Nintendo Wii U Gamepad Linux Driver Support Still Pursuing Mainline

It's been a half-year since talking about the Wii U gamepad driver that's been in development with mainline ambitions for supporting this wireless gamepad in conjunction with the Nintendo Wii U console. The driver has just been revised to address earlier code review comments, again renewing interest in the effort and possible mainlining in a future kernel version.

The Wii U game console is nearly one decade old for this IBM PowerPC powered device but still is active with some hobbyists for running Linux on the device and other retro gaming purposes. This gamepad Linux driver effort continues to be for those wanting to load Linux on the console and depends upon the wireless gamepad being connected to the console via the DRH internal chip to the Wii U that in turn exposes it as a USB device. There has though been some work towards potentially allowing it to work in the absence of the console.

After not seeing anything since May for this Wii U DRC HID driver code, the "v4" patch series was posted on Tuesday. The driver is still missing support for the microphone, camera, and NFC input but all other functionality should be working. The v4 update addresses earlier code review, and merges all the new functionality into the existing "hid-nintendo" driver. While building the support into the existing hid-nintendo driver, the support would still be configurable at the kernel build-time via a CONFIG_HID_NINTENDO_WIIU switch.

Those interested in Linux on the Wii U can learn more about this gamepad driver work via the kernel mailing list. A downstream Linux kernel version for the Wii U continues to be maintained at linux-wiiu.