I wound up with one of those newfangled playstation controllers, and I’m surprised at how good it is. It paired nicely on Endeavour KDE, and there’s a big touchpad in the center that works to control the mouse pointer out of the box. I’m quite happy with it!
Still waiting on $ony or m$ to introduce back paddles as independent buttons, removable battery packs with AA support on ps controllers, and hall effect everything that moves. But Linux hardware support is indeed impressive and nothing like the old days.