Depending on the sticks, you will not know it is hall-effect unless you open the controller or if after playing a lot you are drift free. If it is legit, you might want to share the seller with us, as it might a great place to buy improved joysticks.

Now, I just wish Sony or modders would improve the battery life of the controller.

MacBooks with intel chip are some of the best hardware to put Linux on, there are plenty of guides online on how to liberate your MacBook with Linux.

I tested a bunch of distros based on Debian, Arch and Fedora. By far, the easiest one was EndeavourOS just because it recognized the WiFi driver from the Live USB for me. Otherwise you will need to use a mobile phone with USB tethering to share internet so you can install the broadcom driver. Maybe things changed, but this was my experience in 2023.

Another driver you will need to install is the camera facetimehd . Everything else worked out-of-the-box for me.

After that, all the Linux variants I tried worked great, and it was mostly about distro philosophies and deciding the desktop environments (DE) I wanted to use, and that can be a bit overwhelming at first.

If that is your first experience, I just recommend to start with KDE or gnome. I find gnome works ok from the start, but KDE is easier to tweak. You can always test them from a Linux Live USB before committing them to your hardware. Steam Deck uses KDE for desktop mode.

There are others that are prettier or lighter you can test too: cinnamon, XFCE, MATE. Or even windows managers, but I would leave them alone until you are a bit more comfortable with Linux.

here are a few links in case some people need it in the future:

• facetimehd https://github.com/patjak/facetimehd/wiki/Installation
• https://boilingsteam.com/liberating-the-macbook-air-2013-with-linux-complete-guide/ (sorry for the plug, but it shows all my experience installing with an in-depth guide)
• https://endeavouros.com/

PS5 works great on Linux, everything works: from gyroscope to touchpad. But the stick drift and battery life are the two main downsides. One of mine started drifting after 2 years, the other is still ok, but I have been using a GameSir with Hall-Effect for a while now as my main controller.

Not sure where you are buying it from, get it from a place with easy return policy as the quality may vary. Amazon was rigorous with their products, ebay only gave me headaches with refurbished stuff.

It is easy and cheap to find replacement parts but fixing it is very time-consuming task and require the right tools https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/DualSense+Joystick+Replacement/142488
Sadly, when I did mine, there were not many hall-effect sticks replacement for PS5, and the ones around had terrible calibration. I will probably update with hall-effects when they die again.

There are plenty of budget controllers with Hall Effect or TMR sticks, that might be worth looking into GameSir, 8bitdo, gulikit…
Just make sure you can do everything with hardware for a smooth Linux experience (some controllers require a Windows only app for basic setup or update firmware). It is also worth to search for the “model you are interested and Linux” to find problems related to the device.