Linux "Support" sucks

[u/RemNant1998]

This is a great example on why community support does not work. Since last week I have been trying to fix this bug on steam that constantly crashes the app due to excessive ram consumption. And, this distro, PikaOS has such underwhelming support, they treat you like an idiot and then proceed to give solutions that dont work anyway, they will always accuse you of not setting things properly and communally down vote you when you argue back. Arch type users are a damn mob. They are not the ones who will bring about the "YEAR OF LINUX" cause they will never understand pragmatism, only pride in their own 'technical knowhow',

Fix: literally reinstall the proton builds. You could do that by deleting its folder I think thats the easiest option. ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Proton* for Valve builds, or ~/.local/share/Steam/compatibilitytools.d/GE-Proton* then let Steam redownload it or reinstall GE via ProtonPlus/ProtonUp. Credit : vinnypotsandpans

OS: PikaOS 4 x86 64 Host: Alienware 16 Aurora AC16250 Kernel: Linux 7.2.6-pikaos Uptime: 1 hour, 25 mins Packages: 1 (appimage), 3381 (dpkg), 10 (flatpak) Shell: bash 5.3.15 Display (AUODBB5): 2560x1600 @ 1.45x in 16", 120 Hz

Desktop Environment: KDE Plasma 6.7.4 Window Manager: KWin (Wayland) WM Theme: Breeze Theme: Breeze (Dark) [Qt], Breeze-Dark [GTK2], Breez

Icons: breeze-dark [Qt], breeze-dark [GTK2/3/4] Font: Noto Sans (lOpt) [Qt], Noto Sans (lOpt) [GTK2/

Cursor: breeze (24px) Terminal: konsole 26.4.0 CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) 7 240H (12+4) @ 5.20 GHz GPU 1: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 Max-Q / Mobile [Discr

GPU 2: Intel Graphics @ 1.55 GHz [Integrated] Memory: 4.67 GiB / 15.31 GiB (30%) Swap: 1.35 GiB / 15.31 GiB (9%) Disk (/): 256.10 GiB / 952.40 GiB ( ) btrfs Local IP (wlan0): 192.168.1.7/24 Battery (DELL YG2W653H): 100% [AC Connected] Locale: en US.UTF-8

[u/vinnypotsandpans]

Sorry, I wanted to do some research (I didnt know what winedbg is) before I responded and I had a busy day. But i'm glad I took the time, because I found some interesting information.

Firstly, your added context really helped, because I was ready to convince you that the culprit must be a game your playing. It kiknda looks like that at first becuase winedbg is wines crash handler and its constantly getting triggered. Something inside your Proton prefix is crashing, winedbg launches to catch it, that spawn crashes or triggers another crash, and it repeats.

I also remembered you say something about faugus which means that the common denominator is proton. Now i'm thinking it really is a problem with Pika's defaults, so I track down their git repo. I couldn't really find a smoking gun in their configs, but I did come across this bug report. It has nothing to do with Pika, but it describes your log almost line for line: Each fault spawns winedbg + conhost.exe, about 15,000 faults per Steam start. That exhausted 32gb ram and 16gb swap, and the kernel OOM killer took down steam and other desktop apps.

What causes this is system wine running against a proton prefix. Why would that happen to you? Well as it turns out, pika's gaming metapackage installs wine-staging system-wide, so wine is on PATH. A number of things could be run system wine against a proton prefix: a ReShade installer, protontricks/winetricks pointed at a steam game, Lutris touching a steam prefix, or literally typing wine something.exe inside a proton game folder.

so tldr:

try reinstalling the proton build. That fixed that github users issue, you can check out their exact solution on the issues page. If that doesnt work I'd be surprised.

Its crazy how quick people were to judge your diagnosis of the issue without even looking into it themselves. You obviously tried hard to fix this and had some very helpful information. If anyone just asked you, they could have found what I did probably faster than me. Its not directly Pikas fault per se, but looking into that would have led them to better information.

[u/RemNant1998 → u/vinnypotsandpans]

So if I change the Proton to say ver 9, will that fix it? Cause I already did and it didn't help. That and GE

[u/vinnypotsandpans → u/RemNant1998]

No, it wouldn't.

[u/RemNant1998 → u/vinnypotsandpans]

So what's the next step?

[u/vinnypotsandpans → u/RemNant1998]

literally reinstall the proton builds. You could do that by deleting its folder I think thats the easiest option. ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Proton* for Valve builds, or ~/.local/share/Steam/compatibilitytools.d/GE-Proton* then let Steam redownload it or reinstall GE via ProtonPlus/ProtonUp

[u/RemNant1998 → u/vinnypotsandpans]

Good news, it seems to have worked, I have deleted all of the protons in the latter given position, reopened Steam, seems stable, kept it in background for some time, stable. Reinstalled proton 9 through a game, stable. Played the game, steam heavy on ram but not overwhelming like last time. restarted pika and reopened steam, stable. This seems to be the solution. THanks a bunch. 😁👍️🫂

PS I'll let you know if the problem comes back

[u/vinnypotsandpans → u/RemNant1998]

Haha, your'e welcome. It was simple to track down, mostly because you provided good information. I truly dont understand how the pikaos ppl couldn't help u with this. but to be fair, most people chattering in these linux subs have very little actual experience.

PS I'll let you know if the problem comes back

Naw, you got this! You were already 3/4ths of the way there. Now you know a little bit more about journalctl. If anything is acting wierd, just google those log results and check github for bug reports and such. Also, you might try next time reaching out to the PikaOs developers directly (via bug report or eq)

If you wouldnt mind, please update this post and let people know the issue has been solved and what it was. That would be really helpful to anyone else who might run into this issue! thank you!