The Latest Linux Kernel Appears To Be Causing Connectivity Issues For Steam

If you are planning to enjoy some Linux gaming this week via Steam, you may want to think twice about upgrading to the latest Linux kernel Git code or even the newest stable point releases.

A number of Steam Linux users are reporting of connection troubles when upgrading to the latest Linux kernel releases, including the likes of Linux 5.0.0-17 on Ubuntu or 5.1.12-arch1-1-ARCH on Arch Linux, among other kernel combinations and distributions. A number of users are reporting issues with connecting to Steam following a kernel upgrade in recent days.

For some users at least launching Steam with the -tcp argument is a sufficient enough workaround but for others it doesn't appear to do the trick.

This bug report has been very active over the past day regarding this issue.

There were a slew of kernel networking patches to land earlier this week as a result of those TCP vulnerabilities uncovered by Netflix but at this point it's unclear if those are what is regressing Steam on Linux or are some similarly timed regressions in the kernel code. Nevertheless, we know what Linus Torvalds feels about kernel changes breaking user-space.

Given the seemingly growing number of people impacted by this regression, we assume it's on the Valve developers agenda to look at today but for now at least be aware of the possible issue.