Need easy way to configure joysticks

[Corey Burger]

Currently there is no default way to configure a joystick in Ubuntu or Gnome.

There is a GTK 1.x tool in Universe called jsconfigurator which works.

Also, a mention entry in System--Admin needs to be added for the joystick tool.

[Corey Burger (corey.burger)]

If this ever gets bountied, here is a candidate:
http://www.grep.be/blog/en/computer/aaaaaargh

[Emmet Hikory (persia)]

Part of the difficulty is that there are several methods used to connect joysticks. jscalibrator provides the necessary configuration for those programs that link against libjsw2, but does not provide for other joystick access systems. I believe the most common method currently used in Ubuntu is the sdl input libraries, although the xserver-xorg-input-joystick package may lead to more access mitigated by X.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

upstream -joystick supports input properties now, so writing a gui for it is pretty trivial for those who can :)

This might happen for Jaunty.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

I think now that we have input properties we can consider this solved on the X side, but like Timo says it still needs a gui. Bumping over to GNOME for that bit.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

gnome-desktop is a library and the about gnome dialog not the right component

[Emmet Hikory (persia)]

Why do we need a GUI? What do we seek to have accomplished with one?

Firstly, jscalibrator referenced in the original report mostly broke stuff back when we built it (because only searchandrescue *used* the values, and it would put the joystick in an odd state).

Secondly, while there is the jscal utility, most joysticks work fine in most environments without it. If we're ending up with oversensitive or undersensitive joysticks in X, this is an issue in xserver-xorg-input-joystick that it should check the range of an axis to determine appropriate scaling. If we're seeing significant off-center values, that's a hardware issue, and is better solved with hardware centering adjustment (although jscal can help for hardware that is both broken and deficient).

Thirdly, I don't think that we need a separate config utility to handle joysticks. For 99% of available hardware, simply mapping Axes 0,1,2,3 to X,Y,Z,W works, and mapping Buttons 0,1,2 ... to mouse buttons 0,1,2 ... should also work.

It may be nice to have some option to turn on or off joystick input device handling, but as a single checkbox, this doesn't need a separate application, and should just be part of the various control tools that handle other X properties.

Note that advanced users will need input remapping and input multiplexing, but this is better done by using an input multiplexor or remapper directly, rather than attempting to wedge something into the default suite of tools (not that I'd complain about an input multiplexor by default, but that I think the number of users who need one is vanishingly small).

[Thomas Hotz (thotz-deactivatedaccount)]

If we want Ubuntu as a gaming platform this bug could be very important.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Corey Burger, one may utilize qjoypad available from the Ubuntu repositories. For more on this, please see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/QJoyPad . As well, there is also jstest-gtk.

Please feel free to report any future bugs you may find.