Has anyone attempted to play any games with or just use the Big Picture mode at all in Steam for Linux? I'm using AlienBOB's Steam package, Slackware 14.0, and the standard wired Xbox 360 Controller for Windows. The actual controller itself works fine -- the "Joystick" section of Input Devices in KDE's System settings shows that the sticks and buttons are all registered. But Steam Big Picture mode says "no controller detected". I also tried the controller in a game, no luck there either.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/sla...4134005464155/

This says that it's a permission issue with the /dev/eventX and /dev/jsN files. I have tried expanding the permissions of those files but this did nothing. (Unfortunately that poster was not very specific about what he did.) In fact it actually seemed to make things worse, as when I had enabled more permissive read/write access on the device files, and then removed the controller and plugged it in again, a new event file was created and the light on the controller went into the "player 2" position -- and I was back at square one. (If I then enabled the read/write permissions on the new event file, again no luck, and unplugging/replugging resulted in the "player 3" light going on.)

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/sla...9691159198495/

This guy uses xboxdrv and manually changes the ownership of the device files. What a ridiculous solution -- I don't know why anyone would want to use an extra piece of software and go through all that nonsense for something that works out of the box in Ubuntu.

I'm personally in no rush as I keep all but one of my games in Windows, for the time being. But I'm guessing Linux will become a serious gaming platform in no more than 5 or 6 years. What's needed is a clean solution that can be incorporated in future Slackware releases.

I have the same problem with a generic USB JoyPad that describes itself as a Dragonrise USB controller.

Using the links in your post I was able to find a solution, which will fix the problem but is probably not the most elegant or in fact permanent, I would guess you would have to do it each time you rebooted.

The permissions do not match between /dev/input/eventN (640) and /dev/input/jsN (644).

So as root then restart steam. Your joystick will be detected in big window mode and be useable ingame.

Thanks for finding the correct links, I hadn't found anything that helped me.

samac

is opening a huge security hole. Use an udev rule matching ID_INPUT_JOYSTICK and let udev set the permissions on the correct device only.

Drop this into /etc/udev/rules.d/99-joystick.rules
It gives members of the 'games' group read and write access (required for force feedback) to all joystick devices. Add your own user account to the 'games' group (it should be in there anyway to run Steam) and the controller is working in big picture without without compromising keyboard and ACPI buttons security.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for a more secure and permanent fix.

samac

Thanks guys. I hope this gets added to future Slackware releases.