Comment 79 for bug 274203

First off, I agree with Jeremy on this matter. I have been somewhat appalled at the lack of consideration for the end user on this beta and release prep. Although I am tremendously impressed with the majority of functionality that has been added to Intrepid with KDE4 and generally better hot plug support. However, not supporting a feature that has been around for ages is disappointing and even though I know how to fix it (patch it temporarily that is). What will my friends say when I go to plug in a joystick that they offer me to use and I have to tell them just wait a minute while I manually fix this to work...
Not impressed I'm sure.

Ranting aside, I also have this problem and I fixed it (temporarily patched it) by the method mentioned by Ari Mustonen above. I just had to look at the output of the command lshal at the console search for input.mouse and find my joystick's name nearby (I think case matters here) and replace the name in the attachment he gave with mine and put it in /usr/share/hal/fdi/preprobe/20thirdparty as he instructed. It worked for me and I use a Gravis GamePad Pro USB. I haven't tried Timo Aaltonen's workaround, since I just found out about this last night. I would also attach an lshal output, but I think the point is over now and I would have to undo the fix to get the right output anyways.