Just before Christmas Day, Sony published a new “hid-playstation” Linux kernel driver for bringing up the PlayStation 5 DualSense controller, and will also be used for supporting other PlayStation hardware on Linux.

The Linux kernel driver supports the PlayStation 5 “DualSense” game controller both in USB and Bluetooth modes. All key functionality along with LEDs, motion sensors, touchpad, battery, lightbar, and rumble are all supported by the official Sony Linux driver.

The Linux driver exposes DualSense functionality as a ‘composite device’ similar to DualShock 4 in hid-sony, spanning multiple frameworks. First, it exposes 3 evdev nodes for respectively the ‘gamepad’, ‘touchpad’ and ‘motion sensors’. The FF framework is used to provide basic rumble features. The leds-class is used to implement the Player indicator LEDs below the DualSense touchpad, while the new ‘leds-class-multicolor’ is used for the lightbars next to the touchpad.

Not yet supported are new unique features introduced by the DualSense such as Adaptive Triggers and the VCM based Haptics. These features require a large amount of data and complex data structures. It is not clear how to expose these. The current Evdev and FF frameworks are too limiting. We hope to have a dialog on how to expose these over time in a generic way.

Read more on Phoronix and see the generic Sony video below.