers will become legitimate and no longer be an issue.

[Guest]

Maybe if the driver detects a copycat device it can just give a subtle warning to the user and leave it at that?

Well, that subtle warning will just be printed to dmesg, and with the proposal to make dmesg readable by people with root permissions only, actual users will never see the message!

A userspace component would have to check (or query information from the kernel) and tell the user, that would be the only way this could work.

[Guest]

Exactly. Even since I got my first original gamepad I had never locked back at knockoffs. Also, if you can, also avoid the current Logitech gamepad offerings. While they actually offer good game compatibility, their ergonomics are atrocious compared to what Sony and MS offer. I know because own them all.

I have an F-710, seems nice. Although it is a bit stiff. I also have a really old wired Logitech controller that's easier on the fingers.

[Guest]

I wonder whether perhaps the next PlayStation cloud gaming device (or even the PlayStation 5) will be Linux-based. :O

True, I've been wondering about that too, especially with them hiring a Vulkan developer from Feral interactive. But I don't see why they'd move away from the FreeBSD kernel , they're most likely getting some FreeBSD driver from AMD directly, and I very much doubt they're OK with releasing kernel source code.

It's possible this controller support is for some Android TV device, that probably supports interoperability with PlayStation (e.g streaming games from PlayStation) and support for some Android games.

[M@GOid]

I have an F-710, seems nice. Although it is a bit stiff. I also have a really old wired Logitech controller that's easier on the fingers.

My (and all my friends) biggest problem with the F710 (the one Logitech I have) is the analog triggers. They are too small and had at last double the stiffness of the console ones. And to add insult to injury, they are ~10mm/half a inch further apart from the sticks (compared to the console ones), making your thumbs and indicators really apart from each other. And my hands are not small. I have other complains on it, but to not have a giant text, lets stop here.

Personally I wouldn't as far as call it trash, but having better options, I would not recommend them to anyone.

[Guest]

Adding support for knockoffs isn't as great as everyone makes it out to be. These controllers tend to be dirt cheap and are ripoffs even at that price. They often come with screwed up batteries, extremely low-quality parts and often deceive people into thinking they're an official distributor for <brand> controllers. Adding software support to help with quirks introduced by these controllers only encourages such hardware which I really don't condone, even from a consumer perspective.

You really can't be supporting every piece of junk under the sun, it complicates the software and encourages bad hardware. Not a fan.

Sure, but for some people who were fooled into buying knockoffs, it's not Ok to prevent them from using the hardware when it works perfectly fine aside from a trivial quirk.

If everyone followed your logic, no one would support Samsung's shitty buggy fork of Android, but unfortunately we're all forced to due to their high market share and popularity.

[Guest]

My (and all my friends) biggest problem with the F710 (the one Logitech I have) is the analog triggers. They are too small and had at last double the stiffness of the console ones. And to add insult to injury, they are ~10mm/half a inch further apart from the sticks (compared to the console ones), making your thumbs and indicators really apart from each other. And my hands are not small. I have other complains on it, but to not have a giant text, lets stop here.

Personally I wouldn't as far as call it trash, but having better options, I would not recommend them to anyone.

Works fine for me, but I guess my hands just happened to be suitable for the joystick.

This new adaptive controls trend seems interesting, if you pair it with 3D printing you can probably create your own joystick that works for you.

Or maybe just have some sort of flexible, extendable joystick, similar to some mice that have modular components (to change weight and shape).

[samots]

I wonder whether perhaps the next PlayStation cloud gaming device (or even the PlayStation 5) will be Linux-based. :O

No need for them to change when they already use the superior os for gaming.

FreeBSD: A Faster Platform For Linux Gaming Than Linux? https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...inux_games_bsd

[bwat47]

What next?
Nvidia tries to delete Nouveau?

You're pretty off the mark with this example. The equivalent scenario would be more like if nvidia had taken up maintainership of Nouveau, and there was a merge request for Nouveau to support knock-off Nvidia hardware