I completely forgot to mention in my previous post...
If all the the DVDs were burned from ISOs downloaded from the same mirror, that could cause all the bad installs... As they would all have the same corruption....
---
I just tried my Saitek X52, and Linux can "See" it and even list exactly what it is...
So the Fanatec, and CH drivers may very well get there soon.
I can't say for sure, as I'm not sure which kernel you are running.
Although I did a quick search and it appears that MINT 18.2 has kernel 4.8 by default, and 4.10 as an update.
By comparison, I'm running 4.12. and have been on 4.11 for a few months now. 4.13 is currently a "release candidate". And it takes an average of 2 months for a new kernel.
Fedora 25 was released with 4.8.6, November of 2016. That means there are about 10 months worth of "new stuff" available (6 at the least, if you go with the 4.10 kernel).
So your kernel may be as much as 10 months "behind".
I'm not saying it *WILL* work, but many times some here have mentioned a difficulty with running a certain program...
For example, RR mentioned in a (much) older post that a program, S3D I think, didn't work in WINE.
But I had been running it since I installed Fedora 20 in Oct. 2014. Over a year at that point.
*THEN* he mentioned that he was running WINE 1.6. And Suddenly it made sense.
I was running WINE 1.7.30-44 on that PC.
So somewhere between 1.6 Stable (which was 1.5 development) and 1.7dev something was added (or fixed) that enabled it to work.
That may very well be the difference in what works for you and what works for me.
I'm running much newer kernels and WINE versions.
To clarify, I'm not trying to tell you "It works" when it actually doesn't.
I'm simply saying that *MANY* of the games that I've tried work for me as of wine 2.13 (current development/staging/testing series).
(Only 2 of the games I've tried recently don't work for me, Space Engineers, and Fallout 4. But, I haven't tried Space Engineers in a few months.)
The advantages of an LTS is just that, a Long Time between needing to upgrade.
But at the same time, it's a long time between new "features", because sometimes those "features" can/might cause regressions and bugs. Nobody's perfect, after all.
I'm sure that somewhere, there is a programmer with Fanatec hardware, tirelessly coding drivers, possibly without help from Fanatec.
However, if he has to buy each one before working on the drivers, that could take a while!
Also, Fanatec may not even be aware that there are Fanatec users that run Linux and want to use their controllers in Linux... (I didn't do any checking on this point. Just something I thought about.)
As for the CH control/remapping software... IF it runs under WINE, then all you need is Linux to "see" the controller, and then run the program through WINE.
WINE will "fake" all the Windows input for the CH Manager "remapping" functions.
WINE could then run the program "on startup" (wineboot), and all games run after that, would get the benefit of the CH Manager.
If the game was a Linux native program, then this wouldn't work. As it would look straight at the joystick drivers for input.
However this isn't necessarily a problem, Linux and Windows handle joysticks differently.
For the Saitek X-45 (possibly others), according to a forum post I read over a decade ago... Saitek set the "HAT" switches to be an "axis".
Linux followed this and viewed them as an "axis". Windows viewed them as a "button".
I think this continued on the X-52... On more than one occasion, when I didn't have the Saitek software installed,
Windows XP would show that I had a 4 axis joystick, with 50+ buttons.
When it actually has 8 Axis, 3 HAT switches, and 17 buttons.
Linux Shows 11 axis currently...
Anyway, you might check and see what is the newest kernel you can run.
That may open a few doors that have been closed so far...
Barracuda