Just a public PSA and was a little sad. I thought the latest kernel updates would address this. Until then, when you plug the official Xbox Wireless USB in- nothing happens.
The 360 Wireless USB adapter still works tho for some reason. 10+ years and its still kicking.
afaik xone (the kernel driver for the Xbox One dongle) still isn’t part of the linux kernel (neither mainline or steam deck kernel)
the gamepad itself works fine though, only the adapter dongle suckssince you can also connect the newer Xbox gamepads via bluetooth, it seems like not many people actually care about it
Without the adapter there’s massive input latency.
You pretty much can’t game over bluetooth. Idk why they thought that would suffice. Maybe if you have next to no signals bouncing around the room you’re in it would be fine.
It doesn’t work with nothing else in the room either.
I’ve done it several times with different people. I never prompted anyone. Every single one took 3-4 plays of Madden (which, until the most recent one, worked perfectly fine handheld) to ask why the controller sucked.
That’s never happened with the adapter on my desktop.
Its because the xone dongle uses a proprietary frequency that WiFi doesn’t interfere with. I would have assumed they’d love to ship the Deck with the necessary libs to enjoy wireless gaming. But got’ dayum, they didn’t even think about it. So I had to buy some whack ass 3rd party wired controllers (not 8BitDo those don’t work without some setup) and my kids can now game without my help. And ontop of all this controller nonsense I still have to unplug the AC adapter for the Deck Dock and plug it back in to get the TV to see it after a nap. It would have been easier to buy old Steam hardware that doesn’t have these issues. Still love the Deck tho.
you are right, on my linux pc I also use xone instead of bluetooth
on the Steam Deck I just use another non-Xbox gamepad insteadBig time
Gotcha. I get that the newer Xbone controllers have BT, but:
- Two of mine dont (older controllers)
- the ones i have tried on have worse latency than Dualsense (generally only newer controllers have actual good BT latency)
Its just frustrating the 360 adapter “just works” but this newer one doesn’t.
xow isn’t supported anymore and already gives problems with newer libusb versions
but xone (the sucessor of xow) will no longer work after a SteamOS update due to the immutable filesystem of the Steam Deck, you would need to set it up after every update again
There’s a way to install it, I have done it myself, but I find it annoy AF that it isn’t preinstalled. And then we have to reinstall it each time the steam deck updates.
Thanks for the PSA.
Since SteamOS 3.5 allegedly supports nix packaging, will this make root partition modifications like the xone kernel module survive after an update?
Unfortunately I do not have the knowledge or will power to learn anything about nix packaging :(
Nix on another distro doesn’t allow changing the kernel. If you installed NixOS itself, adding xone to the system would be a single line.
