Gamepad workaround for Steam Play Proton on Fedora 29

On recent builds of Steam Play's Proton I've not been able to use my gamepad under any games which use Proton's WINE based compatibility layer. In early betas of Proton my gamepads worked fine so I knew it was possible. I poked around my system checking for what might be causing Proton to not detect any connected gamepads. Using the terminal command 'lsmod' I noticed the 'xpad' kernel module was loading. I recalled historically 'xpad' could interfere with some gamepads even though it appears to work for most applications. I figured I'd give the alternative userspace driver xboxdrv a try instead. From my days of using a XBOX 360 wireless controller with the wireless dongle I remember using xboxdrv for better support and greater options.

I went about installing xboxdrv via the following command.

sudo dnf install xboxdrv

After installation finished I wanted to set xboxdrv to start at boottime. I did so using the following command.

sudo systemctl enable xboxdrv

And finally you'll want to start xboxdrv so you can begin using your gamepad right-away without a reboot. Use this command to fire it up.

sudo systemctl start xboxdrv

Next time you connect your compatible gamepad you should be able to use it with Steam Play games.

For this how-to I used a SONY Playstation Dualshock 4 wireless controller connected via Bluetooth. It should also work for a legit XBOX 360 controller setup. I am not so sure about a XBOX ONE S controller as I couldn't get xboxdrv to recognize it being connected. This is via Bluetooth or USB.