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[SOLVED] New-to-Linux gaming, Steam freezing/crashing with certain games (self.linux4noobs)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by Confused_Emus to c/[email protected]

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SOLVED: Installed GloriousEggroll custom Proton. For Talos, also had to set launch options (PROTON_ENABLE_NVAPI=1 PROTON_LOG=1 %command%) or else I'd just get a black screen. First runs of games take a bit to get loaded, but launch without issue on subsequent runs.

I'm a recent convert to Linux - currently running Mint 21.2. I don't have a huge Steam library and thankfully most of the handful of games I play have worked fine - Deep Rock, Lethal Company, Sea of Thieves, Elite Dangerous (although that one is through Epic, thanks Heroic Launcher).

Two others that I've tried so far - Astroneer and Talos Principle II - don't seem to want to get started. When I hit play on either of those in Steam, it just stalls at "Launching..." I can cancel the launching and it'll go back to the Play button, but at this point Steam won't launch anything else. When I try to exit steam, the main window closes but its icon is still in the system tray icons. At this point, I have to kill the steam tasks before I can get it to re-open.

Since I'm seeing similar behavior for two different games, I'm guessing it might have something to do with the Proton config? I don't know much about it other than it being the main compatibility layer that gets the games running on Linux. In my Steam compatibility settings, I've got Steam Play enabled for supported and all other titles, and I've got "Run other titles with" set to Proton Experimental. I've seen that you can set the Proton version on a per-game basis as well. If that's the issue, is it just trial-and-error figuring out which version I need to use with each game?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I have had the bugs with steam not launching games too. However, I can't remember if I need to kill steam in that case. But I definitely had that happen too. But that is a very rare case that any of that happens. Also, it was not because of a specific game, because after the steam restart it would work. Not sure what the problem is in your case, sorry.

It is interesting, that you have problems with astroneer. Last I played was years ago and worked fine (ignoring degraded performance), even hot-join multiplayer (joining dedicated would NOT work). Talos principle 2 was a bit finicky to get running for the first time, but then it's flawless. Please mind that I only use the glorious eggroll proton because it is most up-to-date. From my experience, the chance is veeeery much higher that stuff just works and do not bother with the included proton version steam provides. For every new game I want to play I just select the newest proton-ge I have installed and that is generally sufficient. If not, I quickly defer to protondb because the chance is high, that one poor soul already tried all combinations of proton version and weird config flags. I should have reviews for both games on protondb too.

I hope you can figure something out. Not sure with your steam client but maybe an ignorable issue if you get the games to work?

[–] Confused_Emus 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Huzzah! Installed GE and I'm able to run both Talos and Astroneer (with some launch options set for Talos)! First run of the games takes a while to get them started and the loading screen videos run like a slideshow, but subsequent launches seem fine so I guess that's just a caching thing. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Perfect! Have fun :)

Yeah, on first use it compiles and caches shaders. I think I was disappointed too from that when I first launched talos principle 2. But that was the only time it really affected me. For most other games you won't really notice.

[–] Confused_Emus 2 points 10 months ago

Oooh, so there are other versions of proton! I’ll have to try out that eggroll proton and see if that makes a difference for me.