After about 15-30 minutes of playing the game starts lagging in a...peculiar way - whenever there is any amount and type of input; and I mean ANY: moving the mouse, clicking, pressing, releasing or holding keys on the keyboard. When there is no input everything runs smoothly.

This happens in the native versions of TF2 and Portal, as well as in GMod when running through Proton (the game freezes after about the same amount of time in the 32-bit native version, and doesn't even get past the logo screen on the 64-bit branch).

I do not know if the issue disappears after another 15-30 minutes, as I just restart the game the second the lag begins.

I have an RTX 4060, and I'm running Nobara 40 with Plasma 6.2 & Wayland, the kernel is 6.11.6-201.fsync.fc40.x86_64 and the proprietary Nvidia driver is 565.57.01

these spikes in frametimes only happen when there's input

I have tried a couple non-Valve games and all of them run fine (whether natively or with Proton).

Has anyone else encountered this? I tried looking this up but I haven't been able to find anything. I'm fairly new to gaming on linux (and linux in general) so I don't even know where to start.

My specs are Nvidia GTX 1080 and Asus Rog PG348Q Gsync monitor I have a dual boot os (W10 and Opensuse TW 15.6) I am using Plasma X11 and Gnome X11, as on Wayland gsync does not work as intended.

On Nvidia X Server settings I activated the following settings for Gsync:

Sync to vblank, allow flipping, enable Gsync & compatible, enable gsync & api indicators, use conformant texture clamping.

I also add this command

nvidia-settings --assign CurrentMetaMode="DP-2: nvidia-auto-select +0+0 {AllowGSYNCCompatible=On}"

Whenever I run an application, on the top left part of the monitor the message BLIT and VSYNC appear. On top right the message NORMAL.

I installed and tried Mame, Snes9x (both flathub) and Dosbox Staging 0.82 (appimage) and BLIT indicator is green, which means that Gsync works. I could verify it by testing the shadows in Samurai Shodown 2 and the coin menu of Mortal Kombat 1. The shadows flicker ultra fast.

However upon launching emulators like Retroarch, Duckstation, Pcsx2, BLIT indicator is always red. VSYNC indicator is red or green, depending whether I have Vsync enabled in Retroarch, yet it does not affect gsync.

The VRR/Gsync monitor sync option on Retroach does not make any difference. Driver is Vulkan but even if I switch to OpenGL Core it remains red. Tried Samurai Showdown 2 in Retroarch (MAME core) and shadows do not flicker as fast as in stand alone Mame, even with throttle on.

Same on Duckstation and Pcsx2, despite both having options for vrr monitors.

On fullscreen blit is red. On windowed mode it does not work in any emulator.

On W10 I also enabled gsync indicator and it is activated on the emulators above.

Can anyone confirm whether Gsync works with Retroarch on Linux distros? Perhaps the fact TW is stuck at 550 drivers is also a factor.

Is there any extra step to activate Gsync? I guess somehow they do not activate proper fullscreen mode for gsync to be activated.

Hey, I was trying to run a game, this one to be exact when every time I tried to run it it gives me an fatal error message? I've tried different proton versions and all. Any Ideas?

I had initially bought BFV and BF1 because they were both listed as playable and I trusted Valve's labeling system. This was however not the case. Fortunately I bought them both on sale but it still sucks that I can't play the games I paid for.

I sold my ps4, and got a Steam Deck instead, so I don't have anything else to play on. And to those who tell me to dualboot windows, that defeats the point of getting a steam deck.

I was told online that the badge system was never guaranteed support only the current status and it was my fault for trusting it.

Now after GTA online and recently Apex Legends support got removed. I cannot trust either the protondb ratings or the badge system.

The point of the badges was to play a smaller catalog of games in exchange for a smooth experience.

I am happy with offline games, but am disappointed that Valve cannot keep their end of the bargain as there was never a promise to begin with, for online game.

I installed forza horizon 4, but when I launch it, it opens up that initial small window, then crashes along with crashing the entire steam application.

Linux - Manjaro GPU - Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Proton vers version - 9.0.3

Hello people. I want to play said game on my potato pc. My specs are:

Os: Linux Mint 21.3 x86_64

Cpu: AMD Athlon 5150 APU

Gpu: AMD ATI Radeon HD 8400 / R3 Ser

Ram: 4GB

I tried the same configuration in almost all proton version. The most succesfull being 4.11-13 with the following configuration:

PROTON_FORCE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE=1 PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 %command% -novid -nojoy -nosync -fullscreen

Is there any way to play it with this hardware? Or it's plain impossible? The problem seems to be with vulkan shaders.

Best wishes.

This is a follow up to a post i made a couple days ago
Just made the switch to linux mint (from windows) and im struggling to find a solution to a problem i have
That problem being i use a Steelseries headset and part of steelseries GG is separate audio channels one for Game Audio, Chat Audio, Media Audio, and an optional AUX Audio. My question is do you guys know of a program that would allow me to at the very least split audio from discord into a separate channel because currently Ive installed headsetcontrol to adjust EQ values on my headset (Arctis Nova 7 Pros) but my friends still sound like they're talking into cups. (also if you know of a EQ that has a GUI that would be much appreciated) Any help is appreciated! <3

Tldr: what's the expected performance hit between running a game, ie deadlock in windows 10 vs through proton

So in anticipation of support for windows 10 ending, and the fact that some of the software tools I use are better on Linux, I am doing a test run of daily driving Kubuntu 24.04. I have been running Kubuntu on a laptop for a while and while I am still unable to use the discrete GPU on my laptop and have therefore never tried Linux gaming until now. The transition has been very smooth and I'm surprised that some old games like No one Lives Forever is easier to get running in wine than in native windows.

That said what is really annoying me is the games that I want to play with my friends really struggle on Linux, I'm talking getting 15 fps where I get 120 fps on Windows. I have a friend who is transitioning to Linux with me (he has a 3080 and I have a 980) who has no problem running games through proton. So my question is is does anyone understand proton enough to explain to me the discrepancy.

My understanding is that proton is a translation layer, so I assume whatever GPU calls the game wants to make get changed by the CPU before going into whatever the normal Linux graphics pipeline is. This makes me expect to see higher CPU usage due to the extra translation step but a comparable GPU usage, but my CPU (7600x) is 30% while my GPU usage and memory is maxed out. Is proton just translating the calls into worse performing calls? Is the Linux graphics pipeline naturally heavier than windows? Also of note, on deadlock specifically it performed better in dx11 than in Vulcan mode which is opposite of what I've seen people say.

Frankly I have been wanting to get a new GPU for a while which based on my friend's experience will make the games I want to play together actually run well but frankly I don't think upgrading your hardware should have to be a requirement for Linux gaming. (And yes I am running the proprietary Nvidia drivers)

I been banging my head against my keyboard (not actually) last night trying to figure out how to get roblox studio to work on Linux, im thinking I should just set a VM up for roblox studio. Can someone help me?

Hey everyone,

I could really use some help with getting Proton to run smoothly on my Linux setup. I’ve been trying everything for a while, but most of my games (N sane trilogy and cult of the lamb for example) will only work with Proton if I force them to run with OpenGL instead of Vulkan. I’m on Linux Mint XFCE, using an NVIDIA GTX 640 with the 470 driver series, and here’s the setup I’m dealing with:

Proton Issue: Games only run with PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 (OpenGL fallback), but Vulkan should be working fine for DirectX translations. Without it, I get “failed to initialize graphics” errors, ELF errors, or crashes.

Vulkan Tests: vulkaninfo shows the NVIDIA Vulkan ICD as installed, and vkcube runs, so Vulkan itself seems functional.

ELF Errors: When I try to launch Proton games with Vulkan, I get wrong ELF class errors, especially around LD_PRELOAD.

Steps Tried:

Installed both 32-bit and 64-bit NVIDIA libraries (libnvidia-gl-470, libvulkan1, etc.).

Reinstalled Vulkan libraries multiple times.

Tried multiple versions of Proton.

Ran Steam with a minimal environment to clear out extra variables.

At this point, I’m really not sure if I’m missing some key configuration, or if there’s a specific setup trick to getting Proton and Vulkan to play nice together on this setup. If anyone’s been through a similar situation with an older NVIDIA card or has advice, I’d be super grateful. I just want to enjoy gaming on Linux without having to backtrack to OpenGL-only, and I know these games are supposed to be compatible according to proton DB.

Thanks so much for any help you can offer!

I was trying to run Lethal Company and Deep Rock Galactic on my Linux computer using Proton, but I encountered some issues. On the ProtonDB website, both games were listed as running without problems. However, even after changing the Proton version or adding other launch options, nothing worked.

The solution I found was to uninstall both games from my secondary SSD (with larger storage, which I use for games, movies, and large files) and reinstall them on the primary SSD (where my OS is located).

I don’t want to use up space on my primary SSD (which doesn’t have much storage) to store Steam games. Is there a solution that would allow my games to work regardless of the SSD they’re installed on?

Note: the Steam and Proton files are installed on my secondary SSD.

After chatting with some people i just wondered if there are any keyboards or parts made only in the eu or made under fair conditions, bez i didn't found anything in this direction.

also i would appreciate if u propose keyboards having an linux compatibility out of the factory.

I bought a headset from AOAS that comes with two inputs; one for the headset and one for the microphone. However, when I connect it to my notebook (which only has one input for headsets), it works fine. However, when I switch the microphone from my notebook to the headset microphone, the headset audio stops working and only the microphone works. What could this be?

(I currently use Linux Mint, and I'll go back to just KDE neon when I buy a RAM memory. I've already tested it in live mode and it gave the same result.)

The headset works on my cell phone, and I already have an adapter so I can use the headset and microphone on the same input, but nothing is working, even with the adapter :(

Disclaimer: What I'm about to say could be very wrong. This idea sprang to my head a couple of days ago, and I could be misled by my own research. I'm posting this primarily as a way to be corrected/informed by people more knowledgeable than me.

The single biggest issue with Linux gaming is anti-cheat. While runtimes for Battle-Eye and Easy Anti-cheat do exist, they are fundamentally less secure. As much as people like to throw flack at devs for not enabling Linux support, what they fail to understand (or possibly ignore out of cope) is that allowing Wine/Proton players to run the game with kernel-space anti-cheat disabled, also allows cheaters to do the same by spoofing as a Linux client (irrelevant if they're actually using Linux or not).

So for good reason, those Proton anti-cheat runtimes are opt-in. So what's the solution? Well, to figure that out, we'll need to understand why KAC (kernel anti-cheat) is needed in the first place.

A game is a computer program, and a program's memory is isolated; another process cannot directly read/write the memory of another process. This done using "virtual memory". Instead of programs directly accessing physical RAM, the kernel abstracts memory space for each one.

But why doesn't this make cheating impossible? Because you can run cheats in kernel-space, bypassing this virtual memory isolation. A cheater could simply load a driver that manipulates the memory of a game, then all the anti-cheat can do now is memory obfuscation and other anti-tamper techniques; which results in the infamous "cat and mouse game" between cheaters and game devs.

We need a way to verify that the kernel has not loaded any cheating drivers. KAC does exactly this by also running as a driver, vetting other drivers that might be on a whitelist/blacklist of known safe drivers/cheats.

But, you can bypass this again by using a rootkit. If you load your cheats before the anti-cheat can load, the AC will have a much harder time detecting cheats. Thus, in this arms race of cheat vs anti-cheat, the anti-cheat also needs to run as a rootkit. And now we're at what we are today; anti-cheats like Vanguard that runs with full system access (scary!).

Now for my solution:

You may have heard of secure boot. It's a way of verifying if a booted image is approved by your computer's firmware (UEFI). It basically does this by check-summing your boot image, signing it, and enrolling it in a list of trusted hashes. Then, when you boot your system, it checksums the image you're booting and compares it against the enrolled hashes. This (if properly implemented) helps against OS tampering, but this only verifies the booted image to the UEFI, so this alone isn't sufficient as an anti-cheat measure.

TPM to the rescue! TPM (trust platform module) is a dedicated microprocessor for cryptography. It can generate and store key pairs to be used for encryption and signatures. Signatures specifically are important for what I'm proposing, since they're a way of verifying if a message is coming from a trusted source.

TPM has a feature called "Remote Attestation". This is similar to secure boot, as it's a way of verifying an OS, but the difference is that this can be used to verify the currently booted image by a third party (like a game server).

So how will this verification process work?

1. Secure boot and TPM needs to be enabled.
2. You must use a unified kernel image (UKI), since we want to verify the actual operating system kernel, and not a bootloader.
3. Said UKI's kernel sources need to be vetted by anti-cheat devs, and its binary checksum be added to an approval list. To be approved, a kernel should have no modules/patches that allows for cheating (duh), but also have any out-of-tree module loading support be disabled (dkms, akmod). All hardware support (cough, cough, nvidia, cough) must be compiled in.

With all said and done, only clients running specific kernels – such as the ones provided by a distro's repos – can be allowed to play games.

And guess what? It seems this process is already used by Riot Games' notorious Vanguard anti-cheat. It requires secure boot + TPM as a way of verifying that the booted OS hasn't been tampered with.

So why does Vanguard still need KAC? Because Windows NT is a microkernel; it needs to be able to load drivers out-of-tree for hardware support. Linux's advantage is that it's a monolithic kernel; all drivers can be compiled into the kernel image. That's why vetted kernels need dkms and akmod disabled.

If I haven't misunderstood anything about this whole process, this should be an effective way of curbing cheaters on the Linux platform. This is possibly even more effective on Linux than on Windows, due to Torvalds opting for a monolithic kernel design all those years back.

But as you may have already noticed, there are some downsides:

1. Your hardware needs to be supported by one of the vetted kernels, as you cannot load modules nor compile your own kernel.
2. No custom kernels; you won't be able to use kernel patches.
3. Your hardware needs TPM support. Luckily, this shouldn't affect most people.
4. As said before, you'll need to set up secure boot and use a unified kernel image.

Most of the issues above can be remedied by distro maintainers, and the Steam Deck specifically can likely set all this up via an OTA update.

So what do you guys think? Would you go through the effort of setting this up? Do you think distro maintainers, and more importantly, game devs will implement the following system just for us Linux gamers?

I hope so.

Hey buddies

I own an Asus x570 viii impact (the small m-dtx) version.

While the audio output is good enough for me on my MMX 330 Pro, the internal audio device is apparently not strong enough for the microphone (doesn’t work well on windows 10 either).

That’s why I am thinking about ordering an external USB DAC with headphone amplifier as a replacement.

My understanding is that the kernel already provides driver support for some DACs. But I’d like to ask for some first hand experience for you guys.

Is a creative sound blasterx g6 / x4 supported? I also think the GC7 “board” looks interesting. Or any other recommendation from your side?

Profile: gaming 90%, music 10% Relevant features: microphone amplifier, very good output

Using endeavorOS in case that’s relevant.

Cheers friends

Hello,

the scenario:

• main PC running Zorin (ubuntu/debian based)
• NAS running an SMB share (access as guest because I don't need Security in my home network)
• auto mounting the NAS drives via fstab

I tried for two days now getting steam to use my NAS for storage, but it always complains about no write permissions. Before that I got the issue of the drive not being executable (which I probably solved)

I hope someone here can point me towards the issue, because I don't see it anymore. From what I can tell, I do have full access to it. here is the fstab entry

//<ip-adress> /home/<myname>/fast cifs dir_mode=0777,file_mode=0777,exec,nocase,uid=<myname>,gid=<mygroup> 0 0

the mount works, I can access everything, can copy files, and all folders show as owned by me. Still steam fails downloading as soon as it tries to write anything. I really want to give Linux as a main OS a try, but it is always challenging me.. I also tried to make a new folder and copy in that, which also don't work.

On my NAS side, the new folder shows as owned by "Nobody" and "Nogroup", old folders show as owned by the user account of my NAS, but also with full write permissions for owner, group, and others.

Anyone an idea what else I can try?

https://youtu.be/hRpZnAhDMcY?si=EWNeAPrAe8-vsijE