Gaming on Linux Gotchas

I've been PC gaming solely on Linux since the beginning of 2020 and generally things that are meant to work just work; it's just a case of installing a game through Lutris or switching on Proton for all games in Steam. But I've definitely experienced problems that have been some effort to resolve.

I'll update this article over time as I find more things.

Sometimes the Default Version of Proton Used is Out of Date

At any time you will likely have many different versions of proton installed, so that if you have an issue, you can just toggle the version in the game's settings.

For some reason when its set to "default" that doesn't always mean the latest version. I'm not sure if this is a bug or something Valve has done to certain games. In my case this was with Doom Eternal.

GSync can Default to the Wrong Screen

In your NVidia settings, there is a tab called "X Server XVideo Settings", which chooses which of your screens to apply GSync to. It may be set to "auto" and "auto" may refer to the wrong screen.

The easiest thing I've found to do is to plug in my screens in a different order to make "auto" the one I want.

Controller Mapping Can be Wrong by Default

I found that my XBox One Controller never had the right button mapping over Bluetooth, but it was correct when wired.

It turned out that the global button mapping for the controller in Steam was wrong and whenever I un-pair and re-pair the controller, the mapping goes back to this wrong state.

Fullscreen VSync with 2 Monitors on XServer is bad.

If you're using XServer and you're playing a game in full screen with VSync on, and you have a second monitor, you will get screen tearing.

You probably will be using GSync/Freesync most of the time, but some games don't let you turn VSync off so that you can use GSync/Freesync.

XServer is a compositor which means it helps to draw stuff to your monitor. It's a library that your desktop environment might use. It's considered to be a bad compositor but switching to an alternative is a long ongoing challenge for developers. The main alternative is Wayland, but NVidia's drivers don't work with it. XServer is still the default for most desktop environments.

This is the only real different between NVidia and AMD on Linux that I've found. I chose NVidia mostly for the monitor I wanted and also because while there's a lot of people online who swear that one company has terrible drivers and the other has great drivers, I find slightly more people complain about AMD.

The easiest solution is to go into the settings and disconnect the monitor you're not gaming on.

Another solution is to run the game windowed.

The other solution is to use Wayland.

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