USB joystick support ? good / bad ?
 

Ive been googleing trying to find what USB oysticks are, and are not supported by Linux 2.6.

and i have founf no information at all.

which leads me to believe that either support is excelent, and all joysticks will work thanks o some kind of joysttick protocol i am un-familiar with.

OR

Usb joystick support is awfull.

or even more scary, a dreadfull combination of the 2 ( the whole hardware modems vs software modems issue )

Im considering the following 2 to play FlightGear (floghtGear.org) flight simulator.

http://web-systems.co.uk/?page=Products&pid=2351
http://web-systems.co.uk/?page=Products&pid=1314

The local shop is great for convinience and price, but utterly useless for technical questions..

(once when buying a chep-o-stick mp3 player, i asked it it worked under the standard usb mass storage protocol... they didnt know...

well, will it work on linux.. they said maybe, but most likely not.

started spewing some rubbish about voiding the warrenty using it with an OS other than what the mp3 player listed.

they refsed to let me read the back of the packageing for a mention of linux, they refused to look themselves. (they were not busy, the shop was empty)

anyways, asfter i decided to risk it, and buy the thing, on the back, minimum system requirements wre listed as "MacOS8 Win98 Linux-2.0"

lol.. many of my posts seem to trail off into rants lately, sorry.

back on topic....

Is there a USB-hid compatability list anywhere i can read ?
if i decide to "risk it" (no refunds) what are my chances of the 2 joysticks working ?

I'd think that any USB joystick supports the HID protocol, so I think you should be relatively safe with almost anything, provided of course you have USB HID and Joystick support in your kernel. I have a cheap ($25) MS SideWinder, and it works pretty good on Linux. Hey, if a microsoft joystick can work in linux, that's certainly saying something :)

ive been reading the kernel source code, mainly hid-core.c
if contains a huge list of blacklisted product_ID's and vendor ID's

but no list of supported hardware !

Should i then assume that all non-blacklisted hardware works ???

Its so annoying when kernel developers dont make a public list of what hardware is, and i not supported.

If there is such a list, i cannot find it.

and googling for the prouct name of the joystick returns zero results.

soooo frustating.

EDIT:
Hi FreeThinkerJim, thanks for the reply.

It scares me when in the minimum system requirements they list DirectX 8.

surgests that maybe it requires a non standard protocol. (like the digital camera's that dont use USB Mass Storeage)

Since iv'e found virtually nothing on linux and USB joysticks, im going to assume that all works sooo well, that nobody has needed to make a fuss on forums :)

im finding this all annoying, because i built my machine from parts, and every part i was able to lookup support before i bought it. lookin on compatability lists, or looking in the kernel configureation for mention of the hardware.

Im going to risk it and buy blind.. if it doesnt work, maybe ill spend a few monhs learning to write drivers.. (or ebay it.. LOL)

Worked perfectly.. 4 Axis 12 buttons.
i just had to re-compile the kernel with joydev for the /dev/jsX interface.

i bought the Trust Predator GM-2500 USB Joystick

just make sure the force-feedback works. mine doesn't on a logitech strike force 3D.

no forece feedback on this device.

just a plint joystick, with loads of buttons and axis.