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Sony publishes an official Linux driver for Playstation 5 DualSense controllers
- anakaine 6y agoWe can assume, then, that linux will be a viable place for gaming in the near future. /s
- ndiscussion 6y agoTwo years ago, I deleted my Windows partition, because I never used it. I'm the kind of person that has spent over 10,000 hours on video games... maybe 20k or more. I don't think it's fair to deride Linux in this way. Thank Gaben for that.
- chrisacky 6y agoI spend 99% of my time on Ubuntu, but still keep a stray Windows OS around for Dota/Warzone. This last year I've only clocked 4 hours granted... but It'd be nice to actually not care anymore. It's really weird, one of the things as a kid I remember losing my main WIndows install being a big deal.. days or recovery. Now I just sit down at a Windows machine and it I don't care what's on it. I don't use windows for anything but the odd game.
- selectodude 6y agoProbably the orders of magnitude more internet bandwidth. My current internet connection is about 20,000 times faster than the one I had as a kid. And I'm only a little bit old.
- emilsedgh 6y agoDota works perfectly on Linux. It's not even through proton. It always worked natively on Linux.
- literallycancer 6y agoDota works well on Linux nowadays. Better than on Windows even.
- ameen 6y agoFunny how my most played games are WZ and Dota as well I do use Mac instead of Linux for development but I did use Debian/Ubuntu as my main partition for a few years.
- ajvs 6y agoDota works great on Linux and it's native.
- da_big_ghey 6y agoI don't use it much, but I have heard from others that do that Proton is good and continually getting better. While things like drivers are still hard problems, distros like Ubuntu have made them easier for users that aren't super technical. Linux is a much better place for gaming than it was just a few years ago.
- neilv 6y agoI have mixed feelings about the emulating-Windows approaches. They've let some people run some games, without running Windows, for whatever reason they want to do that, but... Another way to look at it is that this has been going on for 20+ years, and it's kept relieving whatever pressure exists to get games then on Windows to be on something more open. (Yes, I built a SteamOS box a few years ago, but that turned out to look mostly like a negotiation tactic, for Valve's continued coexistence with Microsoft. Maybe there will be another attempt someday, supported by Vulkan.)
- danielheath 6y agoMicrosoft has fired the testing team that makes backwards compatibility so reliable. Having a separate open source implementation will be the only way to run many of those games 10 years from now.
- radicaldreamer 6y agoThey keep making revenue from the Windows workstation business even though they've clearly telegraphed that none of the stuff people are paying for and expecting to work will do so in a decade... it's ridiculous
- hhggfdss 6y agoProton is based on WINE. WINE stands for WINE Is Not an Emulator. It's a compatibility layer, and why shouldn't Linux have a Windows compatibility layer? The more you can do on Linux, the better.
- 2III7 6y agoLinux, since the inception of Proton is a viable place for gaming. Go ahead and try it out, I promise you will be pleasantly surprised ;)
- gshulegaard 6y agoJust to temper expectations, gaming on Linux is still not a plug and play type experience (although it is a LOT closer than it was 5 years ago). Even games that have reasonable performance on Linux may require custom builds of Proton, winetrick startup modifications, etc. I love Proton and the work Valve has been doing, but I certainly feel the friction when gaming on Linux still.
- mrbungie 6y agoConsidering it's not native I would say it is still pretty impressive. And hopefully at the speed these developments are being made right now it is just a matter of time until we get that plug and play experience we are all hoping for ;)
- ErikBjare 6y agoI mean, we kinda already have plug and play, just mostly for older, popular games. New issues always crop up whenever there's a new AAA title with the latest tech. It's inevitable.
- gshulegaard 6y agoEh, I feel like I have a 50% chance of a game working in proton. Age of Empires II works, but has multiplayer issues (which, while it "works" in GloriusEggroll's 5.21 build, that's about all it is since I get frame stutter / 13 FPS which I do not see in single player). Warframe is another game which kinda works, but can have some visual/audio quirks (audio issue being listed as fixed in GE 5.21 proton as well but I haven't tested it yet). On the more positive side, Witcher III works well enough for me to consider it "no tinkering needed"...so there are definitely success stories out there. I just wouldn't expect the majority of titles to "just work" at this point in time. All in all, I stand by what I said in that Proton is great, but expectations should be tempered since it definitely has some rough edges still.
- weego 6y agoAfter all, 2021 is the year of Linux desktop
- sidibe 6y agoI am just using Linux for gaming these days with Stadia. I don't see any reason that cloud gaming won't become more popular in the near future, in which case Linux is perfectly fine for gaming
- literallycancer 6y agoIf you don't mind the 1000ms input lag.
- sidibe 6y agoI don't mind I guess because I've never noticed the input lag at all. Also as cloud gaming gets bigger the machines will be in more places and thus closer to the clients
- mhh__ 6y agoIt's probably OK if you play big games like RPGs with open worlds that tend to be already slow, but the input lag is just too high to play competitively - obviously most people don't but we should aim for better.
- sangnoir 6y ago> ...the input lag is just too high to play competitively Do you have any numbers to support that? I have seen your argument before, but I'm yet to see it quantified. I don't see how Stadia would be slower than any other games whose ground-truth 'state' lives on a server somewhere, which I think is the majority of games these days[1]; trusting the client to faithfully maintain state is a no-no because of cheating. If anything, I would expect Stadia servers' ping-times to be better than most. I don't expect Stadia to work very well with Super Smash Bros were frame-perfect parries/combos are expected (at he highest level) - but for the rest of us who do not qualify for a spot on an e-sports team, it works well enough. edit: So I went and looked for the numbers - PCGamer[2] says that Stadia is about 60-80ms slower than PC for Tomb Raider and Destiny 2 (eg. 63ms PC / 125ms Stadia @1080 Stadia gets worse at higher resolutions and on TVs, obviously) 1. The games I play, which are rather limited. 2. https://www.pcgamer.com/heres-how-stadias-input-lag-compares-to-native-pc-gaming/ https://www.pcgamer.com/heres-how-stadias-input-lag-compares...
- II2II 6y agoThat all depends upon a given person's definition of viable. Personally, I have more games that I know what to do with. Most of them are Linux native and the vast majority of those that aren't Linux native work under Proton/Wine. Performance or stability is almost never a problem. The few games that I have encountered problems with under Linux use a custom engine and I have heard that anti-cheat software tends to break compatibility. I periodically boot into Windows to play games that don't run under Linux. That does not happen often since it is an awful lot of trouble when there are many excellent options that do work under Linux.
- AsyncAwait 6y agoAs someone who plays on Linux, I'd bet it's safe to assume exactly that.
- scorchin 6y agoThe patches to the Kernel are in review and can be seen here: https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-input/patch/20201219062336.72568-2-roderick@gaikai.com/ https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-input/patch/20201...
- iso8859-1 6y agoGood to see they are still using GOTO. Straight-forward and performant.
- will4274 6y agoI checked (just for you). All four gotos are reasonable forward gotos and not what the article "goto considered harmful" was referring to. As an aside, why did you write goto in all caps in your comment? While your comment was quite basic, it wasn't BASIC, so no such caps are required. Please don't shout.
- centimeter 6y agoGoto doesn't have a performance benefit over other control flow structures with a modern compiler.
- akira2501 6y agoYes, but it does reduce the level of indentation required in most functions that use it. That consideration is part of the kernel style guidelines.
- the_duke 6y agoIn C GOTO is often by far the cleanest solution for error handling. Everything else turns into an ugly, unreadable mess in functions that need to free resources or do some kind of cleanup.
- Uptrenda 6y agoI've seen the goto error-handling approach used now in SDKs written by developers from companies like Microsoft, Nvidia, and Nordic Semiconductor. It really does seem to be the best way to do it. And it's simple. Mess something up... goto cleanup... Seems fine to me!
- paulcarroty 6y agoI'm ignore all Sony products since PS3 bullshit: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/if-you-used-to-run-linux-on-your-ps3-you-could-get-55-from-sony/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/if-you-used-to-r...
- Jonnax 6y agoDid you actually run Linux on a PS3?
- II2II 6y agoThere was a lot of enthusiasm for Linux on the PS3 around release due to the Cell processor. While I doubt that many people who exploited this feature for research purposes were bitten by Sony's reversal, I would imagine that a handful of home users were (since they would have updated the firmware to play games). That said, 10 years is an awful long time to hold a grudge.
- Something1234 6y agoNot really. It's taking a feature that he paid for, and it was really cool to have access to that processor. At least it would have been. I wasn't really into machines at that point, but it would have been cool.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hda2 6y agoMy brother did, and he used it daily until Sony took it away.
- robbyt 6y agoI installed the yellow dog build, it was terrible because there was only 256mb of ram available for general use, and no low-level hardware access to video acceleration. People complain about this like it was so awful they removed this feature, but TBH it was terrible and only designed so they could get around tariffs in some countries by calling it a computer rather than a videogame console.
- ydnaclementine 6y agoPeople who want to use these controllers when emulating games on rpis will be grateful
- sneeuwpopsneeuw 6y agoI still remember that I connected a PS4 controller a few years ago to test a unity game that I was making. I typed apt search ps4 but could not find something so I pressed some buttons and magicly the UI changed. It all just worked no setup no nothing. I also used the controller on windows 10 but you had to use the xbox driver with special software to map the controls to that driver. The fact that everything just worked on linux amazes me to this day.
- augusto-moura 6y agoYes! Also the touchpad in the controller also maps to the mouse and if you plug a headset on the controller it is detected by the system as a proper audio driver. For some time my p2 input was messed up on my PC so I used the controller as a improvised USB to Audio input adapter and it worked flawless
- ErikBjare 6y agoI wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that PlayStation runs FreeBSD. Maybe the source was close enough that porting to Linux wasn't a major effort?
- city41 6y agoXbox One controllers also work flawlessly in Linux. I find it interesting I've not had any luck getting my xb1 controller to work in Windows 8.1 though.
- alpaca128 6y ago> I've not had any luck getting my xb1 controller to work in Windows 8.1 though Could this be another intended incompatibility that Microsoft introduced to push Windows 10? They did it with CPU support limitations and the newest DirectX version if I remember correctly, so maybe they decided to give gamers another "incentive".
- ianlevesque 6y ago
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y agoIt'd be pretty cool if I could buy a Linux controller that didn't cost $70 and break so easily. We have yet to see how this new gen holds up but last gen was trash. I had 2 ps4 controllers just stop working via bluetooth and 1 even had a bad usb port so it couldn't even hold a charge/maintain a connection. I'm sticking with 8bitdo for a while.
- toast0 6y agoI don't know if it's worthwhile anymore, but playstation 2 -> usb HID adaptors work pretty well. Modern Windows doesn't seem to care for them very much anymore though (they still work, but very little UI support).
- asddubs 6y agoxbox 360 controllers also work with generic knockoff wireless adapters off ebay
- jon-wood 6y agoXBox One controllers are built like bricks, and have the advantage of being natively supported down to the controller button prompts in many more games on Windows because they’re either forward or backported to the actual Xbox.
- taeric 6y agoI'm curious what you do to your controllers. My family of six has so far only done minor cosmetic damage to our controllers.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y agoWell aside from use them like normal, set them down like normal, and connect to bluetooth, nothing out of the ordinary.
- taeric 6y ago
- russellbeattie 6y agoDoes anyone know if the PS5 still runs on a variant of FreeBSD like the PS4? Just curious...
- thr0w3345 6y agoConsidering that the ps5 can play all PS4 games it seems highly likely.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoThat doesn't necessarily require that the base system be the same system; for an extreme case, there's no reason they couldn't just stick the PS4 OS in a VM. (I mean, I tend to agree and I think it's most likely that the new OS is just an enhanced version of the old one. I just want to point out that mere compatibility is only weak evidence.)
- macdice 6y agoRumours say FreeBSD 12. PS4 used 9.
- mjg59 6y agoSony support PS4 and PS5 remote play on Android, so having Linux support for their controllers makes sense (the PS4 controller driver is in Android 10, but DualSense controllers aren't supported there yet)
- enos_feedler 6y agoDoes PS5 support remote play? Hope I can get verizon 5G home soon to support the upstream requirements
- ThatPlayer 6y agoYeah. The apps have been updated, and I believe there's even a remote play app for the PS4 to stream from a PS5.
- breakfastduck 6y agoDoesn't appear to support the special hardware features of the controller, but we can hope in time.
- djsumdog 6y ago> Not yet supported are new unique features introduced by the DualSense such as Adaptive Triggers and the VCM based Haptics. These features require a large amount of data and complex data structures. It is not clear how to expose these. The current Evdev and FF frameworks are too limiting. We hope to have a dialog on how to expose these over time in a generic way. It looks like the Sony devs want to support the new vibration features, but don't want to abuse the existing hid/input layer for the amounts of data it apparently requires. It is good they're looking for feedback (I assume via the kernel development mailing lists) on the right route to implement them. It'd be neat if we started to see a lot of open source projects that used this controller in the same way Kinect projects took off.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoOkay, I'll bite: Why would Sony want Linux support for their controllers? Like, it's great, but what possible benefit do they get? It's unlikely to sell more PS5s, it... might sell more controllers but I'd be shocked if the profit from that is enough to justify porting the code unless it's really trivial, and the "best" use that I can imagine is supporting emulation which I rather doubt Sony wants to support. So what gives?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- whalesalad 6y agoPorting the code? The PS5 runs FreeBSD no? I can’t imagine this was a big lift.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoLinux and FreeBSD are different systems; closer than ex. porting NT drivers to Linux, but still some distance apart.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Spivak 6y agoI think it’s to sell more controllers. Being a good generic PC controller is a small but not insignificant market. And it costs basically nothing since Sony likely already needs the drivers for their own internal use. I use my Xbox 360 controller for lots of games on my PC.
- ThatPlayer 6y agoAndroid (linux) support for their Remote Play and cloud streaming services. It's a lot easier to get users to try when you can say "Use your existing controller and a phone you already have!" Steam Controller added Bluetooth support for their release of the similar Steam Link app.
- kgarten 6y agoUnfortunately as blog post says, the unique features introduced with DualSense (e.g. Adaptive Triggers, VCM based Haptics) are not yet supported. I was wondering has anybody hacked/reverse engineered them? Wanted to play a bit with the haptic feedback over the years and see the responsiveness and expressiveness of the feedback.
- phendrenad2 6y agoI wonder if this has something to do with the recently-released Atari VCS (which runs Linux).
- Grazester 6y agoWhen was this vaporware released. Even if this was released it wouldn't have any bearing on Sony's decision not release a Linux driver?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- the__alchemist 6y agoIt's plug + play with Windows as well, at least with Steam. Like in the article, the adaptive triggers don't work, but the rest of the functionality does. I'm curious if it worked on Linux on steam before this driver.
- YeGoblynQueenne 6y agoThis is the first time I see the Playstation 5 controller and I want to cry. What did they do to the controller? It looks like an Xbox controller. Is there an alternative controller? Can you use DS4 with Playstation 5? This is awful! Er. Good thing for the published driver though.
- asutekku 6y agoHave you tried it? Almost all reviews have praised the controller and called it a better than the previous iteratios.
- YeGoblynQueenne 6y agoI haven't tried it. To be honest, I don't trust console reviews :)
- tomalpha 6y agoIt does look like a cross between the PS4 and Xbox controller but it feels much more like the former. And it is really good :)
- janhuenermann 6y agoLet's hope that macOS will soon support DualSense controllers too. Was a little disappointing to find out that Google Stadia on Mac does not work with these controllers.
- capableweb 6y agoLooking up who Roderick Colenbrander is (person who submitted the patch over at https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-input/patch/20201219062336.72568-2-roderick@gaikai.com/ https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-input/patch/20201...), it seems they are the "Director of Hardware & Systems Engineering" over at Sony. I'd expect them to spend time on more higher-level things, but seems here they either was involved with actually writing the driver, and/or are just the public face for the patch. Seems unusual though. Kudos if directors at Sony still get to write code, especially low-level code like this. Edit: Seems there is more details in a almost year old article on phoronix (https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Sony-HID-Official-But-Clones https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Sony-HID...): > Roderick Colenbrander of Sony who serves as their Directory of Hardware & Systems Engineering, chimed in on the matter of adding this Gasia controller support (And, yes, this is the same Roderick Colenbrander who in his spare time serves as a Wine developer and if going back to the early 2000's was the NVClock NVIDIA overclocking tool developer as opposed to being some eager Sony employee): So seems Roderick is a true hacker! I've used both Wine and NVClock in the past so if you're around here, thanks for your work on all these things and upstreaming them as well! :)