Linux 4.17 Gets PhoenixRC Flight Controller Support & PS/2 Mouse Improvements

From several of the pull requests covered on Phoronix this week for the in-progress Linux 4.17 kernel, there are many areas seeing improved hardware/device support with this next kernel upgrade, including the input drivers.

Last month I wrote about Phoenix RC Flight Controller support coming to Linux. That flight controller is modelled after radio controllers for model airplanes/helicopters/drones and designed for the Phoenix RC model aircraft/drone simulator on Windows, but thanks to a passionate independent developer, is now being supported on Linux. I was surprised by the interest indeed in this driver/controller support.

As part of today's input subsystem pull request, there is indeed this PXRC Linux driver for supporting the Phoenix RC flight controller adapters. The developer behind this driver has also been answering some questions in that aforelinked forum thread.

In addition to that flight controller driver, the input pull also has a new RAVE SP power button driver, support for a second week on the ATech PS/2 mouse, clean-ups to the PS/2 protocol support, ALPS trackpoint detection fixes for some ThinkPad and Dell Latitude laptops, and various other fixes.

Yes, PS/2 mouse improvements for Linux in 2018... The A4Tech second wheel mouse improvements affect some of the company's products like the "Optical GreatEye Wheelmouse" due to not complying to proper PS/2 specifications. The patch adds a a4tech_workaround module parameter for the psmouse kernel driver. Funny (or troubling?) enough, the A4Tech mice behavior was discussed among Linux kernel developers at the time back in 2002 but never merged... until now. At least this work is not as ancient as the Linux 4.17 kernel also having improvements for Macintosh PowerBooks from the early to mid 90's.

The input changes in full for Linux 4.17 are outlined via this pull request.