My Steam controller V2 arrived today and I’ve been playing around with it for a few hours now. First things first: The hardware and built quality seem really great. Mostly what you’d expect from a “shrunk Steam Deck”, but with some clear improvements as well. The d-pad and shoulder buttons feel way nicer than on the Deck. Also, proper haptic/rumble motors.
Using it on Linux (Kubuntu) was initially pretty seamless. Once I connected the puck, I was prompted to do some firmware updates, after which I could start using the controller.
One issue that came up rather quickly was that in some games as well as on the desktop, I could not see the mouse pointer. It was still working but essentially, it was invisible. After some digging, I found that this was a documented issue with Wayland on the old Steam controller. As a workaround, there’s a library called extest, which emulates the old X11 behaviour. After compiling and enabling that, it works. I can even switch between a controller mapping and a desktop mapping, same as on Steam Deck. However, it still seems a little buggy sometimes. For example, I’ve had the on-screen keyboard refuse to come up one time, after which Steam was somehow completely unresponsive until I restarted my PC. Not sure whether issues like these are related to the workaround I had to do or not.
There’s also quite a strange issue with the puck. When I boot up my PC with it plugged in, I can’t control anything on the GNU GRUB. Afterwards, in the OS, it works fine, but it just doesn’t take any keyboard inputs for the GRUB until I plug out the puck and restart the system. Hopefully, this behaviour can be fixed with a firmware update at some point, as it’s fairly annoying.
Edit: Puck issues seem to be connected to the specific USB port. I plugged it into a different one and now GRUB works fine with it plugged in.
For the GRUB issue, it was probably using the Steam controller as the primary keyboard. Without steam running, the controller works as keyboard and mouse, so you can navigate bios/etc with it. On the GRUB screen, you could have probably selected the boot up option with the controller.
I’m guessing by changing USB ports, you now have your regular keyboard on an “earlier” USB port, so it takes priority over the controller.
Does grub only allow one keyboard at a time by default?
There is a grub setting for that, but usually the motherboard bios/uefi is responsible for passing input devices on to grub. Other motherboards may not have this same issue.
Yeah, probably something like that. The controller was not on or connected at that point though, so it seems like even the puck itself might advertise itself as a keyboard.
I think the on screen keyboard is the main culprit. That thing is incredibly buggy sometimes. Some games just don’t know what to do with that virtual keyboard.
Interesting and thanks forbthe review! Do you know if SteamOS (on Steandeck) uses Wayland or X11?
xwayland on desktop, they are migrating to Wayland, they use kwin but you can use gamescope of you want. In gamemode it’s fully Wayland, uses gamescope.
Same with 32 bit, they are working towards a 64 bit executable.
Now that Valve is balls deep into Linux, we’ll all see major gains.
I think in the current stable it uses Wayland in desktop mode and a modified Wayland called Gamescope in game mode.
It uses X11 in desktop mode and wayland in game mode. I think in a beta update it uses exclusively wayland though
I believe it’s X11 right now, but about to switch to Wayland with the next major update.
In game mode they use gamescope with xwayland. Desktop mode switched to Wayland recently iirc
