cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/47762187
When I first installed CachyOS, my mind was blown away by how quickly and conveniently I could start playing my Windows games with it. With its
proton-cachyos-slrwine executable, it was only a matter of setting the game executable and runtime locations in Lutris and I could start playing the game immediately.However, ever since I updated my system with
sudo pacman -Syuin the beginning of May, almost every game stopped opening like it used to. Of those games, almost half of them would simply not open at all with any tweaking. The rest of the games eventually started to run but some of them were hit by performance degradation severe enough to not be playable.I tried to search for the cause on the CachyOS forums and wiki. I managed to find some posts somewhat discussing this issue, citing issues with the new kernel or the
proton-cachyos-slrpackage. Unfortunately following their proposed solutions like downgradingproton-cachyos-slror tweaking runtime settings in Lutris didn’t fix the problem.Eventually I moved on to the CachyOS documentation, mentioning an option of using an alternative wine executable
wine-cachyos. It wasn’t available as a regular executable option and had to be called manually, but eventually it allowed me to play most of my games like before.I don’t feel comfortable with this setup since the entire implementation feels like a hack instead of being an in-built feature, requires additional configuration process for every new game added and still doesn’t allow me to run some of my games that I have spent most of my playing hours on. I have been experiencing this for almost 2 months and I have been contemplating my decision to update my system.
Is there a way to go back to how my system was before without resorting to snapshots or a fresh installation? I don’t expect solutions as you would do in support forums; I am just in need of advice on where to start looking to solve my concern. If you need debug info or context, I’ll happily provide them.
Regression aren’t fun. To solve them, you need to do proper debugging.
First, take a look into logs. See the Proton readme on Proton logs, and Arch wiki’s article of journalctl on system logs. Also games have their own logs. When you have found a suspicious error, copy-paste it to your favorite search engine. Eg. Steam prints errors about game overlay on each start, and those are harmless.
Another option is to take a look into the issue tracker to see, if someone else has the same issue and found a workaround.
Third method is regression testing. It means going back to a working version, and testing each update to find out which one introduces the bug.
If these sound like a lot of work, it’s because they are. That’s why people often try random stuff that may fix the issue, or break your system, instead doing proper debugging. I personally don’t have time for it, so I have given up running rolling release distros.
I hope someone is able to give you the actual fix for your issue.
Is that around when proton went from 10 to 11? I used proton plus to manually install the last version of 10 for games that had issues with 11.
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update your system
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delete your game’s wineprefix, it’ll regenerate and may fix issues from changing versions
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lutris is not likely the issue unless you’re using its runtime and something is clashing with it. With proton-cachyos-slr, you should have lutris runtime disabled and prefer system libraries enabled. See here: https://wiki.cachyos.org/configuration/gaming/
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wild guess, but new versions of proton-cachyos use ntsync by default which requires a kernel module that may not exist in your older system. I’m not sure if it falls back to fsync in this case, but that could cause issues. System update fixes this.
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if you’re on wayland and using PROTON_USE_WAYLAND, the change to proton 11 may have broken some games. These typically would be crashes / white screens rather than lag. In this case you can disable PROTON_USE_WAYLAND or use the older proton 10 based version of proton
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I used to have similar problems with Lutris. I have since switched to Heroic. You could try setting up one or two games in Heroic. Just point it to the same prefix and executable as in Lutris and see if it runs there.
Forget Lutris, it’s been having a ton of issues lately. The lead developer also started using AI-generated code around the time (and being a real dick about it), but that might just be a coincidence.
Faugus Launcher is my preference. It handles Proton installations on its own without having to install system packages.
I’m quite fond of heroic. I will give faugus a test run.
half of them would simply not open at all with any tweaking. The rest of the games eventually started to run but some of them were hit by performance degradation severe enough to not be playable.
It sounds like your video card driver stopped working and it’s fallen back to non-accelerated graphics.
Nvidia dropped support for some older cards in their linux driver recently, so that could be it!
Wow that’s lame… So I guess if you have an older GPU you can’t update your drivers?
If we’re talking about the RTX 900/1000 series, they’re still supported on the 580 driver branch. They’re just not getting new features anymore. Most distros package these legacy drivers too.
In OpenSUSE at least that problem is mitigated by sorting the drivers into generations. That way you can at least easily pin your driver to the latest working version.
No idea what other distributions do.
I’ve always had to manually install drivers every time I set up a distro (usually Ubuntu variant). After that I do noticed it updates semi randomly over time, which usually causes some games to stop working, but c’est la vie
Nvidia wants you to buy a new card.
AMD has well-supported drivers going back decades, partly thanks to Valve
Every day I regret buying the NVIDIA gpu lol. Next time I’m getting AMD for sure
Keep an eye out for Intel, they have been making strides lately, and they generally have similar compatibility to amd on Linux
My Intel A310 has been extremely reliable in my media streaming rig. It’s not gaming, but it hasn’t given me a single issue from day one.
On the gaming side I switched from an RTX 3080 to a Radeon 9070XT near launch specifically to leave Nvidia and I’ve also been happy with it. It wasn’t a huge upgrade, but it was worth leaving team green. Plus having all AMD hardware in that rig has been nice. Currently running a Ryzen 9 5900X in that rig, and moving my drives and GPU over to a new board with a Ryzen 7 9850X3D later this week.
Nvidia clearly has been moving away from caring about consumer gaming for years now. And that just accelerated with the AI boom. Gaming is such a small part of their revenue now that it wouldn’t surprise me if they just started abandoning it. Not leaving the space, but just not actively developing anymore. It definitely feels like they’ve started that since the 3000 series, with such small gains generation over generation.
You can use the open drivers instead of the closed ones, but they’re not as developed.
They do not work nearly as well. I’ve tried.
I didn’t have any issues after updating, have you tried using Proton GE instead of proton cachyos? That one is often more stable.
second this, proton slr is great but it’s also bleeding edge, there were a lot of regressions for specific games in proton 11. generally i try to use 11 if it works but set it to proton 10 GE if it fails as a fallback
I used Lutris on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, but I haven’t used it since switching to CachyOS; it just didn’t work properly for me, and I haven’t cared enough to troubleshoot it when alternatives exist.
