So first off, I'm clueless when it comes to Linux. Been running Mint for, god probably five years now and the thing is so intuitive that I've never needed to dive into the complexities under the hood.

Here's the issue. Old XBox controller worked right out the box, no muss, no fuss.
New controller is a newer version of the same controller. I plug it in, and nothing. I fire up Steam, nothing. I go into controller settings in Steam, and see it listed as being detected. I click Detect Controller, the thing rumbles, and boom, it works fine. It's not a big deal at all since it just takes a few clicks to get the controller working, it just seems odd that I have to go into Steam and ask it to detect something that is already detected in order to get the thing working even outside of Steam.