Do you want to use a Game Controller instead of your keyboard and mouse? They work! I got my Logitech Dual Action to work in Mint 14. I had to install joy2key and some other packages Then I had to setup the configuration in Terminal. After that it seemed to work fine with Native Linux games. I have not been able to get it to work with Wine games. I'll do some more research, but its cool that game controllers work with native Linux games. This Logitech F310 Seems to be the best controller to use in Linux. Ubuntu recognizes it immediately without any intervention. Tip: Make sure the switch on the back of the controller is set to "X" (Xinput), then plug it in. Otherwise it will default to Directinput and probably won't be recognized
I hope things have changed,,,last time I looked it was a ton of work to get one to work with ONE game. Then you had to start all over with the next one..and only half the controllers buttons would work. Let us know how things may have changed! ":O}
I will I won't give up until game controllers work for every game without having to configure it all over again. In Windows, you will usually have to customize the controls with the buttons, but most games have standard default settings for joystick. We'll see where this goes. I only tried one game in Linux. It didn't work at all with PlayOnLinux, but I read Wine 1.5.6 has a joystick configuration, but I looked at later versions and didn't find anything.
I tested Lego Star Wars this weekend and the joystick worked flawlessly without configuration. Also, I noticed the analog stick moves the mouse in Linux. That could be a benefit to you instead of using a mouse, use the analog stick on your controller
Saaaawwwweeettt! I suggest doing some research on which controller to get. I'm sure there is a basic PS2-like controller that runs well in Linux. Mine seems to be working fine: Logitech dual action USB