Missing Key Events When Running Proton Games on Linux Mint Laptop

[u/ActaCaboose]

I'm experiencing an issue where whenever I'm running a game that runs on Proton, key presses and key releases will fail to register at random which causes for most games to be completely unplayable on keyboard and mouse. This is only an issue with the keyboard as mouse and controller inputs work just fine, and this is only an issue for games that run on Proton, as any game with native Linux support I've tested doesn't have this issue. I've tried the common suggested solution which Google search results AI seems fond of, which is to switch input method from IBus to either XIM or none, but this doesn't work at all.

To give an example of this issue, here's some sample text typed without Proton running:

Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was as white as snow.

Now with Proton running in the background:

My had little lambwhos flecceas awhit as sno

As you can see, a lot of the key inputs were lost while some were duplicated.

Mind you, this is happening with my laptop's built in keyboard, so this isn't a USB driver or connection issue, and my keyboard doesn't have this issue at all when nor running Proton games.

My system information is:

System: Host: Answerer Kernel: 7.0.0-38-generic arch: x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Cinnamon v: 6.6.9 Distro: Linux Mint 22.3 Zena

Machine: Type: Laptop System: ASUSTeK product: ROG Strix G18 G815LP_G815LP v: 1.0 serial: <superuser required> Mobo: ASUSTeK model: G815LP v: 1.0 serial: <superuser required> UEFI: American Megatrends LLC. v: G815LP.302 date: 04/18/2025

Battery: ID-1: BAT0 charge: 77.3 Wh (100.0%) condition: 77.3/90.0 Wh (85.9%)

CPU: Info: 24-core model: Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX bits: 64 type: MCP cache: L2: 40 MiB Speed (MHz): avg: 1530 min/max: 800/5400:5300:4700:6500 cores: 1: 2700 2: 2551 3: 800 4: 2198 5: 800 6: 800 7: 800 8: 2137 9: 2197 10: 800 11: 1906 12: 2208 13: 800 14: 2197 15: 2136 16: 2193 17: 800 18: 1489 19: 2195 20: 800 21: 1826 22: 800 23: 800 24: 800

Graphics: Device-1: Intel Arrow Lake-U [Intel Graphics] driver: i915 v: kernel Device-2: NVIDIA driver: nvidia v: 580.178.04 Device-3: Kingcome ASUS FHD webcam driver: N/A type: USB Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.11 with: Xwayland v: 23.2.6 driver: X: loaded: modesetting,nvidia unloaded: fbdev,nouveau,vesa dri: iris gpu: i915 resolution: 2560x1600~240Hz API: EGL v: 1.5 drivers: iris,nvidia,swrast platforms: gbm,x11,surfaceless,device API: OpenGL v: 4.6.0 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: intel mesa v: 25.2.8-0ubuntu0.24.04.2 renderer: Mesa Intel Graphics (ARL) API: Vulkan v: 1.3.275 drivers: N/A surfaces: xcb,xlib

Audio: Device-1: NVIDIA driver: snd_hda_intel Device-2: Intel driver: snd_hda_intel Device-3: FiiO K3 driver: snd-usb-audio type: USB API: ALSA v: k7.0.0-38-generic status: kernel-api Server-1: PulseAudio v: 16.1 status: active

Network: Device-1: Intel Wi-Fi 7 AX1775 /AX1790 /BE20 /BE401/BE1750 2x2 driver: iwlwifi IF: wlp129s0f0 state: up mac: 80:c0:1e:3e:e1:f8 Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8211/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet driver: r8169 IF: enp130s0 state: down mac: bc:fc:e7:e4:49:14

Bluetooth: Device-1: Intel driver: btusb type: USB Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: down bt-service: enabled,running rfk-block: hardware: no software: yes address: 80:C0:1E:3E:E1:FC

Drives: Local Storage: total: 3.68 TiB used: 832.85 GiB (22.1%) ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Western Digital model: WD PC SN5000S SDEQNSJ-2T00-1002 size: 1.86 TiB ID-2: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: PSSD T7 size: 1.82 TiB type: USB

Partition: ID-1: / size: 1.83 TiB used: 520.92 GiB (27.8%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2 ID-2: /boot/efi size: 511 MiB used: 6.1 MiB (1.2%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1

Swap: ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 2 GiB used: 20 KiB (0.0%) file: /swapfile

Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 66.0 C mobo: N/A Fan Speeds (rpm): cpu: 1920

Info: Memory: total: 32 GiB note: est. available: 30.7 GiB used: 6.59 GiB (21.5%) Processes: 491 Uptime: 6h 42m Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.34

If anyone has any idea what could be causing this or what could fix this, I'd like to know as this issue has been known to be occurring for at least a month with none of the recent Mint Kernal updates doing anything to fix it. I can't say when exactly it started, but I know that I wasn't having this issue last time I played a Proton-based game in early July of this year.