I’m having some problems running Steam games on Ubuntu 21.10 with kernel 5.15.11-051511 (updated the kernel to solve the trackpad issues). I have the i5 model. I wondered if anyone else was also having problems.
Cities: Skylines seems to work fine, but other games (both native and Proton) will either crash at launch or a few minutes later. The native game I tried that crashed (Splitgate) complains about an Unreal Engine error.
As a relative newcomer to Linux I’m not sure if I need to do any more configuration to get things working smoothly. I’m also not sure where I could perhaps find error logs to pinpoint the problem.
Any tips/other experiences people can share would be much appreciated.
Welcome to playing games through a translation layer. It is glorious and excellent work, but it means that google search and learning a bit more about how things work are going to be par for the course. I can assure you that your issues, in this regard, are not going to be framework hardware related, but rather software related.
I would try to search for the Unreal Engine error you had, and see if this is a known limitation or problem with that title. You might be able to find a solution to the issue, or find that the game just will not currently play.
Thanks! I’d heard good things about Proton but I guess it still takes a bit of tweaking.
The Unreal Engine error was for a native game, not Proton or any translation layer. That’s what led me to believe there may be another issue (perhaps hardware is too new/drivers aren’t quite there yet).
Something to keep in mind with “native” clients is that they can be barely tested or only tested with a specific distro + software combination. They may even be very buggy even though they “run,” so you should temper your expectations (it will be this way until Linux gaming gets more traction, hopefully Valve can change that.)
If you find that a native version isn’t working correctly, you can try running it through proton by forcing it.
First, make sure “Steam Play” is enabled:
Click “Steam” in the top left corner of the steam client, then click “settings” from the drop-down list
Select “Steam Play” from the bottom of the options list on the left
Check “Enable Steam Play for supported titles”
You may also want to check “Enable Steam Play for all other titles” and select “Proton Experimental” which is used for games that have not been tested with proton yet, as the option implies.
To force proton to be used on a specific game (which might otherwise have a “native” client)
Right click the game in your steam library, click properties.
Click on the “compatibility” tab on the left
Check the “Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool”
Select a version of proton to run, if a game doesn’t run on the latest experimental version you can check to see if it runs on an older version (For some older games, this may necessary.)
Generally speaking, you can check the protondb website to see what other people did to get any game running, but take what they say there with a grain of salt because not everyone who posts there is an expert, or whatever issue they may have had could have been fixed in a later proton version, making their fix no longer necessary)
Additionally, there are community forks of proton that are not officially supported by Valve, one of the popular ones is “Proton GE” or “Glorious Eggroll” edition. The GE versions of proton have some extra fixes implemented for specific games to get them running, and they enable some in-game cutscenes and videos to play that would otherwise not play. This is due to licensing reasons with the WMV (Windows Media Video, proprietary to Microsoft) format that Valve can’t officially support but the GE version is able to. Valve plans to have server-side transcoding to get around this but it’s not ready yet. I would use this as a last resort if you can’t get the game to run through Proton Experimental or an older version. It’s not too complicated to install, but you would need to go to the github site and follow the installation instructions https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom
This explains a lot, thanks! I can confirm that running Splitgate with Proton got it to load - couple of graphics issues but much better progress than native.
Hopefully with the Steam Deck and Proton that means these tools and native ports will improve over time. It’s already a much better games setup than my old MacBook!
Just wanted to say I bought Oddworld Soulstorm (UE4) tonight and it runs flawlessly maxed out on Out-of-the-box Fedora 35. I was shocked at this because it’s an Epic Store title (doesn’t support Linux), launched through Heroic games launcher, uses Proton and additionally wasn’t sure how the Intel Xe would perform. Every complication in the book (except for maybe anti-cheat), and works great out of the box! How far we’ve come. Great job Framework, Fedora, Heroic and Proton!
We can also thank Valve and their efforts with the Steam Deck for a lot of the recent improvements to Proton support.
I’ve been putting serious effort in to moving my gaming systems over to Linux in recent months, and so far there’s been almost no need to compromise. Between Proton and Lutris, very little has been a problem, and the fixes have been pretty simple.
The only real drawback is the amount of time it takes some games to do the Vulkan conversion, if there isn’t an official profile for the game.
just wanted to post my own experience with gaming on Framework Laptop and Ubuntu 22.04.
After a bit more than 3 years on a MacBook Air 2019 without gaming (except late night video soccer sessions on my son’s Nintendo Switch) I received my Framework laptop beginning of February 2023 and 3 days ago I had the idea to get my abandoned Steam account reactivated.
My Framework is a 12th gen. DIY edition with an i5-1240P, 32 GB RAM and an 1TB SSD. I really had doubts if the Iris Xe graphics will perform well. But it really does.
I have only some older games in my Steam library of which i have chosen 2 to be tested: Breach & Clear and ArmA 3
After installing Steam using the Ubuntu Software app and updating itself twice, I was able to choose to install all of the games of my library. Besides the Linux ported Valve games even for the originally Windows-only ones an installation would be possible.
Breach & Clear was running ootb on an external screen with FullHD resolution without any issues and around 60 fps.
ArmA 3 I had to install twice as with the first try I installed the Linux port which is of version 1.8x and cannot be played online lacking servers. As suggested on protondb.com I decided to switch the to Proton Experimental engine for Arma 3 and with the next start of the game it installed the Windows version (2.1x) which started up without any issues. But it was not playable from scratch. Responses of the keyboard were strange leading to my character still moving for some seconds even when no key was pressed and mouse moves were also laggy and sometimes even stuck. After reading some Steam forum posts related to Arma 3 issues I changed from “Fullscreen” to “Fullscreen Windowed” in the game settings which solved the mouse issues. The keyboard issues were also solved by deactivating the “Repeat Keys” feature in the Gnome Settings (reactivating it after playing).
Arma 3 had almost any graphics option set to Very high after initial run. I set some less important ones to High or Standard because I had worries that it would bother the GPU to heavily. The game is running flawlessly with 25-30 fps which is great.
Linux gaming is tricky as many games are not native to Linux, rather, utilize Proton/WINE to work. ProtonDB is a great resource indeed.
Few early thoughts:
Ubuntu 21.10 is super not supported, not long term supported (LTS) and isn’t really an up to date release and quite old. 22.04 LTS is great, as is 22.10.
Breach and Clear appears to have a native port, so it should be running naively. There may be bugs of course, but it should be native.
