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)
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Glad you got it fixed! You should update your title to say “Solved”.
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.
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/kdeIf 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/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.
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 😁
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_utilitiesIf 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-GuideGood info! Thanks!
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.
Another option is cachyos, it’s based on arch (bleeding edge distro) It’s also known for being faster than other distros and optimized for speed (didn’t try it myself)
Gonna try this, I’ve had issues running TF2 on mint
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
history | grep "apt"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:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kisak/kisak-mesa sudo apt update sudo apt upgradeThe 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
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.
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)
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.
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.
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
pacmanjust 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Great info, thank you!
Eyyy! I see you got mint up and running, congrats dude! :D
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.
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!
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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The GPU driver might not have been initialised. This can happen because of Secure Boot being enabled in the BIOS. I’ve only seen this happen with NVIDIA GPU’s though.
I disabled that before starting the whole process. But I’ll check if it came back on
