Whenever I launch a game for some reason the game will either open successfully, but the game's window will be completely transparent and unable to be interacted with OR the game simply crashes. Most games I launch through steam result in the transparent window error. Oddly enough however, even though I can't interact with the game, steam still shows I am playing the game and logs minutes played. However, games I've tested so far that are not launched through steam, like minecraft, will just crash.
Normal apps, like discord, spotify, etc. work completely fine, which made me suspect my problem was related to my graphics card. Because of that, I've tried updating my drivers as well as uninstalling my drivers and reinstalling them but to no avail unfortunately. Importantly, I had previously been fine launching all these games with no issues, but I recently had run the software updater and then this issue started occurring. This is my first time using linux for gaming so I blindly thought it was ok to not take note of what I was updating, but I'm starting to realize my mistake... I would be very appreciative of any help
Specs:
Processor: Intel Core I5-9400F x 6
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super
Os Type: 64-bit
Windowing System: X11
This is a result of a recent Bug.
It was introduced in an update for Chromium.
Chromium is used for Steams UI, so I think that is why it affected you.
It can affect a lot of things, including GIMP, browsers and other applications, and sadly, the above will resolve it for most, but for some, it is a temporary solution. It can reassert itself, requiring you to run:
rm -rf ~/.cache/fontconfig
fc-cache -fv
again.
On the Ubuntu side, and Zorin OS, replacing the stable fontconfig package with a later one would permanently resolve trhis.
Or, Chromium patching their overzealous package inclusion while neglecting system compatibility would resolve it.
If I can ask, why did this work/why did you think it would work?