I recently got a controller from 8BitDo that has an extra pair of triggers and two extra face buttons for screenshots or whatever you want really. Issue is, not only do do my emulators not recognize these buttons, but is seems Linux Mint doesn’t know they exist at all. Even bringing up a program to map buttons to keys doesn’t show any input when those buttons are pressed. Does anyone know how to make these buttons recognizable? They’d be really helpful for toggling fast forward on games with long loading screens for instance or just resetting the system on a whim.
The problem is Xinput vs Direct input (D mode). Direct input allows low level access to the various buttons of a controller, it is mainly used by Sony. Xinput input is simplified, however it doesn’t allow the same low level access for configurable button. Xinput was developed by Microsoft and is the defacto standard, that’s why a lot of controllers only support it, the 8bitdo pro series is a rare exception.
TLDR its Microsoft’s fault