Valve could open source the Steam Controller driver (including the Steam Input configuration and full set of functionality) and make it installable to use without Steam. And for Linux users, at least the core driver could be integrated into Linux for out of the box usability. This would be my perfect scenario. No need to emulate a different type of device, it is its own. A man can only dream.
this post was submitted on 04 May 2026
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Steam Hardware
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That is basically the current state of the Steam Deck's controller driver.
You probably could already find the new controller's driver in Valve's repositories and compile it for your kernel. Maybe Bazzite and Co have it already integrated. No idea. But if that isn't the case it's just a matter of time.
Steam Input being independent from Steam would be pretty cool. Upstreaming it to the kernel is nice, but the kernel can be slow-moving, and it doesn't necessarily lend well to cases where you want to be able to deliver fixes to consumers outside of Linux's release cadence. Now, Valve could perhaps go release with 2 separate cadences, the older driver as a fallback, and offer a DKMS build for newer driver releases, but it IS work to make sure it doesn't bork someone's system.
According to Russ from Retro Game Corps (YouTube), in Windos, without Steam running, the new Steam Controller acts like a keyboard (mapping the d-pad to WASD, etc).
He also said that Rocknix (a Linux distro for Rockchip-based handhelds) already recognizes the Steam Controller, suggesting that other Linux distros could pretty easily include drivers as well, if they haven't already.
Lizard mode also maps the right trackpad to mouse input, doesn't it?
First time hearing about Rocknix. Not heard about Rockchip too. Seems like a cool project though. Wondering where they got the driver from, or if they made their own.
Looking deeper into it, it seems like they basically got a Steam client to run in Rocknix (even in the ARM version) so anything you launch from within that client will use Steam input. Not native support, but since SteamOS is open source, it's only a matter of time!
Wondering where they got the driver from, or if they made their own.
Probably from https://github.com/evlaV or directly from Valve's packages.
I would imagine it's just some sort of really basic shim driver to get a communication channel between the controller and steam, then from there everything just goes through steam input.
That's the kind of choice you make when you need to just get 'it' working. IIRC when the deck, its input depended (more?) on the steam client too. I'd imagine that they'll finish the slow part of the process eventually to make the controller work more generally too.
When you check KDE's gamepad page without Steam running it appears like any other controller. Back buttons are just additional buttons.
It's a shame that the capacitive joysticks aren't buttons as well. And I'd expect the gyros to just appear alongside the other axis as pure numbers but unfortunately they do not. Same with the touchpads.
Are we talking about the old controller? Or the new one? Cause I'm sitting here wondering... how are you able to see that, unless you somehow already have the new controllers?
Or are you using the Steam Deck's controller to check that?
Sorry for the volley of questions here, but I'm just super curious somehow.
I'm talking about the Steam Deck, which is pretty similar to the new controller.
Good thing about Linux is that anyone can contribute to make what you describe actually happen.
I actually tried to do that but I didn't find where the buttons and axis are defined.