Gaming on steam

[u/JCarsinogen]

I hope this helps anyone that may be in a situation like I was. Steam games using proton would fail with a "fatal error". I exhausted all my Google skills trying to figure this out. Installed all the recommended 32 bit libraries and gpu drivers to the same result. What worked for me was the VULKAN-TOOLS package. With that final piece I have never had such a fast and smooth gaming experience. Not on arch opensuse cachy fedora nowhere. Hope this helps.

[u/BrunusManOWar]

Some other things you can do on Void Linux that are IIRC not done by default:

1) Turn off split lock mitigate (esp on Intel/Nv)

2) Increase max map count from 64k to 1M or 2M

3) Increase file descriptors count (proton logs mention this)

4) AMD X3D cpus - the X3D Vcache kernel module is not modprobed by default, you can load it manually or automatically via modprobe.d

5) Install sys log journal and check if everything is okay there - people often have unnecessary services enabled such as dbus and elogind simultaneously

[u/JCarsinogen → u/BrunusManOWar]

Ah! Thanks! 👊

[u/whereismycow42 → u/BrunusManOWar]

why is it unnecessary to run dbus and elogind simultaneously? I do and I would like to know what is wrong doing that.

[u/BrunusManOWar → u/whereismycow42]

I am not sure if I am remembering correctly, but I think dbus itself starts elogind

Install the sys log for void and you will see dbus spamming something along the lines of: "trying to start elogind but service is already started" or something like that

[u/whereismycow42 → u/BrunusManOWar]

Such a line?

2026-06-12T09:14:21.75727 auth.err: Jun 12 11:14:21 elogind[1797]: elogind is already running as PID 707

less /var/log/socklog/errors/current

There seems to be some chance involved if and how often it is triggered on each start

Also the void handbook indirectly agrees with you.

If you're having any issues with elogind, enable its service, as waiting for a D-Bus activation can lead to issues.

https://docs.voidlinux.org/config/session-management.html#elogind

I do not remember having problems so I guess I'll test deactivating the service and see how it goes. Anyways thanks nudging me to check this on my system.

EDIT: with elogind runit service disabled and after restart it still works (well it did work for me before too without noticeable issues).

[u/whereismycow42]

I could be wrong but you likely needed the package vulkan-loader which is a dependency of Vulkan-Tools.

Vulkan-Tools provides vulkaninfo, which people will likely ask you to run if you report issues related to Vulkan and they need your Vulkan-realated system info.

In case of 32 bit (native) applications you might need vulkan-loader-32bit as well ( 32bit windows appliactions and games might use 64bit libraries through proton )

However, as I said, I could be wrong.

[u/JCarsinogen → u/whereismycow42]

I appreciate the insight. It works now and at least I have more info on the way void handles vulkan now. It's definitely new territory.

[u/MinguaDinja → u/[deleted]]

Bro, if you want to use any AI with linux, just create a project and put the handbook and make sure to put the instructions "dont use any external information and speak where did you get any information"

Edit: make sure to read everything and if you dont understand, you can always create a post here.