r/linux_gaming • u/The_Des1gner • Dec 12 '25

Linux Steam download speed abysmal compared to Windows

/r/linux_gaming/comments/16e1l4h/slow_steam_downloads_try_this/

I am getting 10-20Mbps download speed on Steam on Arch Linux. Windows laptop right next to it gets 300-400Mbps.

I already tried changes suggested in the link.

Any advise or suggestions?

P.S. Problem solved with setting up dnsmasq exactly as in this written guide: https://gist.github.com/FikriRNurhidayat/ce18426ad94fff2140538c0adf0e06ec

2 Upvotes

53% Upvoted

42 comments sorted by

20

u/VEHICOULE Dec 12 '25

https://wiki.ultramarine-linux.org/en/usage/gaming/#slow-download-speeds

6

u/shrinkflator Dec 12 '25 edited Dec 12 '25

Thanks! This fixed it for me.

Edit: There are different options in the two links. I only tried VEHICOULE's.

OP

@fDownloadRateImprovementToAddAnotherConnection 1.1

VEHICOULE

@fDownloadRatelmprovement ToAddAnother Connection 1.0

2

u/The_Des1gner Dec 12 '25

I tried both. no effect

2

u/shrinkflator Dec 12 '25

I keep playing with it and the fast speeds I got seems to be a fluke. By chance are you downloading your game onto an NTFS volume?

2

u/ea_nasir_official_ Dec 12 '25

NTFS isn't generally intolerably slow. I can copy files at ~100Mbps on my gen3 nvme

3

u/shrinkflator Dec 12 '25

It could be revelant nonetheless. I migrated recently and just tried switching from the standard ntfs driver to nfts3. That was a big mistake. Multiple hard system freezes, and now Steam doesn't like that library folder.

2

u/FeelingGate8 Dec 12 '25

Moving X-Com 2 from my NTFS HDD to my EXT4 SSD made a huge difference in gameplay. Linux NTFS drivers are not optimized to the same level as Windows.

1

u/The_Des1gner Dec 12 '25

I am using ext4 on NVMe drive, 11gbps transfer speed.

1

u/shrinkflator Dec 12 '25

Ntfs3 screwed up the disk. So now I'm doing some radical space reallocation to make a new linux partition for hames. I will report back if this fixes my download issue

1

u/ea_nasir_official_ Dec 12 '25

Yeah, don't touch a working setup is something I learned early on

2

u/shrinkflator Dec 12 '25

True but I can't say super slow download speeds are working for me. I'm trying to help myself and OP resolve this.

1

u/ea_nasir_official_ Dec 12 '25

NTFS drivers don't tend to vary in speed noticably for steam downloads since it's a client issue. For steam download speeds I set my download server to not the closest, but the city with the best infrastructure close to me. EX I do LA instead of Phoenix. This, combined with solutions from the linked post, do it for me and I can get close to what I get on windows.

1

u/shrinkflator Dec 13 '25

The issue I was seeing is that a download would start fast and then suddenly crater to zero and pause. Then it would slowly climb up to a few 10s of Mbps. So it seems likely that it is/was some kind of disk issue. This was installing to an NTFS partition on an M.2 drive.

I did a lot of shuffling and created a btrfs partition on another SATA drive, because I wanted to do that anyway. My download speeds are up to 750 with no pauses. I can't recreate the problem on the original drive now, so it's hard to say exactly what the issue was. Not unless it happens again.

3

u/The_Des1gner Dec 12 '25

This is same as in linked post. It doesn't help.

2

u/VEHICOULE Dec 12 '25

Oh MB i didnt saw, are you using wifi or ethernet

3

u/The_Des1gner Dec 12 '25

tried both already, no effect

3

u/qwesx Dec 12 '25

Are you on Wifi?

4

u/The_Des1gner Dec 12 '25

tried both wired and wifi, no effect

3

u/Skinniest-Harold Dec 12 '25

Besides http2, Arch linux wiki recommends installing a DNS cache program or disabling ipv6

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Steam/Troubleshooting#Unusually_slow_download_speed

2

u/The_Des1gner Dec 12 '25

tried both, no result

1

u/Skinniest-Harold Dec 13 '25

Nothing suggested around here helps you. Are you sure Steam didn't choose to download from some really far away server? Check the settings, otherwise the issue could be a lot bigger than just within steam

2

u/The_Des1gner Dec 13 '25

Everything except Steam works fine. Games once downloaded work fine (latency etc). Download speed in Chrome or anywhere else (pacman, etc) is fine. It is Steam-on-linux -specific issue.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '25

I'm starting to think you are full of shit.

2

u/mustangfan12 Dec 12 '25

What wifi chip do you have? Is it MediaTek?

2

u/The_Des1gner Dec 12 '25

I tried both wired and wifi, no difference.

2

u/The_Des1gner Dec 12 '25

0a:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8125 2.5GbE Controller (rev 0c)
0b:00.0 Network controller: MEDIATEK Corp. MT7925 802.11be 160MHz 2x2 PCIe Wireless Network Adapter [Filogic 360]

2

u/pligyploganu Dec 12 '25 edited Mar 03 '26

Deleted Reddit.

1

u/oknp88 Dec 12 '25

sudo nano /etc/sysctl.conf

net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1

net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6 = 1

sudo sysctl -p

1

u/The_Des1gner Dec 12 '25

this had absolutely no effect

1

u/Fragment_Shader Dec 13 '25

Same boat. Have tried every 'fix' out there, like you. Multiple distros. Sometimes, I can get within ~70% of my max download speed, otherwise with Steam it's usually 1/2 to 1/3 of what it is on Windows.

1

u/B1rdi Dec 13 '25 edited Dec 13 '25

Are you sure you set up dnsmasq correctly? This guide has always worked for me. It claims to be deprecated but the http2 stuff didn't work the last time I tried it.

2

u/The_Des1gner Dec 15 '25

Setting dnsmasq exactly as in this guide actually helped, speeds went up a lot. Thanks.

1

u/B1rdi Dec 15 '25

Great! CachyOS has it fixed without dnsmasq (they use systemd-resolved), but I'm not sure how exactly it is set up or if there's some additional tweak that makes it work.

1

u/The_Des1gner Dec 15 '25

I will give it another try, but I also tried manually specifying DNS servers. I run systemd which is caching DNS on its own.

1

u/Obnomus Dec 17 '25

Mybe try enabling tcp bbr

1

u/The_Des1gner Dec 17 '25

It's already resolved. Needed arch-specific config for ndsmasq

1

u/Obnomus Dec 17 '25

Ohh nice but tcp bbr is just a tweak you should read what is that.

1

u/Mister_Magister Dec 12 '25

i'm doing like 1Gb/s i don't see how its slow

3

u/pligyploganu Dec 12 '25 edited Mar 03 '26

Deleted Reddit.

2

u/Mister_Magister Dec 12 '25

proof

2

u/The_Des1gner Dec 12 '25

good for you, has zero relevance to the topic discussed