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

With the recent accusations about Linux gamers cheating, please answer this curiosity poll about whether you've cheated on Linux.

View Poll

Hi, I'm having trouble running games on Linux (even native Linux games) and I don't know what to do anymore. Usually the game opens and then closes or gets extremely laggy with the mouse stopping working (eg. Oxygen Not Included).

I have a GTX 1050 Ti, R5 5600x, 16GB RAM, and a single QuadHD 165Hz 10-bit color monitor. I use Arch Linux Wayland Hyprland with the proprietary v565 drivers. I only play on Steam and they are not competitive or online games.

I've tried using Proton (from Steam), I've tried using GameScope, I've tried adding specific windows for games, etc.

I configured it as follows:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Wayland

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Gamescope

https://wiki.hyprland.org/

https://wiki.hyprland.org/Nvidia/

And several posts on forums and reddit

All parameters, env, etc. were configured but can you tell me the obvious because the error is usually something stupid.

My dotfiles:

https://github.com/GOLD875379/Hyprland

I would be very grateful if you could help/share your settings and what you know about hyprland gaming

Hey guys!

I'm relatively new to Linux, about five months of experience so far, and I absolutely love it! That said, I only just decided to try emulation again now that I've fully switched over and I'm getting a really weird issue.

So, I'm trying to play the Game Shadow of the Colossus on RPCS3 and when I boot up the game, I get a toast in the window saying that RPCS3 Has likely crashed. When I looked in the log, I got the following text:

https://preview.redd.it/5gjw9sq8v3zd1.png?width=874&format=png&auto=webp&s=583e2bd0361880645c255e69e69868ac3d2eca1c

Now, I know for a fact that I was able to emulate this game when I had a Windows installation on my system, but I have no idea what could be causing this specific error. I know it has something to do with trying to read/write to a specific memory address, but I don't know much past that.

There's also another tab that I found that had the following printed in it:

https://preview.redd.it/0q9r7s9lv3zd1.png?width=569&format=png&auto=webp&s=ae15d7a1c5cee0e10e6d02448a18ea7c8bcaa526

I don't know if this might be helpful, but I'd rather give you guys as much information as I can so I can get this resolved as quickly and (hopefully) painlessly as possible.

One more note: I was able to successfully boot the system's firmware, so that's at least a start.

If anyone can help, that would be fantastic.

I'm using an external RTX 3070 with my laptop and I managed to finally make it run all steam games on the egpu, but I still can't make Minecraft do the same. It'll say that it's running the gpu, but there's almost no difference in fps. I already tried this tutorial (https://askubuntu.com/questions/1108043/running-java-minecraft-with-the-nvidia-gpu) but all it did was put my system in something of a boot loop. I'm running Zorin OS 17 with Wayland and Gnome.

TLDR: 1080p 60hz with 5ms ping on average on Linux. Stream quality is limited by being browser-based but there is a beta Steam Deck "app" so perhaps NVIDIA will have a native app at some point. Picture quality is acceptable. There is some fuzziness in the image but streamed versus native picture quality is like the difference between Netflix and a local Blu-Ray.

I thought I was finally done with Windows on my desktop in 2023 but this past summer Call of Duty drew me back. I set up a dual-boot again with Windows on a PCIE NVME card. With the rollout of Copilot and Recall I quickly found myself back in the "I don't want Windows on here" state of mind. Neither of those services affect me right now as I disabled Copilot, to the extent I could, and Recall won't run on my CPU. But in the future whenever I upgrade they will if I keep having Windows around. So I was thinking of alternatives.

I already knew that consoles weren't going to work for me. I have CoD on the PS5 but it just didn't suite me. I played MW2019 a lot on PC and that spoiled me. I have known of Geforce Now for a while but my first reaction was always "I don't want to stream games I want them on my hardware. And what if the network is down?" A switch flipped for me though the other day when I realized that with the way games like Call of Duty are set up now if the network is down I can't play regardless. I bought one month of the ultimate subscription for Geforce Now and tried it out on my Steam Deck and MacBook.

Steam Deck:

• The Geforce Now "app" is browser-based. It uses Chrome and sets itself up to use controllers and appear in your Steam Library.

• Due to the browser limitations we get a peak of 1080p and 60hz.

• The codec used is H264/8bit.

• Latency for games like the Witcher 3 are noticeable on WiFi - like 20-30ms ping for me - but not enough to impair gameplay for me. When wired in latency goes as low as 5ms which, in my opinion, is really good. This applies to multiplayer games as well. Checking the CoD leaderboard the ping reported by Geforce Now is the same as in-game.

MacBook:

• The Geforce Now app is native.

• I can get a full fat 4K 240hz with the ultimate subscription.

• Code is H265/10bit.

• Playing CoD at 120hz with both controller and mouse the latency is hardly noticeable. It is to the point where I am more than likely missing shots because I am rusty from not playing for over a month compared to the latency being an issue. I mean 5ms ping is not different from what it's like playing on my desktop. I would have to have both side by side for me to potentially notice when wired in. Obviously WiFi is not recommended for online shooters.

Obviously there are pros and cons to this solution.

Pros:

• Your hardware is not an issue. Even on an M1 MacBook Pro I can still play with high/ultra settings and ray-tracing because I am connecting to a 4080.

• Picture quality is, in my opinion, more than adequate. For me it is like the difference between watching a Blu-Ray movie on your TV with your Blu-Ray player versus streaming the movie on Netflix or Disney+. The stream may have a bit of fuzz whereas the Blu-Ray is clear. But the fuzz doesn't have an effect on the ability to enjoy the movie/game. Keep in mind I am streaming 1080p to a 1080p display. If I was streaming a higher resolution I expect the image would be sharper.

• You can bypass the issues with Linux or macOS for online shooters. Apex Legends, Call of Duty, Fortnite, etc. are all playable.

Cons:

• It is a subscription. The ultimate package (4K 240hz)) is, in CAD, $26 a month or $140 every six months. The priority package (1080p 60hz) is less at $14/month or $70/six months.

• You still need to buy the games. Quite a bit of my Steam, Ubisoft, Xbox (with GamePass), GOG, EA, and Epic Games libraries are available. But when new games come out that I want to play with Geforce Now I need to buy them separately.

• You're streaming so your proximity to the nearest datacenter and internet speeds are variables to consider.

• It isn't running on YOUR PC.

• No mod support outside of what might be supported in games themselves.

• Your sessions are timed. You are not limited by how many sessions you create on a device but your overall session length is either 6 or 8 hours depending on how much you spend. There is also the free-tier which I did not try. It has ads, overall sessions are 1 hour, I don't know what the max FPS or resolution is.

Overall I am impressed because I was expecting Geforce Now to be nearly unusable for online games. But it is quite the opposite. I don't think this is an ideal solution though. I would much rather that I could download and play whatever games I want on my PC. However, as it stands the state of online multiplayer with anti-cheat is a mess on Linux. I haven't played Apex Legends in like 2 years but EA/Respawn stopping the support for Linux with Proton is a big blow for a lot of people here. I also think there is something to not having some of these games running on your hardware. Like on my RX6600 ray tracing is just not something I have touched besides with World of Warcraft. If you live in a region with expensive electricity and half-way decent internet this could be good as well. You aren't pushing those watts on your PC. On Witcher 3 I cranked the ray tracing to the max with all high settings and I was getting a silky smooth 60fps on my Steam Deck. Instead of the Deck struggling to hit 30 fps with low-med settings I was being wowed by the ray tracing.

If the money isn't a barrier to you and you are opposed to dual-booting Windows Geforce Now may be the solution. I know some people will say that if a game isn't playable on Linux then "who cares? Just don't play it." But I don't think some of these people making these arguments are considering that it can have a negative impact on your social life. I'm not too far away from age 30. My friends and I all have jobs. Some of the only times we can hang out is online playing a game like CoD. Being the odd one out using Linux and just not being able to play with my friends meant I wasn't included on most sessions. I don't blame the guys either. They play a handful of games to begin with. Having a way to play with friends and not deal with Microsoft's bullshit is a win win to me.

gamemode software saved my gaming on linux, i tell you... first of all, I'm a LinuxMint user, I also tried fedora with wayland and kde to see if the problem persisted and yes, I identified the problem: gpu optimization, in fact on cinnamon which doesn't have vrr, my monitor was constantly changing its frequency between 152-180hz, I found this very strange so I went to try fedora kde wayland , before realizing that the problem was still there and that freesync wasn't working either, worse my screen had a lot of flickering, the frequency was absolutely not keeping up with fps!!

and that's where gamemode saved me, in the file found here: /usr/share/gamemode/gamemode.ini

I modified 3 lines :

apply_gpu_optimisations=accept-responsibility

amd_performance_level=high

gpu_device=1

to check that everything was working, I checked in the terminal with gamemoded -t and all tests passed

now when I play, the screen stays perfectly at its frequency on linuxmint cinnamon, I haven't tried it again on fedora kde-wayland, but I imagine it could solve this problem in the same way and that the vrr would work, to be checked. but i removed it to reinstall mint so i will try later.

while doing various tests, I noticed that the mesa kisak killed the machine if I tried to update the drivers on linuxmint 22, so I advise you not to do it.

I hope this helps if you're in the same situation!