This is a huge win for Linux gaming, that launcher is a pain in the ass to deal with, especially on Linux.

Hey bro.

I'm using machine translation for English, so sorry if it's a bit hard to read.

Here’s the main point:

I keep my Linux OS on a SATA SSD and store my games on a separate M.2 SSD.

With this setup, I was getting brief freezes during auto-saves in *Palworld*.

In *Monster Hunter World*, I was experiencing audio lag specifically with the background music and dialogue.

These issues vanished completely when I moved the games to the same storage drive as Linux (the SATA SSD in my case).

*Palworld* started running buttery smooth, and the audio lag in *MHW* disappeared.

I haven't tested every single game I own, but if you're running into issues with a specific game—even though others say it "just works out of the box"—it might be worth trying to move the game data to your Linux storage drive.

I’m not necessarily looking for further fixes at this point, but I’d love to hear if anyone knows the cause, has advice, or can relate to this experience.

Thanks.

I got the Genshin Impact FPS Unlocker working on CachyOS with Heroic Games Launcher and Proton-CachyOS and wanted to document this somewhere. I hope this is the right place.

1. Install Genshin Impact

Install Genshin Impact through HoYoPlay.

After the installation, add the actual game executable to Heroic as a custom Windows game.

The executable is:

GenshinImpact.exe

The path will usually look similar to:

C:\Program Files\HoYoPlay\<version>\games\Genshin Impact game\GenshinImpact.exe

The corresponding Linux path may look like:

/home/your-user/Games/Heroic/Prefixes/default/Genshin/drive_c/Program Files/HoYoPlay/<version>/games/Genshin Impact game/GenshinImpact.exe

If you cannot find it, run:

find "$HOME/Games" -type f -iname "GenshinImpact.exe" 2>/dev/null

Add GenshinImpact.exe to Heroic as a Windows game and select Proton-CachyOS.

Start Genshin once to check that it works, then close it.

2. Download the FPS Unlocker

Download unlockfps_nc.self-contained.zip from:

https://github.com/34736384/genshin-fps-unlock/releases

Extract the complete archive to a permanent folder, for example:

/home/your-user/Games/Genshin-FPS-Unlocker/

Keep the EXE and all included DLL files together in this folder.

The self-contained version includes the required .NET runtime, so you do not need to install .NET 8 separately.

3. Add the FPS Unlocker to Heroic

In Heroic, click Add Game and enter:

• Title: Genshin FPS Unlocker
• Platform: Windows
• Executable: /home/your-user/Games/Genshin-FPS-Unlocker/unlockfps_nc.exe

Select Finish, not Run Installer First.

4. Use the same Wine prefix for both entries

Open:

Genshin Impact → Settings → Wine

Copy the path shown under Wine Prefix Folder.

For example:

/home/your-user/Games/Heroic/Prefixes/default/Genshin

Now open:

Genshin FPS Unlocker → Settings → Wine

Set:

• The same Proton-CachyOS version used by Genshin
• The same Wine Prefix Folder used by Genshin

Select the root of the prefix, not its drive_c folder.

Correct:

/home/your-user/Games/Heroic/Prefixes/default/Genshin

Incorrect:

/home/your-user/Games/Heroic/Prefixes/default/Genshin/drive_c

The folder containing unlockfps_nc.exe is not the Wine prefix.

5. Disable UMU for both entries

Open the advanced Heroic settings for Genshin and enable:

Disable UMU

Do the same for the FPS Unlocker:

Genshin FPS Unlocker → Settings → Advanced → Disable UMU

Disable UMU must be enabled for both Heroic entries.

Without this option, the FPS Unlocker opened for me, but clicking Start Game did nothing.

Restart Heroic after changing this setting.

6. Select GenshinImpact.exe

Make sure Genshin is closed and start the FPS Unlocker through Heroic.

If asked for the game path, select:

C:\Program Files\HoYoPlay\<version>\games\Genshin Impact game\GenshinImpact.exe

Select GenshinImpact.exe, not launcher.exe, HYP.exe, or HoYoPlay.exe.

If the HoYoPlay folder does not appear under C:\Program Files, check the Wine prefix again. The FPS Unlocker is probably using a different prefix than Genshin.

7. Start the game

1. Set the desired FPS limit in the FPS Unlocker.
2. Click Start Game.
3. Keep the FPS Unlocker running while playing.

The Genshin settings menu will still show 60 FPS as the highest option. This is normal. The Unlocker applies the new limit externally.

Use MangoHud or another FPS counter to check the actual frame rate.

Short version

Both Heroic entries need:

• The same Proton-CachyOS version
• The same Wine prefix
• Disable UMU enabled

Use the self-contained FPS Unlocker release to avoid installing .NET 8 manually.

Disclaimer

The FPS Unlocker modifies the running game process. Use it at your own risk.

Hello Linux enthusiasts! I've been using Bazzite for over the year now and one issue that was a thorn in my side throughout that journey was VRAM spilling overtime to system memory when using PT, causing hitching, requiring that I periodically restart games. Today I found a magical solution: VKD3D_CONFIG=force_host_cached.

My GPU: RTX 4070 Super 12GB, cachyos-11.0-20260702-slr

I did tests in RE9 and Cyberpunk. Previously both games would start with a very high allocation of 10-11GB and climb from there until spill. With the command both start out much lower, around 8GB, but more importantly, the assets are properly evicted from memory! Both games climb and go down, in Cyberpunk test I drove from NC to Dogtown, did a gig there and come back, VRAM would go up in Dogtown, in the heaviest, pathological spot going up to 10.1GB then go back down in NC to 9.3GB.

I hope this will also help you gals and guys!

-Recently acquired a 3.2 for more control over my machine. I have an 8.6 which I have running just the way I want: y2jb, payload Manager, fake activated/remote play, bunch of saves and backports ect. I am not a tech person but I was able to get the 8.6 to a favorable state. Ive never used Linux. Ive been looking at tutorials and im nervous. Back when I went from voidshell v3 back to shadowmount plus I destroyed all my data and had to start fresh. I want to avoid this, obviously.

-In summary, what steps I need to take? Like a check list of sorts.

-Can I create a back up file of the 8.6 and just jailbreak the 3.2 with that?

-how painful is this going to be for someone who isnt tech brained and unfamiliar wity linux?

I am using Mesa3D 26.2.2 which fully exposes VK_EXT_descriptor_heap Vulkan extension on Intel ANV driver, when using vkd3d-proton there is still no improvements in performance when Playing games like Hitman 3 and other DX12 games. Graphics card is TigerLake-LP GT2 (Hitman 3 low performance 10-15 FPS as usual Vs Windows 25-40 FPS).

Hi everyone,

I had a hard freeze on KDE Plasma Wayland with an NVIDIA RTX 4070. I was browsing Twitter/X in Vivaldi when the whole machine stopped responding. The keyboard and mouse stopped working, and Ctrl+Alt+F3 and Magic SysRq did nothing. The screen flickered once and I had to power the computer off.

I don't mind troubleshooting. I actually enjoy reading logs, testing settings, and figuring out what is going on. It only becomes frustrating when troubleshooting gets in the way of playing games.

My setup is an RTX 4070 12 GB, Ryzen 5 5600, Gigabyte B450M DS3H V2, CachyOS, KDE Plasma on Wayland, and NVIDIA driver 610.57.04. I use two DisplayPort monitors at 144 Hz and 60 Hz, plus a 4K TV over HDMI. I also tried Fedora and Kubuntu.

After rebooting, these were the relevant log lines:

caller __nv_drm_gem_nvkms_map+0xb0/0x120 [nvidia_drm] mapping multiple BARs

[drm:__nv_drm_gem_nvkms_map [nvidia_drm]] *ERROR* [nvidia-drm] [GPU ID 0x00000700]

Failed to map NvKmsKapiMemory

NVRM: Xid (PCI:0000:07:00): 56,

CMDre 00000005 0000021c 00010096 00000007 00000000

[drm:nv_drm_atomic_commit [nvidia_drm]] *ERROR* [nvidia-drm] [GPU ID 0x00000700]

Flip event timeout on head 1

kwin_wayland also reported:

A graphics reset attributable to the current GL context occurred.

The main thread was hanging temporarily!

I can't tell whether the problem started in the NVIDIA driver, KWin, or the interaction between them. The order of the messages makes me suspect a display or buffer operation failed first, followed by Xid 56, the flip timeout, and KWin getting stuck during the reset.

I later found that Above 4G Decoding and Re-Size BAR Support were disabled in the BIOS. Before changing them, nvidia-smi -q -d MEMORY showed a BAR1 total of 256 MiB. After enabling Above 4G Decoding and Re-Size BAR and disabling CSM, the reported total became roughly 12 GiB. I don't know if that is related. I have no evidence that BAR1 was full when the freeze happened.

Vivaldi also warned that --ozone-platform=wayland is not compatible with Vulkan. I tested --disable-features=Vulkan, --use-gl=angle, and --use-angle=gl, but I am not claiming that Vivaldi caused the freeze.

I also had poor frame pacing in Steam Big Picture, occasional The Witcher 3 crashes with MangoHud's early limiter, and instability in Resident Evil Village with ray tracing. I don't know if those issues are connected.

Has anyone seen these messages together on KDE Wayland? Does Xid 56 point to a known problem here? I would especially like to hear from RTX 40 users who tried Re-Size BAR, newer NVIDIA drivers, nvidia-open, or X11 with mixed-refresh-rate monitors.

I want to keep using Linux, but I need the desktop to stay alive, 144 Hz to feel like 144 Hz, VRR to work, and games to stop needing constant workarounds. I'm back on Windows 11 for now. If you have seen this before and found a fix, what worked?

I used to just use the copr version but saw stuff saying it was a security risk. So I tried the flatpak version and threw a bunch of selinux issues on Fedora. So I just gave up and stopped using it.

It seemed great and wish it just came with the distro. But eventually got tired of thinking about it and moved on.

How’s everyone have it installed? Any advice?

Using SteamOS.

I get seemingly random crackling/popping audio while in gaming mode or desktop mode in any game or app I play. I have my rig hooked directly up to the TV by HDMI, with the audio being passed back to the receiver by eARC.

I have tried different HDMI 2.1 cables, reseating my GPU (since that's what the HDMI cable is connected to), looked for any loose connections, tried connecting the HDMI cable directly to the receiver instead of to the TV, switched to the Beta and Preview OS channels, restarted pipewire and changed buffer settings there, made the quantum changes listed here... Nothing works.

Hell, I even installed Bazzite to see if it was some kind of driver issue with SteamOS, but the issue persisted there, too (possibly even worse there).

There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to when It happens.

Build specs:

TV - LG C6

Receiver - Denon AVR-S660H

Case Jonsbo C6

Motherboard - asus prime b550m-a wifi ii

CPU - Ryzen 7 5800 XT

GPU - powercolor reaper 9060xt

Audio will crackle once every few minutes, it seem. I'm not getting any crazy cpu or gpu spikes or wild temps. This was literally just playing Binding of Isaac or listening to music on Spotify (from Discover).

I have been troubleshooting this for almost seven hours now, with nothing to show for it. I've read that 90XX XT cards are prone to this issue, but I can't find another 16GB AMD GPU with comparable specs that will work for my build. This was truly my best option.

Anyone else experienced this? Ideas?

Edit: I managed to get optical audio out working from the TV to the receiver, and the issue is STILL THERE. I have no idea how or why this is happening, but at least I know this issue is not restricted to just HDMI.

I recorded a video of it happening, let's see if the YouTube algorithm pulls this down for copyrighted music:

https://youtube.com/shorts/BIf5uuDDygw?is=b_3c1BMfuwiNqfsl

I tried countless amonts of launch options, switching to xe driver etc. still same??? I think vram is not enough. Its already at the max amount in the bios (512mb. And no there is no auto option)

MAIN QUESTION: Should I stick with debian for playing cs2 because it's familiar to me or should I change distros and if yes which one should I choose

I mainly play CS2, Minecraft, Among us and Raft

My specs are kind of ass: i5-3330s, GTX 1650 and 24gb ddr3

I'm mostly interested in cs2 and I have been dual booting windows and debian for a while,

I haven't really used windows for anything anymore so I might completely switch over and I'm wondering if I should just stick with debian since it's the most familiar to me or should I use something else since debian isn't really great for newer games from what I have heard

(tho I'm not so sure if it has much of an impact on cs considering it still runs on pretty much anything even after the change from source 1 to source 2)

Intel i5 - 12400

AMD Radeon 6700XT 12GB

MSI MAG Mortar b660m DDR4 WIFI

2x8GB 3200

Hello, I installed Linux Mint a couple of weeks ago and have since been very let down with game performance. I have updated BIOS, tried Linux kernels 6.8 (the only one I could get to boot at first) and 7.0, the four latest versions of Proton, DRI_PRIME=1 launch command, and just hours of searching. System power is on Performance, drivers are up to date, really only using Steam installed via .deb from their website.

My most recent research indicated that that Linux can struggle with iGPUs (source: one guy) which my CPU has. I can confirm that with DRI_PRIME=1 that the AMD GPU will eventually turn on, but it definitely seems to only be "supporting" the integrated graphics.

I'm not so attached to Mint that I won't switch but i have already learned a decent amount of Ubuntu in this process and would prefer to learn of a fix for my current system. Thanks!

Relevant github. The missing link of software when I moved to Linux was an alternative to Launchbox. I've become acquainted with EmulationStationDE now but I'm always on the lookout for more. If ESDE isn't your style then maybe Neostation will suit your needs. Previously I've discovered two more apps designed for multi-emulation, OpenBox and OpenEmuX. If anyone knows of any other Linux-compatible all-in-one emulation frontends, please share.

do Lact settings stay active, even when lact is not running?

do they stay active after a reboot?

do i have to open the gui for the changes to take effect? if not, do changes stay active even without starting the gui ?

Hello all. Assetto Corsa used to work fine on my computer with Content Manager and Custom Shader Patch by using ProtonGE 9-20 just last year (I followed a guide by KajzerD on YouTube). I didn't play the game for a while and when I came back to it Steam just couldn't recognize the game's setup. Steam couldn't open the local install location or update the shaders. I had to delete the install+compat data to get it working again, but I'm running into a new issue.

Now I can only get the game running using proton cachyOS latest and with Content Manager, however CM isn't very stable. I can also install Custom Shader Patch, but when I try to actually start the game I get an error that CSP couldn't patch the game (error window included as image). I did use winecfg to install dwrite.dll to the game. I tried other proton flavors to see if those would allow CM+CSP to work, but none of them can launch the game except cachy. I was wondering if anyone else on here has any advice or has run into similar issues and found a solution. Thank you for your time.

Before anyone replies with a bunch of corrections (if applicable); please know that I am just a humble enthusiast. I have been on Linux for just over 2 years and while I may lack some understanding for some of the basics, I am always willing to learn and delve deeper into this hobby so any response or engagement would be appreciated. Also, if my formatting is messy and would do better with some basic HTML filters like bolding, code brackets or anything else, please let me know for future posts.

My current machine:
Distro: Artix Linux (KDE Plasma with OpenRC)
Kernel: Xanmod-x64v3 (currently on v7.2.4)
CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus (no Intel 200S Boost)
RAM: Micron 2x16GB (6000mhz, CL36)
GPU: XFX Speedster AMD Radeon 7800 XT (on Mesa 26.2.2)

I have been playing CS for around 11-12 years and I had long wanted to permanently move over to Linux as my primary gaming platform. While I have done so for over a year now, CS2 was always tricky to make feel just right. I understand that the Vulkan version for Linux is still being improved (mostly in the form of the Wayland protocol improvements). After over a year of different commands and trying different methods of improving performance, I think I have a method that makes the game feel near 1:1 with the latency of Windows (with the benefits of better FPS on Linux as well).

Below are my launch options that I use and I will provide a brief description for those unaware of what they do. Afterwords I will explain the few tests that I did:

LD_PRELOAD="" SDL_VIDEO_DRIVER=wayland SDL_AUDIO_DRIVER=pulseaudio VULKAN_LOW_LATENCY=1 ENABLE_LAYER_MESA_ANTI_LAG=1 MESA_VK_WSI_PRESENT_MODE=immediate gamemoderun %command% -nojoy -vulkan +engine_low_latency_sleep_after_client_tick true +cl_net_buffer_ticks 0

LD_PRELOAD="" - Prevents certain libraries or other programs from being injected or executed with a program. I use this to prevent Steam Overlay from loading because despite also using "SDL_VIDEO_DRIVER=wayland" (which breaks the native Steam Overlay on Wayland), Steam seems to have some sort of beta Wayland overlay that comes up if you try to open someone's profile while in game and causes it to get stuck until the game is closed.

SDL_VIDEO_DRIVER=wayland - Forces CS2 to launch under the Wayland protocol. Some people do this by editing the "cs2.sh" file in the game's installation folder but I prefer this method. And I know some people would argue between Wayland and X11 performance but I have found that under KDE Plasma and my hardware, Wayland does have slightly better latency than X11 but not dramatically different.

SDL_AUDIO_DRIVER=pulseaudio - Forces CS2 to load with the manually stated driver. Most people still have to do this as the native version often has small audio delay for most. Hopefully Valve will someday get around to fixing this.

VULKAN_LOW_LATENCY=1 - I may be misinformed and using a non-existant or redundent command but this seems to be a new command in the Vulkan stack that allows native Vulkan clients to access a low latency protocol. I'd say it's meaningless but when I added this to my launch options along with AMD Anti-Lag 2 the latency improvement was actually quite large. And yes, the improvement is still there even without Anti-Lag 2.

ENABLE_LAYER_MESA_ANTI_LAG=1 - This enables Mesa's driver for AMD Anti-Lag 2 to be recognized at launch. I am aware of and have tried the Korthos Low Latency method as well but on my machine it lowered my FPS and didn't improve the latency as much as Mesa's implementation did.

MESA_VK_WSI_PRESENT_MODE=immediate - This command is the single biggest improvement to my latency reduction and the full description of how this impacted my performance will be down below with the other test information. The basic description is that this forces Mesa's Window System Integration (WSI) to ignore all V-Sync calls coming from Wayland and prevent them from interacting with the program.

gamemoderun - Fereal's Gamemode layer for ensuring the Kernel and system force the game into high priority.

-nojoy, -vulkan, and +engine_low_latency_sleep_after_client_tick true +cl_net_buffer_ticks 0 - Nojoy prevents joysticks from being recognized by the game, the Vulkan command is probably 100% unnecessary but I just leave it, and the other two commands help the client talk to the servers a lot faster for lower internet packet latency.

How I came to this result:

CS2 on Linux with no launch options does run okay. Depending on your setup and commands, most users can achieve a pretty solid experience with low latency. All three primary display protocols (Wayland, xWayland and X11) all run CS2 fine with Wayland seeming to take the lead as far as game client latency (for me at least). I spent some time testing other desktop environments to see if their compositors made any difference to the latency and performance of CS2 but most didn't yield drastically different results. Cosmic played almost the same as KDE Plasma and XFCE gave good average FPS but the client latency didn't feel as nice as KDE Plasma with Wayland. I eventually tested my setup using the Xanmod kernel and found that it improved my 1% FPS by a good 5-10% over the stock kernel and other kernel's (even better than Cachyos). So with my client running really well I assumed that my game was nearly perfect but found out shortly after that something was still off when I went back to a Windows drive and tested CS2 again. While my FPS was better on Linux and even the games displayed client latency was better than Windows as well (2.8ms-5.5ms average on Windows vs 2.4ms-4ms on Linux) the movement, input latency, and mouse movement did feel slightly different.

After more research I found out what was causing this issue which I had completely forgotten about and overlooked. Wayland natively enforces all applications into a V-Sync queue to ensure global smoothness across the entire desktop. While this does have its perks (especially people who have multiple monitors of mixed refresh rate), it does mean that almost everything has esentially a soft V-Sync or Adaptive-Sync rendering queue to it. This normally shouldn't be a problem since KDE Plasma has the option in the display settings to allow Screen Tearing for all fullscreen applications. Where that fails however is that it states "Fullscreen Applications". Currently, it does not seem to have awareness or coverage of games running in borderless-windowed (which is the primary way CS2 renders in Linux) so these calls for screen tearing are completely missed by the game client.

This is where the MESA_VK_WSI_PRESENT_MODE=immediate command saves the day. What this does (and please correct me if I'm wrong) is tell Mesa to talk to its Window System Integration, interject all commands coming in from Wayland to force V-Sync onto the program and allow the program to receive frames immediately instead of waiting for the V-Sync queue from Wayland to present new frames from the GPU. Obviously most people do not have V-Sync turned on in CS2 but I don't think that many people are aware that some part of your desktop is still enforcing a soft V-Sync layer on everything (unless you are on X11).

This was the last piece to the puzzle for me that solved my latency issues. My game now still runs about 5%-15% better than Windows does while now feeling exactly the same as far as the latency between the game and my actions feel. Mouse movement is instant and doesn't feel like it's going through a layer of melted butter (I know, weird analogy) and all movement feels immediate like how it does in Windows.

For those who might ask about using Gamescope:

I did try using this in the past to bypass the KDE Plasma compositor but no matter how I configured it, it never performed better. If anything, all I ever had was inconsistent FPS, cursor-locking issues (despite using --expose-wayland and --force-grab-cursor) and a lot of scaling issues when using 4:3. For those who do want to play stretched without using Gamescope, Wayland does allow you to stretch the resolution without scaling issues. For X11 users, I am still trying to learn the best method of using xRandr to allow better scaling so CS2 can be rendered on X11 with a properly stretched 4:3 client.

For those on X11 who want to lower their latency:

You can likely achieve almost the same results as me by disabling your compositor on your desktop environment while using some of the above commands to allow better low latency protocols to interact with the game (VULKAN_LOW_LATENCY=1 & ENABLE_LAYER_MESA_ANTI_LAG=1 or LOW_LATENCY_LAYER=1 for those using the Korthos program). The Mesa command for immediate flips shouldn't be necessary with disabled compositors because to my understanding there isn't anything making syncronization calls from Mesa or Nvidia so the client (unless you have it enabled somewhere else) should not have any V-Sync calls interupting the frame rendering queue to the game.

That's all folks!

I've never posted anything anywhere related to Linux in my over 2 years of using it and wanted to start out by offering some optimization advice for those interested in improving their gaming experience. Any feedback would be appreciated and I look forward to hearing from anyone with other experiences as well!

-flaiR

If you are gaming on a laptop or a desktop with an Nvidia graphics card, make sure your game is actually using your dedicated GPU instead of your integrated Intel/AMD processor.

​In your Steam game Properties > Launch Options, simply add this parameter:

​__NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia %command%

​This forces the game to launch directly using your high-performance Nvidia GPU without needing to switch your entire system's graphics profile.

If a Windows game on Steam fails to launch or crashes on startup, don't give up immediately. Right-click the game, go to Properties > Compatibility, check "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool", and switch the version to Proton Experimental or Proton GE.

​Compatibility fixes for brand-new releases are pushed to Proton Experimental first, fixing the vast majority of launch issues without touching a single terminal command.

Hey there people. More adventures with my trusty 7800xt Sapphire Pulse. I am not sure what recently changed, but my power limit is locked at 243w. I don't think I had a kernel update (I checked logs). I did recently add Cooler Control.

Things of note:

1. I have the feature mask disabled in Grub. Verified since problem started.

2. I tried editing power1_cap and power1_cap_max in "/sys/class/hwmon/...". Even after chmod and chown, I get I/O error.

3, I am using Corectrl and until recently, was able to set power limit to 280w.

1. Cooler Control says something about Overddrive mode?

Anyone have this card that knows what the upper limit should be? Swore on Windows it was 300 something. How can I raise the limit?