I have been able to run games whether it was Steam, GOG, or itch and now I can’t get shit to run. I don’t have the worst rig. I was playing Fo4, and now suddenly I can’t. I switched from a shitty Windows to Garuda. That was working wonderful, until I suddenly couldn’t get it to work no matter what Proton version. Then I switched to Ubuntu, same issue. Then Cachy, then back to Ubuntu, and now back at it again with Garuda. Still. The. Same. Fucking. Problem. I have scoured the net for answers and fixes to no avail and I feel like driving into traffic. I cannot get any Proton version to run ANY GAME at this point, not just the more intensive ones. What the fuck do I do? Here are some specs:
- Processor: 8 x Intel Core i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40Ghz
- Mem: 32 GiB RAM
- Graphics Processor: Quadro K620
- Dell Optiplex 990 (7010 housing)
- 245GB SSD, with additional 500GB HDD and 4TB external drive
I have been able to seamlessly play all kinds of games for months, and then it just up and doesn’t let me anymore. I haven’t done anything to tweak shit out of whack. No matter how many clean installs and following instructions otherwise, this shit feels BROKEN and I’m LOSING IT. Someone help me please.
-Little extra info, I always skip the Vulkan shaders bullshit and it was fine before. Sometimes it’d load with the "Downloading Windows (somethingsomething), but I don’t get that anymore, and as soon as I skip the thing crashes before any launchers of sorts can load so I can mess with configuration with the little GUI bullshit before total launch.
Don’t skip the shaders and use the native version of Steam.
You can start steam from a console (by typing steam), and see log output which would help to diagnose the issue.
Nvidia lags on the Quadro drivers, and I believe latest drivers have issues with newer kernels.
I bet your graphics drivers aren’t even working. Run
nvidia-smiand post the output.I was thinking this has regression vibes, do you know off hand what version this started on? Either kernel or driver version?
Many. Probably 6.14+, but the forums are filled with complaints, so check those. Quadro cards aren’t really meant for gaming, so it’s not unexpected.
NVIDIA-SMI 575.64.05 Driver Version: 575.64.05 CUDA Version: 12.9 | |-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+ | GPU Name Persistence-M | Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC | | Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap | Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. | | | | MIG M. | |=========================================+========================+======================| | 0 Quadro K620 Off | 00000000:01:00.0 On | N/A | | 34% 43C P0 2W / 30W | 499MiB / 2048MiB | 0% Default | | | | N/A | +-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+ +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Processes: | | GPU GI CI PID Type Process name GPU Memory | | ID ID Usage | |=========================================================================================| | 0 N/A N/A 4160 G /usr/lib/Xorg 50MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 4774 G /usr/bin/ksecretd 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 4992 G /usr/bin/kwin_wayland 135MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 5095 G /usr/bin/Xwayland 5MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 5144 G /usr/bin/ksmserver 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 5146 G /usr/bin/kded6 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 5160 G /usr/bin/plasmashell 193MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 5205 G /usr/bin/kaccess 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 5207 G ...it-kde-authentication-agent-1 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 5285 G /usr/bin/kdeconnectd 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 5352 G ...bin/garuda-system-maintenance 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 5363 G /usr/bin/xwaylandvideobridge 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 5381 G /usr/lib/DiscoverNotifier 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 5533 G /usr/lib/xdg-desktop-portal-kde 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 92817 G /usr/bin/kwalletd6 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 301147 G /usr/bin/konsole 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 302560 G /usr/bin/konsole 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 303057 G ...share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam 1MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 303202 G ./steamwebhelper 22MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 303229 C+G ...am/ubuntu12_64/steamwebhelper 2MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 304501 G /usr/bin/konsole 0MiB |Are you running the Flatpak version of Steam?
I’m not at my computer at the moment but it’s what comes with the distro. It’s not Native though, I know that.
Install Flatseal and give Steam every permission that it gives you the option, then try again.
Would also be good for you to try games from other sources and see if they work.
Do you have the crash logs?
Not to be that guy, but isn’t that CPU and GPU kinda ancient in PC hardware terms. About the same generation as my first PC at 13, and I’ve been out of school for over a decade. I’m surprised you got FO4 to run at all.
Console output?
Sounds like hardware then. Try an old gpu or power supply.
For steam, shutdown it and start it from terminal to see logs from steam and games on screen. Then start the game that doesn’t want to start and paste those logs. Because 99% of time clue for the reason why its failing is in the log.
You dont need to use this method to get the logs maybe there is a simpler one foe your setup, like look for those logs in journal or any other place but thats how I did investigate why some steam game didn’t start. But I did have native steam, not flatpak one. For flatpak you might need some
flatpak run something. somethingcommand, it should log a lot of text, if not then maybe need some --params to not go into background.Overall this method works for most stuff, logs are the holy grail of any app when debugging and (almost if not) all linux run app does output those :)
Sounds like you are trying to use the “force compatibility” option inside of Steam? I switched out to Linux a few weeks ago. Installed Steam, initially thought I had to tell it what version of Proton to use for each game. Found that I was better off ignoring it, not using any forced compatibility option, and let Steam figure it out. My games run with very few issues that way. I just make sure I have the latest nvidia drivers, which it appears you do. Hope you get it running.
win, proton and the bunch, are magic to me, but when something just up and breaks it’s usually an update. Try reading logs see what’s missing or throwing errors, and try downgrading. That’s how I usually debug at least. After you know what’s what you can search for an alternative that’s up-to-date.
As crazy as it sounds, if you’re willing to, install Windows to discard some Linux driver issues.
I do the inverse sometimes at work to isolate software issues from hardware ones.
I switched from a shitty Windows to Garuda. That was working wonderful, until I suddenly couldn’t get it to work no matter what Proton version. Then I switched to Ubuntu, same issue. Then Cachy, then back to Ubuntu, and now back at it again with Garuda.
While I’m in the camp that one shouldn’t distro-hop in hopes of fixing their problems, you seem to be keen on it. And that’s ultimately your prerogative. With that in mind, have you considered trying something based on Fedora instead? Perhaps Bazzite is able to offer you a fix?
Normally I wouldn’t hop, I like my Arch distros. I just was trying to see if it was a hardware or software issue and just did it a weird way. I will check out Bazzite when I get access again, I’m otherwise AFK.
