PROBLEM IS FIXED:
Games now run when installed from within Linux through Steam and the EA App. Everything so far have worked flawlessly. Here's a good mix of what I've tried so far. Hitman 3, 9-Bit Armies, Divine Divinity, Metro 2033 Redux, C&C Tiberian Sun, C&C Red Alert 2
Solution: Pop!_OS and Linux Mint doesn't have a kernel new enough to support the Mesa 25 drivers needed for my 9070XT. These commands in the terminal was the fix for this:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kisak/kisak-mesa
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
Original Post here:
Hi guys, it’s me again.
My issues is that no windows game on Steam will run. With any launch option or proton version (tried about 10). Most just doesn’t open at all. (Click play, nothing happens)
Tried for hours last night and resorted to just throw shit at the wall to see if something would stick for the last hour or so. Exhausted dozens of fixes found on ProtonDB and forums.(I want to try some again after another fresh install though)
Testing Linux on a dual boot system. First I tried Mint and had a pretty bad time due to me messing up the size of one of my partitions(Just made everything a bit more work) later reinstalled but tried POP, which went good and it’s a lot nicer to run now.
Here’s a few I tried a bunch of different troubleshooting on:
Hitman 3 - doesn’t open or artifacts and freeze before getting to the menu (Mint, both from a NTFS and fresh install EXT4 drive) 9 bit armies - doesn’t open at all or crash after splash screen (Pop and fresh install on EXT4 drive) Civilization Beyond Earth - Artfacting and 10fps (Mint and Pop, NTFS drive) Cyberpunk- Doesn’t open (Pop and Mint, NTFS drive AOM: Retold - Doesn’t open (Pop and Mint, NTFS and fresh on EXT4) Ready or Not - Doesn’t open (Pop and Mint, NTFS)
Also tried 5-6 more games old and new. None would open.
One thing I will note is that both installs failed to install GPU drivers properly. But I fixed that with a guide and the console.
Specs: R7 7700 RX 9070 XT 32GB RAM
Any tips on where to start ? I’m gonna start from the bottom with a fresh install of either Mint or Pop tonight. (Or any other Distro, honestly)
What jumps out to me is that you mention installing a GPU driver, but most of the time with AMD cards you don't have to mess with that as it uses the open source driver that comes with the distro.
How did you install this driver?
As your card is very new, it may benefit from a newer version of the MESA driver and a newer kernel.
I’m guessing this is my issue too. I did some searching and the 9000 cards should work fine in Pop OS. So this is indeed strange.
I can’t remember what the commands where actually. Sudo apt something 😂
Then go to the command line and do
This will list all commands that include "apt", that you ever executed.
I ran apt update and then apt upgrade. That allowed me the kernel I needed to at least change the resolution and refreshrate. But it seems the Mesa driver I got then and get now is too old for the 9070 XT. Also got a bunch of error of Vulkan missing, so I guess I know why games wouldn’t run now.
I need Mesa 25 and stuck on 24. looking at tutorials for getting the newest mesa driver on Mint 22z. (Did a fresh install)
That seems relatively straight forward:
The first line adds a repository source, where the mesa packages can be downloaded from via apt.
The other lines just update all repository data and upgrade.
Looks like that might have worked on Mint.
Gonna test it to see if games will run now
Haven’t tried that in Mint yet, but it didn’t work in Pop. The terminal didn’t give any errors or anything, it just stayed with Mesa 24.
I’ll just try those commands before anything else i Mint and see what it does.
This and Steam starting with Vulkan errors might have figures it out. My OS is running Mesa 24.0.3, which looks to predate my graphics card.
I’ll try a manual update and see how that goes
Since Pop OS is based on the LTS version of Ubuntu (long term support), it may lag behind a bit on having drivers for the very latest hardware. Mint is also based on Ubuntu LTS, which would explain why it didn't work there either.
This guide shows how to use a PPA (basically like a mini repository with newer stuff back ported to work with the LTS) to upgrade to a newer Mesa version. Hopefully that gets you up and running!
Tried that but it’s still on Mesa 24. I’m doing something wrong somewhere but I don’t know what at this point.
Maybe a non-Ubuntu distro would be better for me?
Hm, just to be sure, you're trying sudo apt upgrade (not update) at the end?
A distro with newer stuff likely would work out of the box, though they tend to be a bit less new user friendly compared to Mint and Pop.
Fedora is generally recommended as the best compromise, but with it comes the need to use a third party repository called RPMFusion to get patent encumbered software like video codecs and steam. After it's setup it's usually smooth sailing, but something to bear in mind.
A non-lts version of Ubuntu should also work, as that's more up to date.
If you'd like to troubleshoot pop a bit more, I believe a newer kernel should be available in your repository, 6.11 perhaps? (I'm not actually sure, I just know Linux Mint has it available). If it's not available, you could grab the Xanmod kernel, which I recall being pretty easy to install, and is very up to date.
Yes, used Upgrade, told me nothing was changed or upgraded. Update told me nothing was available.
Did a jump back to Mint again as I found a few parts of it nicer than Pop and was gonna reinstall anyways.
If this doesn’t work. I’m just going to try Fedora.
As of now I’m stuck on Mesa 24 still, but it’s a newer one than I got on Pop. Kernel is set up to 6.11-something right now. Found a guide to get a newer kernel and then Mesa 25 that I’m gonna the later. (Looks like Mesa 25 only works on 6.12 and newer?)
If nothing else, this is actually kind a fun and interesting. But nowhere near where I want it for daily driving outside of browser use. But I guess my GPU is to «blame» for being too new
Unfortunately yes :(
The stable distros aren't super good when it comes to the latest hardware, but but for slightly older stuff they're pretty great.
I hope you succeed in getting mint into shape, though! :)
Not even that, fedora has added for a few versions codecs and proprietary stuff as opt-in "third party repos" during user account creation.
Just put bazzite and enjoy, it takes away all the tinkering
I tried both Bazzite and Fedora the past couple months, and this was my personal experience:
While Fedora does have a codec installing option in the installer now, it still doesn't seem to include some common ones (couldn't play certain formats until I installed the non-fedora flatpak VLC player).
Bazzite was very nice, though apps seemed a little slow to open. At some point all apps refused to open, which may have been my fault, but it was at that point that I noticed how incredibly sparse help documentation was, and how many questions (that were relevant to my issue) remained unanswered on the uBlue forum for months.
I think for a new user, access to good help documentation and resources is essential, so I currently don't recommend it for newbies.