unfortunately most controllers with back buttons don’t let you re-bind them in the host OS, with the Dualsense Edge being a notable exception. I’ve bought a Dualsense Edge, and, unfortunately, I can’t recommend it. You’re paying $80 too much just for 4 extra buttons.

my controller of choice is a pre-owned Sony Dualshock 4 (like $30 on ebay) plus this $30 DIY Back Buttons kit from eXtremeRate. This new and improved kit allows you to save up to 6 different “profiles”, so you can have different mappings for different games. the mappings are saved on the controller itself, however, it won’t sync them with Steam. and they don’t function as “function buttons”, they’re limited to acting as a “clone” of another button on the controller.

at first I was unsatisfied with this – what’s the point, if I can’t use all eight face buttons and both stick clicks and four more back buttons, all at the same time, right? except… in hours of playtime, I’ve never run into a situation where that mattered. Most games either keep your thumbs on the sticks, in which case you can have the back buttons act as ABXY, or else you keep your thumbs on the face buttons, in which case the stick clicks and trigger clicks are available. plus you have the touchpad click, which really is a separate button that Steam recognizes.

I’ve never had any problems using this controller with linux. as far as the OS is concerned, it’s just a ps4 controller, and the support for those is quite good.