Valve Releases Proton 8.0-5 With Many Fixes, More Windows Games Now Playable

[NeoMorpheus]

Not sure how or why, but on ChimeraOS, I dont select any versions of Proton, I simply click and run the games that I play without an issue.

Even weirder, I was kind of "forced" to use ChimeraOS on my gaming PC, because both W10 and W11 were having all kind of issues with the games, plus not working seamlessly with just the gamepad.

[skeevy420]

If I'm not mistaken I get shader cache updates for installed games after steam deck updates.

I'd get them every single time I'd open Steam for over a hundred games. Usually the same cache for the same games over and over again. It's a known issue with Steam on Linux.

These days I have Steam's shader cache disabled, I run fixed versions of Proton, and do per game Proton updates as I play the games instead of having it set to update everything to the latest version possible. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Kepsz]

Don't have a Deck, but games suddenly not playing happens like clockwork on Arch, CachyOS, Manjaro, Fedora, and Tumbleweed in regards to Proton, Steam, and shader cache updates.

Steam isn't smart enough to disable shader caching when Mesa supports ACO and manually disabling the shader cache fixed a lot of my issues in regards to games not playing at random. It isn't that surprising that they don't have those shader issues on a fixed platform...or weird issues on a fixed platform period.

For 3 years now, I'm a full time Linux gamer, including AAA titles. I have 2 years of gaming experience on Manjaro, and 1 year on EndeavourOS, both with AMD hardware. None of them had any problems with shaders, the games just work. It's the same on the Deck, the games just work.

[skeevy420]

For 3 years now, I'm a full time Linux gamer, including AAA titles. I have 2 years of gaming experience on Manjaro, and 1 year on EndeavourOS, both with AMD hardware. None of them had any problems with shaders, the games just work. It's the same on the Deck, the games just work.

I've been gaming on Linux for over 20 years and I've had this issue for longer than you've been a full time Linux gamer; about 4 or 5 years now. I'm glad that you don't have issues, seriously, I'm not trying to sound sarcastic there, but I've had them occur at random over the years. Whatever you're doing, keep doing it.

I often wonder if some my issues are caused by distro hopping and not sticking with something long term combined with how I move my ZFS pool from distro to distro with the occasional cache wipe here and there when things start acting up

I also only have AMD hardware and have been AMD-only since Zen 2; NVIDIA-free since 2013

[Kepsz]

I've been gaming on Linux for over 20 years and I've had this issue for longer than you've been a full time Linux gamer; about 4 or 5 years now. I'm glad that you don't have issues, seriously, I'm not trying to sound sarcastic there, but I've had them occur at random over the years. Whatever you're doing, keep doing it.

I often wonder if some my issues are caused by distro hopping and not sticking with something long term combined with how I move my ZFS pool from distro to distro with the occasional cache wipe here and there when things start acting up

I also only have AMD hardware and have been AMD-only since Zen 2; NVIDIA-free since 2013

Not everything was a walk in a park... I had an 5600XT for a while, what had some firmware issue that caused constant GPU under-voltage (and instability) under Linux... It took weeks of mailing and kernel testing with the drm dev guys to identify and fix the issue.
At that time I had a second gaming PC with an older Radeon, it was problem free. I still have two gaming PC's, but with 6700XT cards, they works perfectly.

So I had my issues in the past, but not with the shader cache except the long time it took in the past to generate after something is updated. In these days, it usually generate under a minute.

I don't know your ZFS setup, or ZFS in general. But Steam shader cache is something that just works for about everybody. Otherwise there would be no Steam Deck today.
I hope you will figure out what's the problem.

[skeevy420]

Not everything was a walk in a park... I had an 5600XT for a while, what had some firmware issue that caused constant GPU under-voltage (and instability) under Linux... It took weeks of mailing and kernel testing with the drm dev guys to identify and fix the issue.
At that time I had a second gaming PC with an older Radeon, it was problem free. I still have two gaming PC's, but with 6700XT cards, they works perfectly.

So I had my issues in the past, but not with the shader cache except the long time it took in the past to generate after something is updated. In these days, it usually generate under a minute.

I don't know your ZFS setup, or ZFS in general. But Steam shader cache is something that just works for about everybody. Otherwise there would be no Steam Deck today.
I hope you will figure out what's the problem.

I did. I disabled the shader cache. No more 4GB+ downloads of shaders every single time I open Steam. It also fixed the issue where games would stop working for a day or so. I had that happen a lot after small 1.2kb updates with my old RX 580 where I'd be playing a game, stop it for dinner, it takes a small update, and doesn't work again until another small update. That happened A LOT with the game Snowrunner.

I also have a 6700XT. Damn good GPU for 3440x1440.

On ZFS, I just mean that I've taken the same games, same cache, same everything from Arch to Manjaro to SUSE to Fedora to Ubuntu to even Windows via WSL2. I assume that isn't necessarily best practice and that Valve expects people to do things like using the same OS for more than two months and not to use the same library cross platform sometimes multiple times in the same day.

[illwieckz]

I use Lutris as a front end for launching games, and that does let you "pin" particular WINE/Proton/DXVK versions to your game when you find a combination that works well.

The problem is the opposite one: once you have pinned a particular wine/proton/dxvk version that works for the current version of the game, the game receives an update (it is not wine/proton/dxvk that is updated), and that game update is then incompatible with the pinned wine/proton/dxvk version that worked with the previous version of the game.