r/linux_gaming

I have been working on building, developing, and prototyping my own modular handheld x86 PC called the CG Deck. After approximately the past 7 and a half months of going from initial concept to functional engineering prototype, I am finally able to officially present the soon coming release of what I have been working tirelessly on over the course of this year! I will also be ramping up and posting more videos of the CG Deck in use, and other related content over the coming days. If you are interested in the project, like the video, leave a comment and subscribe to the channel! I appreciate all of your support so incredibly much, and thank you to everyone that has been following along so far! It means the world to me!

For those who have not seen this project before, the CG Deck is an x86 based modular handheld PC which has the capability of running dual boot operating systems like Windows & Linux. Designed and built to be a device that you actually own down the the firmware. Quick swap out control modules to mix and match control schemes for your specific task. Design and make your own modules, design your own backplates, upgrade or mod the internals, and even make repairs or fixes when or if you need. The CG Deck is more attuned to a platform rather than a traditional device, giving you full capability to repair, upgrade, mod, personalize, etc.

I wanted to create my dream device, something that evolved with me as time passes. Whether I am playing Steam games, or doing retro emulation, doing CAD work in Blender or other 3D software, coding, art & design work, listening to music, home media console use, video editing, hardware tinkering or whatever it is, I wanted to be able to simply be able to do it on a single portable handheld.

Also as a little bit of an update, I am still working on the behind the scenes documentary going over the entire process from the original idea and conceptual drawing, through design iterations, CAD, creating the bill of materials, material sourcing, navigating partnerships with brands and manufacturers, prototyping, assembly, DFM rework, testing & certifications, planning mass production, figuring out the logistics of warehousing and fulfillment, and every step in between all the way though officially releasing and launching the CG Deck and bringing it to market! Because there is so much that has gone into everything (and I am still in the middle of the process doing it all :) ), I will probably post the videos as an episodic series with smaller pieces of content going up between. I will have more information about those videos over the coming weeks, and it will be posted on my personal channel.

After tons of work, we are officially gearing up for an official launch on Kickstarter to help support a full production run of the CG Deck and various modules to bring it to market! The CG Deck will be available both as a DIY Assembly Kit and a Pre-Built ready to use device! I will be sending out more information to everyone on our waitlist over the next couple of days with some new updates & announcements including early bird backer pricing, package/pledge options, and more!

Now that the NDA is up and I didn't see anyone talking about it, the new extraction game Hunger had its tech test 3, but they only let you play the tutorial. If you try to play online, you only get kicked due to them not enabling Linux Easy Anti Cheat support. I haven't seen the developers mention anything regarding Linux support (either for or against), and their Discord is full of people saying that Linux users are full of cheaters, that it's a small dev team that can't enable Linux support, or that Linux is too small of the market share. Maybe this will change for future betas or the full release, but I'm not hopeful. Kind of a shame because I was really looking forward to this game.

Now with the recent release of GE-Proton11-1 DXVK_FRAME_RATE=90 %command% no longer works, I always like this feature so I could save on power and generate less heat but now it's gone for some reason.

Is there another way to limit the fps or do I need to use an older version such as GE-Proton10-34?

My PC has a 9060 XT and a 7800X3D.

I used a manual Arch Linux installation for quite a while, but I was always dealing with problems related to XWayland, finding the best Proton version for every game, Gamescope not working correctly, high input lag in games, tearing, bad frame pacing, issues with winewayland.drv, and so on...

I decided to give SteamOS a try, but I wasn't expecting much. I installed the latest Deck image, and as soon as I started installing and testing games, I was fucking MINDBLOWN by how perfectly everything works on SteamOS.

Awesome things I want to mention:

1. Gamescope works perfectly OOTB. No flickering, no artifacting. Also, latency and input lag feel muuuuch lower, and the input response is so snappy. On Windows (and even on stock Arch, with games running in XWayland) with uncapped FPS and no V-Sync, the input feels like shit compared to Gamescope, where the input response is incredibly low. And the most mind-blowing thing is that it has NO FUCKING TEARING!!! I tested various older games where I always had latency issues, like Just Cause 2, Borderlands 2, GTA IV, etc., and they all feel so snappy now.
2. The image is slightly more vibrant and sharper in Gaming Mode, and I actually like it. It just looks better this way.
3. It selects suitable Proton version for each game, for some it chooses Experimental, for most of the games if chooses Proton 10.0-4, and I like that I don't have to mess around with that myself.

Issues I had:

1. Slight gamma flicker in Gaming Mode as soon as the cursor disappears. I managed to fix it by enabling Force Compositing in the Developer Settings menu. I don't use VRR, though, and I don't need it here since the image is perfectly synchronized and latency is already very low anyway. (UPD: Enabling Force Compositing has significant drawback. It breaks frametime and framepacing in some games I tested, like Dirt Rally 2.0 and also adds some noticable amount of latency, so I disabled it...)
2. Scrolling through the library in Gaming Mode is laggy when the cursor is over the game artwork. If you lineup the cursor between the artworks, it's smooth.
3. All games launch very slowly. I don't know why this is happening — they launch slowly even after shader precaching has finished. This doesn't bother me that much, though.
4. It didn't detect my Ethernet connection as soon as I installed SteamOS, so I had to go to the tty session and restart NetworkManager. Thanks to who posted this workaround on this subreddit!
5. Gamescope FPS limiter adds extreme amount of latency so mouse is literally floating. So I prefer using DXVK_CONFIG="dxgi.maxFrameRate = X" %command% (dxgi for dx10/11, d3d9 for dx9 games). This way latency is extremely low.

Overall, the experience has been amazing, and I feel like I want to stay here. I may add more info to this post if I discover more things.

I am thinking to switch to 7.2 for HDMI 2.1 support (Yes I am using a TV without DP).

Have you guys had any problems so far on the kernel?

Hi,

I have two GPU's laying around for a HTPC build. I plan to use CachyOS on it. The PC will be connected to a TV and mainly controlled via a gamepad.

Since i want to sell one of the cards, i'm now in some kind of a dilemma. the AMD card would have better support, specially for things like gamescope. But the 3060TI would give more performance.

Is the current state of the NVIDIA drivers still that bad? Or is it fine enough to stick with the 3060?

thx in advance :)

I want to play the 2005 pc version of the game, but there's no oficial Linux support, i know that i can install wine and play it, but will make the game run slower

Is there a fan patch or an unofficial linux port?

Hey everyone,

PipeASIO 1.2.1 is out. It is a low-latency ASIO driver for Windows music software running under Wine or Proton, connecting directly to PipeWire on Linux.

If you have not checked the project recently, PipeASIO now includes experimental opt-in 32-bit WoW64 support for older 32-bit Windows ASIO hosts. The 32-bit frontend talks to the same 64-bit PipeWire backend, so no 32-bit PipeWire userspace is needed, and the normal 64-bit driver remains unaffected.

Version 1.2.1 is mainly a stability and low-latency bugfix release. Highlights from the recent 1.2.x line include:

• Real-time audio scheduling fixes to reduce xruns under CPU load
• Fixes for the 32-bit WoW64 buffer path, autoconnect, and live config reload
• Fixes for a thread leak, config-watcher lifetime issue, buffer overrun, and long-session sample-position wraparound
• Wine integration probes now run under CTest

The 32-bit path is still experimental. For Proton / Steam 32-bit hosts, Wine's new WoW64 mode is required, usually with:

PROTON_USE_WOW64=1

PipeASIO is currently verified with FL Studio under Proton-CachyOS, VB-Audio ASIO Test 64-bit/32-bit, and the project's Wine integration probes. More real-world reports are very welcome, especially from older 32-bit hosts.

I am also working on winepipewire.drv for Proton-CachyOS, so regular Windows apps and games can get low-latency PipeWire audio too, not only ASIO software. If you are interested in testing that work, please visit the CachyOS Discord server thread: <https://discord.com/channels/862292009423470592/1514956087550541924>

Links:

• Releases: <https://github.com/M0n7y5/pipeasio/releases>
• Docs: <https://m0n7y5.github.io/pipeasio/>
• Support development on Ko-fi: <https://ko-fi.com/m0n7y5>

Bug reports are welcome on GitHub. Thanks to everyone testing PipeASIO and helping improve low-latency audio under Wine and Proton.

i was considering finally jumping ships and putting linux on my system, going for linux mint actually since its very familiar to windows 10 as a microslop refugee, very attractive since off what i heard it has far less system overhead

but there's an elephant in the room, currently i am using a intel xeon e5-2680 v4, with a single stick of 8gb 2400mhz ddr4 ram and a nvidia geforce gt 610 (rebranded gt 520) with 2gbs of (very slow ddr3 on a 64 bit bus) vram

off what i read it cannot support vulkan, so i'd be needing to use opengl wrappers instead of vulkan ones to run my steam library (at least, the non native games)

off what i read, this is far less than ideal, i do mostly use this computer for gaming but i also do blender (this cpu is stronger enough than the gpu that cycles [the fully path traced render option] is somehow faster at rendering than eevee [the raster one] at least on reasonable sample rates, which is cursed), i do plan on getting a polaris card, specifically the rx 560D (the 580 is out of my budget and the brazilian market only has white label 560's which are mostly the cut down 800~ish SP versions with 4gb of vram) and adding a second 8gb 2400mhz ram stick in like a month

but can i get any use of this system now before i upgrade???

I'm curious about how Paradox games perform on a PS5 running Linux, especially titles like Hearts of Iron IV, Europa Universalis V, Crusader Kings III, and Cities: Skylines II. From what I've seen online, even games like GTA V seem to achieve

I've been thinking about switching from Windows for a while now, and I’m finally trying to figure out what Linux distro would actually fit my setup.

I use my PC for a pretty wide mix of stuff, so I don’t want something that’s only good at one thing. I’m hoping for something that can handle everything without constant tweaking or breaking things.

Here’s what I mainly do:

• Blender and Unity development
• Playing newer titles (like Meccha Chameleon), AAA games, and simpler games like Minecraft
• Sim racing setups
• VR gaming (this is a big one for me)
• Running self-hosted servers like Jellyfin, Home Assistant, and a few other services
• General school/work use and browsing

The main reason I’m looking to switch is Windows itself. It feels increasingly bloated, background processes take up more RAM than I’d like, and with RAM prices going up, I’d rather have that memory actually available for games and workloads instead of the OS sitting in the background. I’m looking for something that feels lighter, faster, and more “in control” than Windows does.

I’m still pretty new to Linux, so I’m definitely looking for something beginner-friendly and as plug-and-play as possible. I don’t mind learning or using the terminal when needed, but I don’t want my first experience to be constant troubleshooting just to get games, VR, or basic apps working.

So I guess my question is:
What distro would you recommend for this kind of mixed use (gaming + VR + development + home server stuff)? Are there any that stand out as a good all-round choice, or are there specific tradeoffs I should be aware of before switching?

Pen drive based installation tip for fifa 2007

Hi everyone,

I'm having an issue with Steam Game Recording on Linux that started around 3–4 months ago. Before that, recording worked perfectly and CPU usage was very low.

**SYSTEM**

OS: CachyOS (Arch-based)
Desktop: Wayland
Kernel: 7.1.2-3-cachyos
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX (Navi31)
Driver: Mesa 26.1.4 (radeonsi)
Steam: Stable
Recording codec: HEVC (H.265)

**THE PROBLEM**

As soon as Steam Game Recording starts, CPU usage jumps to 70-100%+.

amdgpu\_top shows:

\- Media Engine: 0%
\- GPU usage normal
\- CPU does all the encoding

•VAAPI appears to work

vainfo reports that hardware encoding is available:

VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileHEVCMain : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileHEVCMain10 : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileAV1Profile0 : VAEntrypointEncSlice

•Steam log

Steam tries to initialize VAAPI but fails and falls back to software encoding:

Trying to create an encoder for recording: \[hardware\_enabled=true\]

Created encoder VAAPI for codec 5
libav: Failed to initialise VAAPI connection: -1 (unknown libva error).
CGameStreamVideoStageVAAPI: Failed to create device context: Input/output error
Failed encoders: 5/5

Created encoder VAAPI for codec 4
libav: Failed to initialise VAAPI connection: -1 (unknown libva error).
CGameStreamVideoStageVAAPI: Failed to create device context: Input/output error
Failed encoders: 5/5, 5/4

Created encoder X264 for codec 4

So Steam clearly detects VAAPI, but cannot create the device context and falls back to x264.

Has anyone with an AMD GPU experienced this recently?

Any ideas for a workaround or whether this is a known Steam regression?

Thanks!