Hey everyone,

I’m trying to play Remote Play Together with a friend.

• Host PC: Arch Linux, AMD RX 9070 XT (running amdgpu), latest Mesa installed.
• Client PC: Windows 11.

The game runs fine locally, but my friend experiences laggy video when connected through Remote Play.

Things I’ve checked so far:

• vainfo shows my GPU supports H.264, HEVC, and AV1 hardware encoding (VAAPI).
• amdgpu driver is loaded correctly (Kernel driver in use: amdgpu).
• I tried lowering resolution and bitrate in Steam Remote Play settings.
• Internet connection is stable, with good upload speed.

It feels like Steam is not using hardware encoding. Any tips would be appreciated 🙏

I am using Nobara Official (KDE Plasma). It has some bugs but is still pretty good. However, I wonder if there is a better linux distro for gaming. Which Linux distro is the best for gaming in your opinion, CachyOS, Bazzite, Nobara, or others?

I have been using OpenSUSE Tubleweed for the past 2 years and it has been great. I would like to know what are the Linux gamers distros of choice is.

Help — Trying to install mesa-vulkan-drivers:i386 on Debian ends with removing hundreds of essential packages (including GNOME, Xorg, VLC, LibreOffice, etc.) — I’m losing my mind

I honestly don’t know where to start because this whole situation has been nothing but chaos and frustration. I’m running Debian and I was trying to get Steam to work properly so I could play some games. From what I’ve read, I need mesa-vulkan-drivers:i386 for Vulkan support. Sounds simple enough, right? Just install a package.

Except, no. When I run the install command, apt tells me it’s going to remove hundreds of essential packages — my entire GNOME desktop environment, Xorg, VLC, LibreOffice, and a ton of other things I rely on every single day. This includes core graphics drivers, my window manager, my desktop session — basically everything that makes my system usable.

Here’s the kicker: it’s not a small list. It’s a massive list. Stuff like: cava, libgtk-4-bin, pinentry-gnome3, default-jre, libgtkmm-4.0-0, qt5-gtk-platformtheme, ffmpeg, libllvm19, qtwayland5, flameshot, libqt5gui5t64, vdpau-driver-all, gcr, libqt5quick5, vlc, gcr4, libqt5svg5, vlc-plugin-qt, gnome-keyring, libqt5waylandclient5, vlc-plugin-skins2, gnome-session-bin, libqt5waylandcompositor5, vlc-plugin-video-output, gnome-software, libqt5widgets5t64, vlc-plugin-visualization, gnome-software-plugin-deb, libqt5x11extras5, x11-utils, gnome-software-plugin-flatpak, libreoffice-nlpsolver, xorg, gnome-software-plugin-fwupd, libreoffice-script-provider-bsh, xserver-xorg, gstreamer1.0-gl, libreoffice-script-provider-js, xserver-xorg-core, gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad, libreoffice-sdbc-hsqldb, xserver-xorg-input-all, libadwaita-1-0, libreoffice-wiki-publisher, xserver-xorg-input-libinput, libavdevice61, libsdl2-2.0-0, xserver-xorg-input-wacom, libdirectfb-1.7-7, libsdl2-classic, xserver-xorg-video-all, libegl-mesa0, libsdl3-0, xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu, libegl1, libva-glx2, xserver-xorg-video-ati, libfluidsynth3, libvdpau-va-gl1, xserver-xorg-video-fbdev, libgbm1, libwebkit2gtk-4.1-0, xserver-xorg-video-intel, libgl1, libxatracker2, xserver-xorg-video-nouveau, libgl1-mesa-dri, mesa-libgallium, xserver-xorg-video-qxl, libglut3.12, mesa-utils, xserver-xorg-video-radeon, libglx-mesa0, mesa-utils-bin, xserver-xorg-video-vesa, libglx0, mesa-vulkan-drivers, xserver-xorg-video-vmware, libgstreamer-gl1.0-0, mpv, xwayland, libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-0, openjdk-21-jre, zenity, libgtk-4-1, pavucontrol — and that’s just part of it.

Basically, apt wants to remove my entire desktop environment and most of the applications I use daily just so I can install one driver. That is not okay. I’m not exaggerating — if I let it go through, my OS would turn into a broken barebones command-line system with no desktop session, no graphics drivers, no apps, nothing.

So I dug deeper. Apparently this is a multiarch dependency nightmare. Steam needs 32-bit Vulkan support, so it wants mesa-vulkan-drivers:i386. That package depends on libllvm19:i386, which conflicts with the existing libllvm19:amd64 I already have installed. Debian tries to “fix” this by removing every package that depends on the current library — hence the massive removal list.

But this feels broken. This is not how installing a driver should work. This is not a situation where I’m just missing a package — this is dependency hell at a catastrophic level. I shouldn’t have to break my entire system just to get a game working.

I’ve read about a few potential workarounds:

• Installing only libgl1:i386 instead of mesa-vulkan-drivers:i386.
• Using Steam’s runtime libraries instead of the system ones.
• Installing Steam via Flatpak so it uses its own isolated libraries instead of my system’s.

But none of this is clearly documented, and I’ve been stuck for hours trying to figure out if any of these actually work without nuking my setup. And honestly, I’m so tired of this kind of nonsense that I don’t even know if I want to keep fighting it.

I just want to run some games with Vulkan support without turning my desktop into a pile of deleted packages and broken dependencies. Is there a proper way to do this on Debian, or is multiarch Vulkan support just fundamentally broken? Has anyone else run into this nightmare?

If there’s a guide, a trick, a command, a way to install mesa-vulkan-drivers:i386 without destroying my system, I need to know. Because right now, I’m at the point of just giving up and reinstalling my whole OS. This is exhausting and ridiculous.

-written by chat gpt because op is fucking done atm and needs to recharge

Anyone get Pokemon to work yet? I tried a few months ago and it didn't work. Haven't tried since.

I've been using linux (debian) for gaming for almost a year now but the bane of me has been the same all the time, and at this point every time I think about switching back to Windows it's only because of that issue (it wasn't present in the same games run on Win10). I really hope now's the time to get it over with. In every game (even native: Flightgear) I've experienced the same set of problems: the game generally runs fine but sometimes FPS drops dramatically for 3-7 seconds and that happens very often, sometimes the FPS drops last longer than the periods between them.

Why I think it's a CPU related issue (these are inevitably going to be some specific game examples): 1. Stormworks is a game where FPS drawn to the screen isn't capped by TPS and drops in TPS reflect in game running in slow motion, while camera movement and FPS remain stable. In this game I've never had similar problems, but instead I see very similar things happening to TPS (random noticeable periods of slow motion all of similar characteristics to FPS drops in other games). 2. BeamNG is a very CPU intensive game when the simulation is running, yet once I pause and the physics aren't being calculated, the performance issues go away almost entirely. 3. Flyout has a TPS slider in the settings, and even though I can't stop the TPS drops entirely, but lowering the slider significantly reduces their frequency and duration. 4. I've read about one of the changes in linux 6.16 being the removal of some kernel overhead for AMD GPU drivers, yet it had seemingly no effect for me, which further implies it's not related to GPU. 5. In all the games I've tested and had this issue with, changing graphics settings has no effect on the lags, no matter how high or low I set it, the lags don't change noticeably.

What other causes I've considered: 1. Initially I thought it was a shader compilation related issue, but after applying every possible update to the drivers (RADV specifically) (these were the recommended actions), the issue didn't go away at all and the examples I've described almost entirely rule out the possibility of this being a GPU related problem 2. I have a weird RAM setup (dual channel but 4+8 instead of symmetrical), and also my RAM is very slow (2400 ddr4) and I use a large swap file. 3. I'm using XFS on all of my drives (no particular reason, I've just heard it handles subsequent copying of large amounts of data better, something I really would like sometimes) which may affect game performance, but I really don't think it's the case.

What I tried to do to fix it (failed): 1. All the GPU driver related stuff described briefly above. Had absolutely no effect although I've checked and the changes were applied 2. Disabling speedshift in UEFI (I have an i3-9100f). I thought that the issues might be caused by CPU changing frequencies rapidly, so I tried to take away that ability with this action. Don't think it had much effect but the issue seemed to have been very slightly resolved.

Setup and other hopefully helpful info: i3-9100f, 12gb 2400 ddr4 (dual channel 4+8), rx588-2048sp, h310m board, random noname ssds for the main drives, Debian 14/sid on 6.16.7 (though it's never been related to the kernel version seemingly).

I'd be grateful for any possible solution suggestions from the experienced users, since all the digging i've done online points at the GPU drivers, which I'm almost sure are not to blame, so the problem seems rather unique to my setup. If you think the post is inappropriate for the sub, I'm open for suggestions on where else to post it. If I ever get to solve this I'd have literally 0 reasons to ever want to go to Windows instead..

We have a spare PC that we want to set up for our kids, we play Minecraft and Age of Empires II & IV with them online.

The PC has a Ryzen 3 3200 which isn’t Windows 11 compatible, the motherboard is too old for us to upgrade it to anything without replacing it (which is just getting too expensive). It has an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti currently but we will likely put my husband’s GeForce GTX 1660 in there and upgrade his rig.

Because we can’t upgrade to Windows 11, I’ve been looking at possibly moving the system to Linux, but I’ve read a lot of conflicting information about certain games working, especially online multiplayer.

Pop!Os looks like a good option but I don’t think I understand enough about the capabilities… I’m hoping someone can clarify for me whether it’ll play AoE and Minecraft multiplayer, even if I have to muck around with it!

Heya,

the Demo of "Labyrinth of Touhou Tri" (https://store.steampowered.com/app/3067930) has some interesting Artifacts. Namely, the boxes behind every String. Is anyone familiar with similar issues and knows how to solve them?

Oh, and if anyone wants to see the issue firsthand, the Demo is 300MB and free to download and play.

Also, on Steam there is a Crash to Desktop issue, when going to the Options menu and if that doesn't crash, changing from Fullscreen to Windowed definetly will (at least for me). I managed to trace that one back to the DXVK Version; in Bottles with the DXVK Version dxvk-async-2.0 the crashes do not appear, but the Boxes are still there. Also, the glkasync Versions of DXVK also crash, so only the old ≤2.0 async Versions seem to work. Does anyone know, how to tell steam to use these specific DXVK Versions?

Oh, and interestingly, Labyrinth of Touhou 2 (the predecessor - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1131920) works without any issues out of the box (and has Platinum on Protondb). So this is a regression in Tri. Labyrinth of Touhou 1 is ancient and not on Steam, I haven't tried if that one has any issues.

This issue has been bugging me for a while.

In LACT, I want to use power states, as the concept behind it sounds ideal.

The problem is, when I enable power states, my GPU core clocks hover around 2,000 ghz during gaming instead of 2,600 ghz which is a massive loss in performance. This also happens when I change the performance level to highest clocks.

How can I use power states and not experience a loss in performance?

I use a rx 7900 xt, ryzen 5 5700x3d and have an undervolt set up for both.

Basically what it says on the tin, Steam Overlay doesn't work in added Non-Steam Games. Either Flatpak like Unleashed Recompiled or an Appimage like Retroarch, Big Picture or Desktop.

Regular Steam games, even Proton titles, do work though. Am I missing something because it's really harshing my couch gaming vibe. (I'm on Desktop build)

I'm no stranger to Linux. Iv been fairly happy using Cachy os aside from some issues that kept me going back to W11 with newer games. 2 main issues really with Linux and with W11 well it's Windows. And I actually just bought a 9070xt. It is showing weird stuttering behavior on a lot of my games. Like micro stutters with movement. I can't get rid of it so I'm considering Linux again and taking the performance hit with my 9070xt. The issues I face on Linux is with VRR not working properly with frame generation. My monitors OSD will jump and go to the max and back down, while the game feels very laggy compared to using it on windows. I haven't seen a fix for this yet but iv definitely seen it mentioned around. The other issue is HDR. I use KDE and Wayland. In Linux it always seems a little off/different from W11. I use the calibration tool. Peaks end up a lot different in game from w11. In Cyberpunk I can tweak around it, but like KCD2 looks way to bright in Linux but just fine in W11 as it uses that calibration number. Am I missing something? Iv used gamescope in the past but I don't remember it actually different in tone mapping from Wayland. I can never get it working right away and have to add special commands. I might just say whatever and live without it if my new 9070xt doesn't stutter now. Paired with a 7800x3d so should not be an issue. Any tips/advice appreciated. I just want my system to work the way it's supposed to.

Eu sempre tive muito interesse em usar Linux, então escolhi uma distro fácil para me familiarizar: o BigLinux (baseada no Manjaro).

Enfrentei algumas dificuldades, principalmente para fazer alguns jogos rodarem, como o Resident Evil 4 Remake. Estou tentando usar o Heroic Games Launcher para executar o arquivo .exe, mas não entendi muito bem as configurações de compatibilidade (ainda sou bem iniciante).

Tirando o RE4 Remake, todos os outros jogos estão rodando muito bem! Não me arrependo de ter migrado. Inclusive, no Windows 10 eu tinha que usar o Lossless Scaling (o patinho)para tentar rodar Horizon Zero Dawn eu tinha que fazer uma oração antes de entrar no jogo, agora ele esta rodando no ultra e muito fluido.
Se alguém puder me dar uma luz sobre qual Proton/Wine ou quais configurações do Heroic devo usar para o RE4 Remake, eu agradeceria muito!

https://preview.redd.it/kdq2pc6tnyrf1.png?width=253&format=png&auto=webp&s=abe892dfde37e9ea7c5c0215e0ee9eb5d659b4a5

toda vez que dou play no re4 aparece isto não achei nenhum conteudo sobre algo parecido

So trying to mod fallout Vegas but having a hard time modding. First was trying manually. Got it working until I tried to install MCM which proved to be very difficult. Then tried to find a mod organizer. Both vortex and MO2 been giving me trouble. Vortex wouldnt open and MO2 wouldnt launch either. Was trying to get them with the steamtinkerlaunch. If it helps im using CatchyOS. At the moment everything been running beautifully just modding proving to be a headache. I've also tried MO2 through wine but there was an issue there too. Also tried thr FOMM through wine but nothing happened

I did search for this before posting, but all the results are about specific benchmark instead of a greater list of benchmarks that new users can run without major effort.

What gaming Benchmarks that are known to run well on Linux?

So, basically I have a low end laptop a Lenovo IdeaPad 3 which has 4gb ram 1tb hard drive AMD Radeon with rx Vega 3 graphics i play games like far cry 3 assassin's creed 2-3 black ops 1-2 elder scroll nfs most wanted 2005-12 etc. etc. etc. with a decent 40-55 fps with some shutters lag nd stuff today i randomly stumbled on a yt video explaining how good and light linux is and you can also way windows games on it so i was thinking to switch but i'm not sure if i should do it or not cuz idk how device will handle linux and what Linux to use and the biggest problem of them all the kernel Please share your thoughts and opinions

Don't forget to set your regulatory domain! Twice now I've gotten bit by this not well documented setting. Linux does not set this for you. It doesn't assume where you're in the world and it wants to make your wifi comply with every law for every country so your regulatory domain is never set. This means performance suffers, you might see lag spikes, dropped frames, network jitter and other annoying things. This stands out when streaming with sunshine and moonlight which requires there to be no frame drops.

For the steamdeck following this arch wiki article worked for me.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Network_configuration/Wireless#Respecting_the_regulatory_domain

Simply editing the conf file and Un commenting your country fixed my lag spikes and dropped frames when using moonlight.

This happened twice now, once on the steamdeck and then another time on a different Linux distro, I think it was Opensuse? Maybe arch as well?

However, don't be a dick. This setting means the wifi chip will act in accordance with what the country you're in allows by law. So if you travel from the US to say Mexico, the laws will be different and radio frequencies and settings your wifi chip use in the US may not be allowed in Mexico and you may violate shit.

I'm not responsible for that and neither is the arch wiki, that's on you.

But if you don't travel with your device from country to country frequently, this setting may be just what you need to get a consistent wifi connection!

I've being playing like 3 months now on Nobara Linux using Proton-GE-10-10 and I was getting almost constant 144fps. There was a problem tho, it sometimes froze my hole pc and was really annoying. I decided to try running it through lutris cause I read it could work better. I did that and the performance dropped to the floor. I went to Steam and pasted the same launch settings and proton version I read in the reddit post that said to try lutris. But it still went horrible. I reverted, almost all the changes, because I didn't save the launch settings, but it still had an awful performance. But that shouldn't be a problem, because without any tinkering, it worked perfectly before. I've tried everything: uninstalling steam, overwatched, cleared proton cache... Nothing works. Someone please help me

I was trying to install mentioned games via wine and lutris (adding game from mounted .iso with lutris, then trying to launch it with wine explorer), but whenever I want to install directx/indeo/something that those games need for graphics, I get messages like this, and then some error messages, mainly mentioning access at 0x00000000. What am I doing wrong? Am I missing something crucial about how prefixes/wine work?