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If you own a PC joystick and you're a gamer who just migrated to GNU / Linux and you enter the wonderful world of Linux gaming (haha what wonderful world its nightmare :), perhaps you will want an easy way to make your Joystick work on GNU / Linux.

In this article I'll try my best to explain how you can relavitely easy make your Linux joystick (joy stick 🙂 ), bring you the happiness of playing old arcades in an old school joystick way.
 

1. Install necessery packages for joystick under Linux
 

gamelinux:~# apt-get install –yes joystick jstest-gtk joy2key gjoypad xserver-xorg-input-joystick
xserver-xorg-input-joystick-dev kodi-peripherals

2. Test wherher joystick is properly detected by kernel

 

gamelinux:~# cat /dev/input/js0

 

 

 

If above cat command returns a bunch of weird signs in your terminal, that means the joystick was successfully detected and should be working.
 

3. Load Joystick necessery Linux modules if your Gamepad is not properly detected

Note that I assume you're super user most of below commands are preferrably to be run as root:

If you're Gamepad is not detected, you'll have to manually create /dev/input/js0

gamelinux:~# cd /dev/input
gamelinux;~# MAKEDEV js0

Further on you'll need to perhaps load at least the following 3 modules which gives support for a number of JoySticks / Gamepad devices

gamelinux:~# modprobe joydev
gamelinux:~# modprobe ns558
gamelinux:~# modprobe sidewinder
gamelinux:~# modprobe gameport

Just in case if you're planning to play old Arcade games I recommend you load also following bunch of modules:

gamelinux:~# modprobe snd-seq
gamelinux:~# modprobe 3c59x
gamelinux:~# modprobe snd-emu10k1
gamelinux:~# modprobe snd-pcm-oss
gamelinux:~# modprobe snd-mixer-oss
gamelinux:~# modprobe snd-seq-oss

If you get an error message and don't suceed to calibrate your gamepad, you need to look under to know the modules that fit your Joystick model.

 

For a MS Sidewinder gamepad

gamelinux:~# modprobe joydev
gamelinux:~# modprobe ns558
gamelinux:~# modprobe sidewinder
gamelinux:~# modprobe analog
## This one work only for analog pad, like joysticks

For a Logitech WingMan digital gamepad
 

gamelinux:~# modprobe joydev
gamelinux:~# modprobe ns558
gamelinux:~# modprobe adi
## Specific driver for Logitech gamepads

For a Logitech WingMan gamepad (analog)

gamelinux:~# modprobe joydev
gamelinux:~# modprobe ns558
gamelinux:~# modprobe analog
## Module for analog gamepads
gamelinux:~# modprobe pcigame
## Module for PCI card (??)
gamelinux:~# modprobe adi
## Module for Logitech pads

For a MS SideWinder ForceFeedBack Pro
 

gamelinux:~# modprobe joydev
gamelinux:~# modprobe ns558
gamelinux:~# modprobe analog
gamelinux:~# modprobe sidewinder
gamelinux:~# modprobe iforce
## Force Feedback driver
gamelinux:~# modprobe evdev

 

For a Guillemot dual analog gamepad (gameport, non-USB)

gamelinux:~# modprobe joydev
gamelinux:~# modprobe ns558
gamelinux:~# modprobe guillemot
gamelinux:~# modprobe analog
## to check
gamelinux:~# modprobe iforce
## to check

If auto-detect of joystick doesn't work (hopefully not your case)

 

gamelinux:~# modprobe usbhid
gamelinux:~# modprobe joydev

 

– Enable Joystick for KDE Users
 

Luckily though historically the kcontrol package was required but nowadays, KDE users could usually calibrate joystick via KDE K Control Centrer

To make joystick configuration permanent on Linux you need to add the modules that worked with your Joystick device to /etc/modules,

for eample I own

JOYSTICK GENIUS MAXFIRE G-08XU

And my

/etc/modules file

looks like so:

 

gamelinux:~# cat /etc/modules

# /etc/modules: kernel modules to load at boot time.
#
# This file contains the names of kernel modules that should be loaded
# at boot time, one per line. Lines beginning with "#" are ignored.
snd-seq
3c59x
snd-emu10k1
snd-pcm-oss
snd-mixer-oss
snd-seq-oss
joydev

In case of some problems with SoundCard conflicting joystick or the other way around you might also want to add into /etc/modprobe.d/options something similar to

 

gamelinux:~# vim /etc/modprobe.d/options

gamelinux:~# options snd_ens1371 joystick_port=1

 

4. Calibrate your joystick either using jstest / jscal commands or GNOME's jstest-gtk
 

To calibrate joystick in text mode use below commands

 

jscal /dev/input/js0
jstest /dev/input/js0

For the lazy ones you can calibrate your joystick via GNOME's graphical tool jstest-gtk
 

jstest-gtk

This article is just a basic explanation on how to make your joystick work, for thoroughful advanced explanation on JoySticks and Gamepads I recommend ArchLinux Wiki explanation on how to configure Gamepads
 

5. Create missing Symlinks from /dev/input/js0 to /dev/js0
 

I've personally experienced a problem with Xmame / Xmess (Multimedia Arcade Emulator) and other old arcade Virtual Machine Emulators that are supposed to recognize the joystick, but because it is common that the joystick is trying to be invoked via /dev/js0 /dev/js1 (depending on its model), but somehow this links are missing, thus I had to manually create the links with ln command, like so:

– For /dev/input/js0 to link /dev/js0

 

cd /dev; ln -sf /dev/input/js0;

– For /dev/input/js1 to link /dev/js1

 

cd /dev; ln -sf /dev/input/js1;

 

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Tags: gamepads linux howto, genius, guilemot joystick, howto, joypad, joystick, Linux, maxfire, sitewinder, wingman joystick

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 2nd, 2017 at 12:10 am and is filed under Games Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.