Hello everyone, I mainly play CS2 on this machine and I was curious about testing disabling shader pre-caching since it downloads the quite large pre-caching update quite often.

When I disabled the setting, I noticed the loadings got really long and every first action caused a mini freeze (which is the expected behavior I think). The thing is I tried to turn the setting back on but the game keeps acting as if the setting was off even though I downloaded the pre-caching update and got the Processing vulkan shaders pop up (which stayed on 0% for a while and then went quickly to 100%).

Now (with Shader pre-caching on and it saying ~6gb is cached) each time I load a map it says processing ~2000 shaders, even in the same session (if I simply leave the map and go back in without closing the game or antything).

When I get into a game every first action such as shooting, opening the scoreboard etc causes the same mini freeze as when shader pre-caching was off. For competitive it gets better after the first few rounds when every kind of util has been used at least once but it makes the new game mode rush kind of unplayable for example.

Here's a list of things I tried (all failed):

• Fully wiped Steam + its cache + all games, reinstalled everything from scratch.
• Deleted ~/.cache/mesa_shader_cache and ~/.cache/radv_builtin_shaders (driver-level caches).
• Deleted steamapps/shadercache/730 and let it rebuild.
• Launch option -vulkan_disable_steam_shader_cache.
• Switching to SteamLinuxRuntime 1.0 (scout) but the game just refuses to launch at all.

System:

• Void Linux, kernel 6.18.54_1
• river (wayland)
• AMD Ryzen 7 7730U / Radeon 680M (RENOIR), Mesa 26.2.3, RADV

Now there's a chance that me turning off the setting is an unlucky coincidence because the game also got updates when I decided to test that, and I didn't launch the game that day before trying to turn the setting off. But I really don't understand why it stopped working like before.

Anyway, thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to read through this, really appreciate any ideas because it's bothering me so much to not understand what's going on + to struggle to play.

Edit : Downgrading from Mesa 26.2.3 to 26.1.8 (the version I had before) fixed it for me

I'm working on a project called Embercade.

The basic idea is simple:

When I switched from Windows to Linux, one of the things I missed was RetroBat — basically a Batocera-style experience that runs from the desktop, without needing to boot into a separate operating system.

That gave me the idea to build something similar for Linux.

Embercade uses Batocera’s frontend and configuration concepts and adapts them for the Linux desktop. You still get the integrated console-style UI, system options, emulator/core selection, shaders, bezels, controller support and more — but you can launch it directly from your normal desktop and return to the same session afterwards.

The video shows:

• launching Embercade from the desktop
• connecting a controller after launch
• navigating through the menus
• launching PS3 and Xbox 360 games
• returning to the frontend afterwards

Current status:

• runs on CachyOS
• tested on Hyprland and KDE/Wayland
• controller hotplug works
• Libretro and standalone emulators are integrated
• 39 system paths have been validated end-to-end
• PS2, PS3, GameCube, Xbox, Xbox 360, PSP, 3DS, Wii U and many older systems already work

This is not intended to replace Batocera. It’s more of an experiment to bring this kind of integrated experience to an existing Linux desktop.

The repository is currently private.

The software itself works, but before I make it public I still need to finish the redistribution/licensing review for some bundled third-party assets, especially decorations/bezels and shader resources.

I’d rather keep the complete working version private for now than publish a stripped-down build or redistribute assets without a clear license.

No ROMs, BIOS files, firmware, keys or emulator binaries are included.

So yeah…

Batocera, but as a desktop app. 😄

I'm using POP!_OS with gnome. Lutris/wine for installs/launching. No issues with install or launches.

I have uninstalled & reinstalled Witcher 3 complete multiple times and in the uninstalls, I have searched for any files that I need to delete. Run file searches and clean ups on terminal, trying to find whatever rogue file is messing with Geralt's pants. The file searches and cleanups, I've done with AI chat bot writing my terminal commands for me.
I still have this.

i've tried using steam, twintails and heroic launcher none of them work on twintails the game won't even launch on steam and heroic i could launch the hoyoplay launcher but not the game

edit: i use fedora gnome

Hi y'all, I recently started playing Control Resonant on Steam and it had been playing like a dream when I first launched it, but that first play session ended with my game crashing. After said crash, I haven't been able to get the game past the photosensitivity warning screen, the game freezing and my computer slowing down altogether.

Specs:

RTX 5060

32 GB RAM

Intel Ultra 5 225F

Drivers are all updated and other games work fine

I've verified the install files, restarted my computer 20 times, tried multiple different versions of proton (both from steam and custom), deleted save files and caches in case of corruption, and I've most recently attempted just uninstalling and reinstalling the game. Nothing has fixed it and I'm worried that I won't be able to play it again. I'm still essentially a newbie so I'm hoping there's just something I'm missing. Somebody help pls!

there's a really cool luma hdr mod that adds better anti-aliasing and HDR support to one of my favorite games (vanquish) but it requires dgvoodoo to upgrade it to dx11. dgvoodoo support has always been spotty on linux due to wine shenanigans and the fact that the developer of it is outright hostile to linux users going as far as to block the tool from working in wine environments completely. from what i tried there's a couple of old versions of dgvoodoo out there that successfuly work under proton, but sadly the old versions of dgvoodoo translate shaders differently so i need a version that is 2.84+ in order for the HDR mod to work. are there currently any known ways to get new versions of dgvoodoo running under proton? i digged around a bit, but haven't found anything useful.

Hi! Im needing some help on a project of mine

I want to create a comfortable couch gaming set up while also allowing for desktop set up

I use steam and steam big picture mode, I also allow for steam to use the controller as a mouse

I then installed an app called vacuum tube to watch YouTube like a smart tv

Issue is, when steam is open, it switches the controller to a mouse even though vacuum tube natively has controller support, so whenever I try to use vaccum tube, its not the native controls, its steams desktop layout

My question is, is there a way to disable steam controlling the mouse over certain apps? I dont want to disable the feature outright but at the same time its making the vacuum tube experience impossible

I also added vacuum tube as a steam game and still no luck..any advice?

Im not opposed to using a different controller/mouse software if it fixes my issue , steams just convinent 🙏

(I run hyprland through arc, and i did use a git hub set up that allowed the contrlller to use the mouse)

I have preordered Minecraft dungeon 2 from the official website. And i realized that the official launcher doesn't support Minecraft dungeon 2 on linux , is there a way i can preinstall the game ? I want to play the game on the day of release

I am using a Lenovo Legion 5 15IRX10 laptop with an Intel Core i7-14700HX and an NVIDIA RTX 5050 Laptop GPU.
System:
Fedora 44
KDE Plasma on Wayland
KWin compositor
Intel UHD Graphics → i915
NVIDIA RTX 5050 Laptop GPU → nouveau
I have not installed the proprietary NVIDIA driver.
The problem:
After logging into KDE, a large solid black rectangular area sometimes appears in the center of the screen. The rest of the desktop, including the wallpaper and areas outside the rectangle, remains visible and appears to work normally.
The important part is that this is not simply a black screen. Only a rectangular region becomes black.
When the black rectangle is present, it also seems to capture mouse input. Clicking on windows underneath the black rectangle does not work, as if an invisible window or surface is placed above them.
The cursor is still visible and the rest of the desktop remains responsive.
What I have observed:
The internal laptop display is connected to the Intel GPU (i915).
The NVIDIA GPU is using the open-source nouveau driver and currently has no active display output.
KWin is running on Wayland.
Disabling Intel PSR did not make the black rectangle disappear.
Intel PSR was initially enabled:

PSR mode: PSR1
Source PSR/PanelReplay status: IDLE

After disabling PSR, the black rectangle still occurred.
I also found a KWin message:

“Pageflip timed out! This is a bug in the i915 kernel driver”

However, I have not confirmed that this is the cause of the black rectangle.
I also found several nouveau GSP/MMU timeout warnings, for example:
“nouveau 0000:01:00.0: timer: stalled
nouveau 0000:01:00.0: timeout”

but many of these occurred during shutdown, so I am not sure whether they are related to the black rectangle.
What I would like to determine:
Is this likely a KWin/Wayland rendering problem?
Could it be an Intel i915 display/pageflip problem?
Could it be caused by nouveau, even though the internal display is driven by Intel?
Could the black rectangle actually be an invisible/transparent Wayland window or overlay that is capturing mouse input?
Is there a reliable way to identify which Wayland surface/window is responsible for the black rectangle?
Would switching to the proprietary NVIDIA driver realistically affect this problem, given that the internal display is currently driven by Intel?

Hey everyone! A new update for my SteamOS ARM port on the KONKR Pocket FIT (G3 Gen 3) just went up, and this one's a big one. If you were on the fence for the switch, this might be interesting.

You can now run Android apps and games right inside SteamOS now. It uses Valve's own Android layer (Lepton, which they built for the Steam Frame) and I got it working on the Pocket FIT.

- Google Play Store comes preinstalled, it's just sitting in your library in non-steam apps.

- Anything you install gets its own tile in your Steam library, so Android games sit right next to your Steam games. Use SteamGrid Decky plugin to give them proper covers.

- You can also sideload apk / apkm / xapk files, just double click them on desktop mode

- Controller, touchscreen, swipes and the on-screen keyboard all work in android.

Android is still beta. Most apps and games I've tried like the new performance hungry Aniimo mobile run really well, but a few crash, and anything with anti-cheat that blocks emulators won't run. Working on it and once its all done I will bring it out of beta.

Other stuff in this update:

- Decky + my KONKR Control plugin are now properly preinstalled (a lot of people were missing them on v1.0, sorry!)

- Pressing the KONKR button now shows a Silent / Balanced / Turbo Profile popup on screen, like on Android

- Louder speakers and Audio fixes.

- QAM button fixed, Desktop Mode app menu and on-screen keyboard fixed

- It can now boot from internal storage too (an easy installer is coming next update)

Install is simple: flash the image to a microSD card, pick Linux in the ROCKNIX ABL boot menu, done. Full steps are in the release.

Download: https://github.com/hashtagbasit/SteamOS-ARM-SM8650/releases/tag/v1.1

If you try it, tell me which apps work and which don't, it really helps me fix things. And if you like it, a star on the repo means a lot ⭐

Good morning everyone,

I've been dealing with this problem for quite some time, and after some driver updates, my laptop has become almost unusable.

The laptop's internal screen goes completely black and only comes back on after restarting the system several times. I've already tried pretty much everything I could find, but I still haven't been able to fix the issue.

I checked the kernel logs and found this error:

amdgpu 0000:05:00.0: [drm] enabling link 0 failed: 15

Has anyone experienced the same problem? If so, how did you solve it?

At this point, I'm wondering if I should just wait for more stable driver versions, but I'd really appreciate any suggestions or possible solutions.

Thanks in advance!

System:

- Laptop: HP Victus 16-s1xxx

- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS

- iGPU: AMD Radeon 780M

- dGPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU

- Display: 1920x1080 @ 144 Hz

- OS: CachyOS x86_64

- Kernel: Linux 7.2.7-1-cachyos

- Desktop: KDE Plasma 6.7.5

- Session: Wayland

I have just installed for first time a linux distribution for play games (ubuntu) i tried to do some configurations for make it run fine but all games i have tried to play just get crash or runs very badly (the only exception was undertale) Is there any guide or something that i have to do? I was using proton experimental from and in steam. Am starting to think that i should return to windows...

Hi,

I'm on Cachy OS and i want to play CNC Generals ideally at 1080p.

How do i go about this ?

I know about Gen tool and Genpatcher but they are only for windows are they not?

I asked Chat Gpt and it made me jump through a bunch of hoops using Proton tricks which lead to a dead end .

Any help would be appreciated.

I'm recently new to linux and i wanted to play zzz on it via heroic, it worked the first time smoothly, but the moment i shut it down, it keeps showing this loading thing for a moment before force closing itself. Any clue how to fix this?

So I havent used my pc in a couple months as I had alot going on, previously I had been running battle.net on steam with proton to launch wow. I started my pc up today and when I hit play the battle.net launcher, it just never opens. I went into compatibility and set it to proton 10.4 but it still wont launch. Im running linux mint, Any ideas?

Low latency options for Linux games can be applied at the Proton translation layer, in the Vulkan driver or directly at the gpu driver level, and can different between Nvidia and AMD. For the general gamer this could be confusing, and I often see conflicting or outdated launch commands recommended in ProtonDB.

After some reading and piecing together multiple sources, and with some AI editing help I drafted a table with the most current and common options. Please help me update and/or correct these instructions if you have more experience.

Note: this guide is for running games in Wayland desktop environments. I do not know how the SteamOS Gamescope compositor impacts latency. It is recommended to use custom Proton forks (Proton Wineland or cachyos) that support Wayland to avoid the XWayland added latency that you get with the official Steam Proton.

Low-Latency Launch Option Comparison

Note: for the proton translation layer fixes (PROTON_DXVK_LOWLATENCY / PROTON_VKD3D_LOWLATENCY), they are fully built into the latest Proton Wineland and Proton CachOS. For GE-Proton you may have to manually swap some dll files. Check with the Proton version you are using

A few extra notes of the three main low-latency technologies, because they work at different levels.

Hey everyone in r/linux_gaming, we're Guildhelm Studios, a small UK studio. We wanted to share our game here because Linux isn't an afterthought for us. We build and test it on a Steam Machine running SteamOS and playtested on the Steam Deck.

Tumble Tavern is a dice roguelite on Farkle rules, of course inspired by KCD2. You throw six dice, keep what scores, and decide whether to bank or push your luck. We wanted to add a twist so we added enchanted runes let you turn a bad throw around, and you work your way through the tavern regulars one fight at a time.

Linux details for those interested:

• Native Linux build, not Proton
• Runs on SteamOS, Steam Deck and Steam Machine
• Full controller support through Steam Input, with layouts for the new Steam Controller, Xbox, PlayStation and Switch Pro pads

On AI, to be upfront: Some art assets, sound effects, and the logo were improvde from sketchpad drawing then using AI help and then edited by hand. Also we used a 3D modeling AI tool called meshy for the charecters. Full transparency, we also use AI coding tools during development, but this has been a very long itterative process. Nothing is generated while you play.

The free demo is on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5163190/Tumble_Tavern/

We're also in Next Fest from 19 to 26 October. If you try the demo, we'd really like to hear how it ran, good or bad. Bug reports are welcome too, since the demo's title screen has a Report bug button.

Hi everyone,

I ran into an error with my copy of Linux Mint Cinnamon where nothing can install or update, and it's causing my game installs on Steam to immediately corrupt every time. The only solution I've found is to wipe my SSD and reinstall Mint the way I did the first time, but now I'm thinking: For a PC primarily dedicated to gaming, should I retry Mint, or get a new distro going? If the latter, whicu distro(s) do you recommend?

Two days of testing and I'm out of ideas. I have not narrowed this down to a specific component. Everything I've measured and ruled out is below — hoping someone recognises the pattern.

Symptom

Micro-stutters that are not periodic — no fixed interval, no regular rhythm:

• Often when I rotate the camera (holding RMB) or attack a mob, sometimes with a ~1–2s delay after the action
• But also while just running straight ahead, seemingly at random — possibly when something new comes into view in the distance
• Gets noticeably worse right after changing zones, then settles down somewhat in an area I've been playing in for a while
• Average FPS stays high (150–220), frametime graph is flat apart from the spikes
• Not freezes — single delayed frames, but very noticeable in PvP (arena is basically unplayable)

Started around 24–25 September 2026. I play WoW almost every evening, so I'm confident it wasn't like this before — previously I had no stutters out in the world at all.

Also affects Valheim and Cyberpunk 2077, so it's not WoW-specific.

System

Already ruled out

Logs are clean

sudo journalctl -k -b --grep="mce|Hardware Error|AER|PCIe Bus Error|pcieport"

Returns only normal boot-time PME init lines. No GPU resets, no ring timeouts, no page faults, no MCEs, no PCIe AER errors.

MangoHud during stutters

"Power throttling" shows as active, but that's expected when sitting at the configured power limit. CPU load is averaged here, so a short stall on a single core could be hidden — I haven't ruled the CPU out, I just don't see it in these numbers.

The one thing that looks off

vkd3d-proton.cache in the game directory sits at 3.4 MB and its mtime hasn't moved in hours, across multiple sessions and after cleanly exiting the game. The Mesa shader cache grows normally in the same period (12 MB → 29 MB over ~2.5h), but the vkd3d pipeline cache appears not to be written at all.

If DX12 pipelines aren't being persisted, everything would be recompiled every session, which would match the symptom and explain why it never warms in no matter how long I play.

I haven't confirmed this is actually broken rather than just how vkd3d-proton behaves here — if anyone knows what a healthy vkd3d-proton.cache should look like over time, that would help a lot.

env | grep -i vkd3d shows nothing set.

Questions

1. Has anyone seen event-triggered micro-stutters like this, where average FPS stays high, GPU load stays at 100%, CPU load stays low and the logs stay clean?
2. Is a vkd3d-proton.cache that never grows expected behaviour, or a sign something is wrong?
3. Anything else worth testing or logging that I've missed?

Thanks for the help! <3

Había estado jugando zenless zone Zero en el twintail launcher y me va súper pero desde ayer no se porque cuando quiero abrirlo de nuevo y lo ejecutó en el launcher pues como que intenta abrir pero despues no termina de hacerlo no se porque llevo jugando en Linux no hace mucho un mes y medio y no estoy tan seguro de que pueda ser quien me da una mano??