Xbox One S Controller Rumbling On Linux, Valve Working On Upstreaming SteamOS Changes

While the Microsoft Xbox One S Controller has been supported under Linux for a while now, its rumble mode has not been supported by the mainline Linux kernel. That's now in the process of changing with the upstreaming of up until now out-of-tree patches.

Hitting the kernel mailing list today was a patch adding rumble support to the Xbox One S controller driver within the Microsoft HID code. Worth noting that copied on there is one of the Valve Linux developers, Pierre-Loup A. Griffais.

That patch at this stage isn't in the mainline kernel nor has been queued in the HID subsystem tree ahead of the Linux 4.19 kernel or anything along those lines, right now just under review on the kernel mailing list.

It's great to see this rumble/vibrate support for this Xbox controller finally seeing the finish line for getting into mainline kernel. Interestingly, Pierre-Loup Griffais has confirmed on Reddit that they are working with Andrey Smirnov (who submitted today's Xbox One S controller rumble patch) to upstream "all that stuff" from SteamOS, with this being one of the patches they've long carried in Valve's Linux distribution for improving the Linux gaming experience.

Hopefully they will continue upstreaming more of their improvements for gaming hardware on Linux. Granted, SteamOS will continue carrying various patches especially in relation to upstream Debian GNU/Linux for which it is based given the stable release handling.