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I wish things were working so seamlessly for me, as people describe in the comments. There seems to be something wrong with Steam and how it works, so that in m

I wish things were working so seamlessly for me, as people describe in the comments. There seems to be something wrong with Steam and how it works, so that in my machine (and CPU and GPU from 2019, with official Linux drivers from standard repos, running Debian KDE) it almost never manages to start a Windows game. I will click the green "Play" button, it will change to a blue "Stop" button, as if the application was running, then shortly after silently switches back to the green Play button again, without any visible error and without actually starting the game. This has been going on for years and I have tried various things, Including HWE kernel, OS reinstall from Linux Mint to Debian, installing the steam client via various means, and whatnot. I have a suspicion, that somehow Steam has issues when Guix is installed, which I am always using, but then the question is, why Steam is incapable of just shipping with whatever it needs and using the things it shipped with properly, instead of getting confused by Guix, which only puts things in the GNU store, and not in a place that Steam should ever look at. But like I said, it is only a hunch or suspicion, and I need Guix more than Steam on Linux. Then there are games that just work, like Stardew Valley. And maybe Terraria. I suspect, that it is somehow also about what engine the games use and what those engines rely on. But these games are very few, and most bigger mainstream games like AoE2 simple won't start, like I described. So for me it still seems, that it is not actually working that reliably on just any GNU/Linux system, and that there are still blind spots, that Valve or whoever is clearly not seeing or considering in their whole Proton development or how Proton is used by Steam. Probably some isolation thing that they are completely missing for several years now.

BatteryMountain 7mo ago
Honestly, don't use debian for gaming, as it is too far behind. Gaming stuff needs a bit more bleeding edge packages. I use Fedora + KDE and everything just works. Fedora's packages are at most a month behind but usually get updates within a week of upstream changes. Debian can be months behind (which makes it rock solid for server workloads). So give Fedora+KDE a try, it works great. It's the one combo that solves all problems for me and stopped me from distro-hopping: media consumption, software dev tooling, system admin tooling, gaming - all just works. My current install is about a year old without breaking itself (still on Fedora 42). I gave gnome a couple of tries, but the plugin system is a crapshoot as they broken an install for me once after an update. Come to think of it, I haven't manage to break KDE yet. Then in steam itself, you can swap different versions of proton. I like to set the base version to one of the newer versions, but if a game doesn't work, I check on protondb which versions work so I override it per game. You can also give lutris a try as it has a few extra advanced levers that you can to get things working.
- scbrg 7mo ago
  > Gaming stuff needs a bit more bleeding edge packages. Not sure I agree. I've been gaming on Debian since 2005, and while it certainly was some work in the beginning, it's been pretty painless for the last five years or so. I'm on Debian stable (mostly) at the moment, and don't really know what "bleeding edge" packages I would be missing.
  - BatteryMountain 7mo ago
    Kernel updates.
    - scbrg 7mo ago
      I've got 6.19.8 in stable-backports. I don't know. I don't feel massively outdated.
- braiamp 7mo ago
  > don't use debian for gaming, as it is too far behind I use Debian stable on my laptop and testing on desktop. It is fine. Only the newest games that need a specific 0 day patch may suffer a bit but that's only for 1-2 weeks even on testing. You want a stable system first, then to unlock the full performance out of everything, and most bleeding edge fail in the former and are a coin toss on the later.
  - nijave 7mo ago
    Think hardware also plays a big role. If you have a new AMD GPU, you'll likely highly benefit from mainline or close-to-it kernel
- zelphirkalt 7mo ago
  Since I used Linux Mint before and since this issue has been going on for years, I don't think lagging behind a few months is the reason for it. 1 or 2 years ago people also already proclaimed that now most games just work for them out of the box. Not so for me and my system. There is something that Steam overlooks and does not isolate from, is my guess.
mchinen 7mo ago
This is similar to my experience. I find many people on the forums that can't resolve the crashes in Red Dead Redemption 2, so I suspect a lot of it depends on the specific games you've picked. It is clearly getting better globally, so I expect in 3 years or so things will be ready for me to try again.
- zelphirkalt 7mo ago
  Maybe I didn't emphasize sufficiently just how many games don't work for me on GNU/Linux. Out of 100 games, I estimate that I get 3-5 games that work, while many people in my circles are proclaiming how great the support now is, that so many games just run fine. I actually have more luck getting games to run when I myself make WINE prefixes using WINE and try running games that way, than running any games on Steam. Only very few games work with Steam on Linux for me. This is also part of the reason, why I think something Steam does with Proton prefixes might be the reason it is broken. I also tried things like not putting games in my Steam library on an NTFS drive that is shared with Windows, and instead put them on my GNU/Linux partition in a new Steam library. Didn't help. Tried various Proton versions, including experimental ones. Didn't help. Simply nothing seems to make a difference.
  - Atlas26 7mo ago
    That’s absolutely not a normal or expected experience whatever. A standard, normal Linux install (not any weird experimental stuff like trying to install stuff to ntfs drives or running super arcane or unusual setups), just your normal standard out of the box setup on Fedora/ubuntu/arch etc should run about 95% of your library assuming you don’t have a bunch of anticheat multiplayer games which have purposefully blacklisted Linux. I’d wipe your entire drive (including windows) and start from fresh with a standard install and you should have no issues. Protondb is the definitive guide to what works and what doesn’t and the numbers will align with the above.
margorczynski 7mo ago
Unfortunately a lot depends on the game and software you're trying to use. There are cases where (especially older) stuff on Windows doesn't work but on Steam it works fine. Also the hope is that when the Linux share of the market grows and more multi-platform engines like Unreal are used then we'll get native versions instead of using Wine/Proton. On top of that Windows is now basically unusable in many ways so for me at least there is no alternative (MacOS is really bad compared to a well configured Linux desktop, could never get past it treating me as an idiot).
rshackleford1 7mo ago
I have been running Guix System as my daily driver for 7 years now and I have not had any trouble using Steam as packaged by nonguix with my cursed nvidia GPU. My computer is from 2008 with a CPU/GPU upgrade in 2018. There have only been a handful of games that I haven't been able to play, like Hitman Absolution. But other AAA games like RD2 and Witcher1-3 run without issue. Even Starcraft2, run through proton, works well.
Neikius 7mo ago
I had great success in such cases by just overriding the compatibility tool used, most often to just some version of proton. Default sometimes just does not work.
foresto 7mo ago
> I will click the green "Play" button, it will change to a blue "Stop" button, as if the application was running, then shortly after silently switches back to the green Play button again, without any visible error and without actually starting the game. You might want to enable Proton logging and have a look at what it says is going on. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/?tab=readme-ov-file#runtime-config-options https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/?tab=readme-ov-file#...
drnick1 7mo ago
Are your games installed on a standard Linux partition, e.g. ext4? Proton struggles to launch games from NTFS volumes and can silently fail.
- zelphirkalt 7mo ago
  I have tried both, installing on btrfs and installing on NTFS (shared with a Windows installation). I think I will get a dedicated gaming machine at some point, which hopefully will not have the same issue.

BatteryMountain 7mo ago

Honestly, don't use debian for gaming, as it is too far behind. Gaming stuff needs a bit more bleeding edge packages. I use Fedora + KDE and everything just works. Fedora's packages are at most a month behind but usually get updates within a week of upstream changes. Debian can be months behind (which makes it rock solid for server workloads). So give Fedora+KDE a try, it works great. It's the one combo that solves all problems for me and stopped me from distro-hopping: media consumption, software dev tooling, system admin tooling, gaming - all just works. My current install is about a year old without breaking itself (still on Fedora 42). I gave gnome a couple of tries, but the plugin system is a crapshoot as they broken an install for me once after an update. Come to think of it, I haven't manage to break KDE yet. Then in steam itself, you can swap different versions of proton. I like to set the base version to one of the newer versions, but if a game doesn't work, I check on protondb which versions work so I override it per game. You can also give lutris a try as it has a few extra advanced levers that you can to get things working.

scbrg 7mo ago
> Gaming stuff needs a bit more bleeding edge packages. Not sure I agree. I've been gaming on Debian since 2005, and while it certainly was some work in the beginning, it's been pretty painless for the last five years or so. I'm on Debian stable (mostly) at the moment, and don't really know what "bleeding edge" packages I would be missing.
- BatteryMountain 7mo ago
  Kernel updates.
  - scbrg 7mo ago
    I've got 6.19.8 in stable-backports. I don't know. I don't feel massively outdated.
braiamp 7mo ago
> don't use debian for gaming, as it is too far behind I use Debian stable on my laptop and testing on desktop. It is fine. Only the newest games that need a specific 0 day patch may suffer a bit but that's only for 1-2 weeks even on testing. You want a stable system first, then to unlock the full performance out of everything, and most bleeding edge fail in the former and are a coin toss on the later.
- nijave 7mo ago
  Think hardware also plays a big role. If you have a new AMD GPU, you'll likely highly benefit from mainline or close-to-it kernel
zelphirkalt 7mo ago
Since I used Linux Mint before and since this issue has been going on for years, I don't think lagging behind a few months is the reason for it. 1 or 2 years ago people also already proclaimed that now most games just work for them out of the box. Not so for me and my system. There is something that Steam overlooks and does not isolate from, is my guess.

mchinen 7mo ago

This is similar to my experience. I find many people on the forums that can't resolve the crashes in Red Dead Redemption 2, so I suspect a lot of it depends on the specific games you've picked. It is clearly getting better globally, so I expect in 3 years or so things will be ready for me to try again.

zelphirkalt 7mo ago
Maybe I didn't emphasize sufficiently just how many games don't work for me on GNU/Linux. Out of 100 games, I estimate that I get 3-5 games that work, while many people in my circles are proclaiming how great the support now is, that so many games just run fine. I actually have more luck getting games to run when I myself make WINE prefixes using WINE and try running games that way, than running any games on Steam. Only very few games work with Steam on Linux for me. This is also part of the reason, why I think something Steam does with Proton prefixes might be the reason it is broken. I also tried things like not putting games in my Steam library on an NTFS drive that is shared with Windows, and instead put them on my GNU/Linux partition in a new Steam library. Didn't help. Tried various Proton versions, including experimental ones. Didn't help. Simply nothing seems to make a difference.
- Atlas26 7mo ago
  That’s absolutely not a normal or expected experience whatever. A standard, normal Linux install (not any weird experimental stuff like trying to install stuff to ntfs drives or running super arcane or unusual setups), just your normal standard out of the box setup on Fedora/ubuntu/arch etc should run about 95% of your library assuming you don’t have a bunch of anticheat multiplayer games which have purposefully blacklisted Linux. I’d wipe your entire drive (including windows) and start from fresh with a standard install and you should have no issues. Protondb is the definitive guide to what works and what doesn’t and the numbers will align with the above.

margorczynski 7mo ago

Unfortunately a lot depends on the game and software you're trying to use. There are cases where (especially older) stuff on Windows doesn't work but on Steam it works fine. Also the hope is that when the Linux share of the market grows and more multi-platform engines like Unreal are used then we'll get native versions instead of using Wine/Proton. On top of that Windows is now basically unusable in many ways so for me at least there is no alternative (MacOS is really bad compared to a well configured Linux desktop, could never get past it treating me as an idiot).

rshackleford1 7mo ago

I have been running Guix System as my daily driver for 7 years now and I have not had any trouble using Steam as packaged by nonguix with my cursed nvidia GPU. My computer is from 2008 with a CPU/GPU upgrade in 2018. There have only been a handful of games that I haven't been able to play, like Hitman Absolution. But other AAA games like RD2 and Witcher1-3 run without issue. Even Starcraft2, run through proton, works well.

Neikius 7mo ago

I had great success in such cases by just overriding the compatibility tool used, most often to just some version of proton. Default sometimes just does not work.

foresto 7mo ago

> I will click the green "Play" button, it will change to a blue "Stop" button, as if the application was running, then shortly after silently switches back to the green Play button again, without any visible error and without actually starting the game. You might want to enable Proton logging and have a look at what it says is going on. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/?tab=readme-ov-file#runtime-config-options https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/?tab=readme-ov-file#...

drnick1 7mo ago

Are your games installed on a standard Linux partition, e.g. ext4? Proton struggles to launch games from NTFS volumes and can silently fail.

zelphirkalt 7mo ago
I have tried both, installing on btrfs and installing on NTFS (shared with a Windows installation). I think I will get a dedicated gaming machine at some point, which hopefully will not have the same issue.