Linux 6.2 Adds Sony DualShock 4 Controller Support To Newer PlayStation Driver

As written about last month, Sony has been working on adding DualShock 4 controller support to their newer PlayStation HID driver in Linux. The DualShock 4 controller has long been supported under the older "hid-sony" driver but now with Linux 6.2 the support can also be found under "hid-playstation".

It was nearly two years ago to the day that Sony introduced the hid-playstation Linux driver with initially supporting the PlayStation 5 DualSense controllers. They planned to also extend the hid-playstation driver backwards to supporting some of their older controllers currently handled by the hid-sony driver.

They did that and the DualShock 4 controller now works on hid-playstation both when operating in USB and and Bluetooth modes and supports all the standard features like the touchpad, battery, rumble, accelerometer, gyroscope, LED brightness, lightbar, and dongle support. Presumably from Sony's perspective they are working on this older controller support for their official hid-playstation driver so that in their products potentially in the future they could just ship hid-playstation with their "official" support and leave out all of the community-added and unofficial hardware found in the hid-sony driver.

Sony recently published driver patches for their new DualSense Edge controller and those ended up being pulled already as part of "fixes" during the Linux 6.1 cycle, so that is already set to go for those new PlayStation 5 controllers shipping soon.

The HID pull request of new feature material for Linux 6.2 also included XP-PEN Deco LW tablet support, support for the DJ Hero turntable within the Wiimote driver, and various fixes.