this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025

42 points (97.7% liked)

Linux Gaming

17690 readers

310 users here now

Discussions and news about gaming on the GNU/Linux family of operating systems (including the Steam Deck). Potentially a $HOME away from home for disgruntled /r/linux_gaming denizens of the redditarian demesne.

This page can be subscribed to via RSS.

Original /r/linux_gaming pengwing by uoou.

No memes/shitposts/low-effort posts, please.

Resources

WWW:

Discord:

IRC:

Gaming on Linux

Matrix:

Telegram:

Gaming on Linux

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Can't get a singe game to run on Mint or POP (lemm.ee)

submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

56 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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)

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 days ago

Try launching Steam from the terminal so you have a chance at seeing an actual error message, at least for the crashing games.

It might be the kernel as the other comment says since the 9070 is pretty new. If it works without issues on something like Fedora or OpenSUSE TW then that was probably the issue.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Before spending too much time troubleshooting Linux Mint I would try something that's a bit further along with the kernel updates considering your gpu.
Personally I've had good luck with Fedora KDE - https://fedoraproject.org/spins/kde

If you still wanna go for Linux Mint look into how to install the mainline kernel yourself:
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=443810
https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2020/08/mainline-install-latest-kernel-ubuntu-linux-mint/

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 days ago

This is the right answer. You need a fresher kernel. 6.12 or 6.13.

If gaming is your core use case, check out bazzite, nobara, or garuda to get many of the goodies baked in.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I’ll try Fedora KDE instead probably. I’m not locked into a Distro as long as it looks nice. I can learn a new UI 😁

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You will probably want to enable the non-free rpmfusion repository. I can't remember if that is an option during install, but if not here's how to do it with the console:
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/rpmfusion-setup/#_enabling_the_rpm_fusion_repositories_using_command_line_utilities

If you scroll down to Media Codecs and HW Acceleration you'll have a guide on how to get proper ffmpeg and h264 and h265 driver support:
https://github.com/devangshekhawat/Fedora-42-Post-Install-Guide

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

Good info! Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Rather than vanilla Fedora KDE, maybe give Bazzite a go. It's Fedora KDE but focused on gaming with a bunch of nice additions. Plus it's immutable, so once everything's set up, it's pretty hard to break.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (9 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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 😂

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Then go to the command line and do

history | grep "apt"

This will list all commands that include "apt", that you ever executed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

That seems relatively straight forward:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kisak/kisak-mesa
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Looks like that might have worked on Mint.

Gonna test it to see if games will run now

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

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.

load more comments (8 replies)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

Hey friend, looks like you might be spinning your wheels yet.

You have two options to get driver support for the 9070:

manually update the Linux kernel in mint/pop to 6.13
install a distro that has 6.13 by default

Here's a mint thread talking about it, pop os will be the same.

That said, I can't in good conscience recommend the manual route for a Linux newbie, so strongly consider a fedora or arch based distro.

If gaming is your primary use case, the ones with tons of gaming apps and tweaks built in are Bazzite (based on fedora atomic), nobara (based on fedora), and garuda "Dr460nized" gaming (Based on Arch)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

strongly consider a fedora or arch based distro.

I very much do not recommend an arch-based distro for a newbie.

If you need a newer kernel:

Fedora or Bazzite or Nobara (as you mentioned)
Debian testing (not sure what version it ships, the online package search isn't working ATM for me)
openSUSE Tumbleweed (what I use) or Aeon (what I'm testing out) - definitely on 6.14 now

But Arch-based distros will break for someone new to Linux. Maybe not in the first month, but probably somewhere in the first year. That's not to say Arch is a bad distro or anything, I used it for several years for both work and play, just that it expects users to know what they're doing, and most new users don't.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

There’s nothing wrong with an Arch-based distro for gaming. Shit, the Steam Deck is built on Arch, and it’s about as newbie friendly as anything.

That being said, Bazzite is probably the best for gaming, regardless of whether you’re a newbie or not.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Steam Deck

It's managed like a console, meaning users don't really manage the system. You can install flatpaks, but that's about it, managing packages with pacman just isn't a thing. Bazzite is largely the same way, the base OS is immutable and updated with atomic updates.

Saying Steam OS is Arch is like saying the Switch is FreeBSD. It's technically correct, but not in the sense that actually matters.

And yeah, Bazzite is totally fine. If you don't touch the internals, you probably won't have any issues, especially if you run an AMD GPU. But I don't really consider it an "Arch distribution" because of that immutable base OS. I use an immutable distro on my laptop (openSUSE Aeon), and I love it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

I also would never recommend Arch to a Linux newbie. I've used it for a couple years too as my DD and am very comfortable with it, and not looking to switch off it. But suggesting it to someone new is just asking for trouble. If they even get through the initial install within their first attempt and have it bootable, that'd be surprising. It's very powerful and incredibly customizable, but that's irrelevant if you're just needing to learn the system.

Also Steam Deck being built on Arch is moot. You don't install Steam OS yourself, it comes preinstalled so people can jump right on.

Can confirm though that Bazzite is a great system for someone new who wants to game as their primary purpose on their PC. Can be tricky if the immutable system causes you to not be able to do other things though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I knew that would happen.

FWIW, there are many arch-based distros with a lot of handholding. Heck, garuda has built in btrfs snapshots on update. I believe OP would have an easier time using garuda than setting up all the other things necessary to make other plain rolling release distributions work.

To OP, raw arch is definitely not for newbies. Don't try to install arch to fix your issue.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Honestly, the whole Arch family is problematic because everyone does things a bit differently with different assumptions, so support doesn't exactly transfer. Arch in particular also expects you to do a lot of your own research, and that tends to carry with the various derivatives.

When you're new, you want something mainstream with a ton of users with a variety of configurations so you have a better shot at getting support for the problems you'll run into. You also probably want something recent, especially for gaming since there are a lot of changes to the gaming landscape.

That's why I recommend stable distros with relatively up-to-date packages. My go-to is Debian, and if you need something newer, upgrade to whatever the testing release is (in this case trixie). Fedora is also a great option. I personally use openSUSE Tumbleweed and Aeon (and soon Kalpa), but I don't recommend those distros because they're relatively niche so getting support may be difficult. They rarely break, but new users seem to attract Murphy's Law more than others, hence why I don't recommend it for new users.

As a second or third distro, sure, it's absolutely fantastic. I loved Arch when I used it, and I mostly switched because I wanted to run the same family of distros on my desktop and servers, and I wanted something a bit more stable than Arch for servers. I realize now that what I actually want is a separation between base OS and running services, so I've switched to containerization and am porting to a rolling distro for my servers as well (in this case, MicroOS, coming from Leap). But I definitely do not recommend Arch for new users because it has very few guardrails out of the box for when things go wrong.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The common consensus I’ve seen is for newbies to the stay away from Arch but maybe I’ll that Garuda one. From the screenshots it looks fantastic.

Mint just looks like strange Windows. Still looks great, but very similar to the interview I’m bored to death with.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You can get pretty much any interface on any distro, so if you're judging a distro based on how it looks, you're probably not the target audience for Arch since Arch leaves all of that choice and responsibility on the user. Arch is a fantastic distro if you want what it offers, and you're okay managing what it doesn't offer.

Garuda is probably fine, idk, just avoid Manjaro IMO (they promise stability, but time and time again they've proven they can't deliver that). I personally recommend going with the more "professional" distros, because you'll have a lot more ready resources for help if something goes wrong.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

I’m not judging a distro just on how it looks. I do judge the standard interface as I wasn’t aware you could easily change it.

I’m up for a challenge, but I’m skeptical to Arch as it seems like it’s a bit too advanced for someone who’s totally green like myself.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Arch doesn't have a standard interface, you pick it yourself. By default you get a terminal and no UI whatsoever.

On most Linux distributions, you'll install a pattern (basket of packages) for whatever you want, like gnome-desktop or plasma-desktop then reboot and it should be an option to pick at the login screen. There are dozens to choose from, and they all have various features and caveats. Installing multiple is generally fine, so feel free to experiment. Some distros have a very customized interface, so you may need to customise it a bit to match what you see in screenshots.

I recommend either KDE Plasma or GNOME to start. Broadly speaking, GNOME is more unique (inspired by macOS iI guess) and stable since it's sponsored by RedHat, whereas KDE Plasma is more familiar (looks like customized Windows) and still pretty stable since it has a large community.

The specific distro doesn't matter that much for the interface, so pick something mainstream with at least an option for more recent packages.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Thanks for the explanation! Makes choosing a distro all that much easier.

It seems I’ve managed to get Mint to work too, so I’ll test it out some

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Woo! Have fun!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Garuda is more user friendly than most arch distros, but you really might want to consider something like bazzite. You can always change the desktop environment and theme as much as you want regardless of distro, although if you're looking for a Windows -like experience I recommend KDE with it's default settings.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

The other commenter is giving good advice, but I think they're knee-jerking a bit hard on the arch base. I presented 3 gaming oriented distributions. All have guardrails. All are opinionated. All are fully featured, user-friendly experiences.

Yes, arch (by itself) is a bad idea as a solution, but so is gentoo, and so is Debian testing.

I believe the issues they're so concerned about actually apply to every rolling release distro like the others, but it's the only way you're going to get OOTB support for the 9700xt until the major release distributions catch up.

Linux users have strong feelings and often let perfect at any expense get in the way of good enough and cheap. This is a demonstrably negative experience for new users.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

I’m gonna give the mint route a go(just did a fresh install) or I’m doing Fedora or something similar.

I’m down to at least give the slightly more advanced stuff a go at least. I can always just reinstall and at least I learn a long the way.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

Great info, thank you!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Eyyy! I see you got mint up and running, congrats dude! :D

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

This community gave me the best kind of help. Gave me ways to figure out my problem, understand why it was happening and then a solution.

I’m probably buying another SSD to put in my system for an alternative OS. And at this rate I might put Windows on it and main Linux.

[–] my_hat_stinks 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Sounds like you've tried some different formatted partitions for the os, have you done the same for the games too? When I switched from Windows to dual-boot Linux I kept my existing NTFS partition for games, those games shows up as installed in Steam but wouldn't launch properly.

If that doesn't help, add this to your game's launch options to get a log which should include an error:

PROTON_LOG=1 %command%

Log should be in your home directory.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Which version of Steam did you install? I think that's a quirky one where the Flatpak version works better in some cases, but check out the native if you're already running the Flatpak version (there are pros and cons to each).

9070 XT is new enough that driver issues aren't surprising. Periodically check in for updates drivers, more than you would usually.

I recently played through Cyberpunk without any compatibility layers and it worked flawlessly, and I've played Hitman:WoA (I know a different game/version, but closest I had) using only the Proton compatibility. (It runs native, but has some menu issues.)

I bring these up because I was running into similar issues as yours at first when I switched to Linux, and it was all caused by the Steam version I had installed. I switched that, and everything else fell into place.

Best of luck!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

On Mint it was directly from Steam and on Pop it was trough the Pop store thingy.

How do I check for drivers updates manually? Like I did when forcing updates to get them installed in the first place or something different?

Also, WoA is Hitman 3 so they’re the same game. WoA is just the new name for it. I read everywhere that it works great so that’s the first game I tired.

Luckily I refuse to give up just yet. I obviously have no idea what I’m doing so I at least want to give it a proper go.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

How do I check for drivers updates manually?

Your distribution handles the packaging and distribution of your drivers, if they're not in your distribution repository you can install them manually (not recommended), use a flatpak (can be awkward), or wait.

If you want bleeding edge drivers you get a bleeding edge distribution like Arch. Fedora is good too but you will only get the latest version every 6 months and after that it's stable releases till the next fedora upgrade.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Try uninstalling Steam (or keeping track of which one was already installed), and trying one of these methods. It was over a year ago I last did this, so I don't 100% remember which version I ended up using but believe it was the Flatpak version that worked best.

For graphics drivers updating, MintOS has a GUI interface for managing drivers which is actually pretty nice. Try searching for Driver Manager in your system utilities. Other than that, you can manually download official AMD drivers from them directly here. I'd recommend looking into that process for Linux a little more before going that route, as there are a few CLI commands you'll have to use.

As for updating anything, yes it will mostly be done the same way you installed in the first place if you used the CLI. Try the following:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Sounds a lot like my first to days of trying to open games on linux (I am on Manjaro with KDE Plasma). I missed to create a swap partition and my RAM couldn't handle some games that just didn't start or closed after a few minutes. Maybe that's your problem as well.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Run steam from a terminal and see if you can spot any errors in the logs.

Steam games tend to just close without displaying anything in the GUI.

Also, install steam from a deb package if you can. It's the native package format for pop and mint, and will give you the least issues.

https://repo.steampowered.com/steam/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I know this is a dumb question, but did you turn on Proton in the steam settings?

I had to manually enable Proton before any of my games would work on Linux.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

Yep.

Issue was found to be Mint or Pop won’t install a Mesa driver new enough to support a 9070 XT.

Fixed that and now pretty much everything works. (That I install on a Linux drive, games on my Windows partitions doesn’t work, but that’s fine)

load more comments