by mungewell » Sun Dec 30, 2012 1:19 am
For the joystick it sounds like the default dead zone is way too much. Firstly I would confirm that the behaviour is the same on the command line (or other game) - you can use 'jstest' for this which is in the 'joystick' package.
If the deadzone is the fault it really should be fixed in the kernel, but it can be adjusted using the following tools:
Good luck, let us know if you get it solved.