Steam client (installed as .deb) freezing my entire system every couple of minutes for a few seconds. There is no specific pattern, either steam in background or I'm searching store or library - cursor will freeze, like I suddenly have 1 fps across all apps. Nothing else causes same problems and the games themself run perfectly fine.
Is it from the Repo's or from Steam directly?
- Can You post Your Hardware Specs?
- If You have an Nvidia Card: what Driver do You use?
- Does Your System run in Wayland or X11? You can check that with the Terminal Command
echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE - Is Fractional Scaling in Settings>Displays active?
- How are Resolution and Refresh Rate are set up?
- Are Secure Boot and Fast Boot in BIOS disabled?
- If Windows is still installed: Is Fast Start-Up in Windows disabled?
Hi, it's from steam website directly. When I click on "Install" it prompts me to download .deb file.
- Zorin OS 18, Kernel: 6.17.0-14-generic, Shell: bash 5.2.21, Resolution: 1920x1080, 2560x1440, DE: GNOME 46.0, CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800H, GPU: AMD ATI Radeon Vega Series, GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile, Memory: 27912MiB
- NVIDIA driver metapackage from nvidia-driver-590 (proprietary)
- X11
- No, I have default 100% scaling on both monitors
- 1920x1080 at 165hz for laptop display, 2560x1440 at 280hz for external monitor
- Disabled
- No, I have no windows and run Zorin as my main and only OS
I would make two recommendations:
Roll back to the 580 Nvidia driver and
Rollback to the 6.14 kernel.
Both the 590 and the 6.17 have shown severe regressions and bugs.
1 Like
This sounds to me like Steam's split lock issue.
Yes, that's an old article. The bug is still open (it was opened in 2001), and my understanding is that the kernel has become more aggressive about split locks since. To see if this is related to what you're experiencing, next time it happens, open Logs (it's a program in your applications menu; I think it's under utilities), and look through the last few minutes for any cases of a split lock.
If it IS a split lock issue, because the problem is on Valve's side, there's not much you can do but disable the kernel's split lock detection. There are instructions for both a command line, single time disable that'll last until you reboot (option B) and a permanent disable (option A). Yes, the problem discussed in that post did mention game performance, which you said is fine, but the split lock issue itself exists in the Steam Client.
To save you some hassle, the one time command for test purposes is: sudo sysctl kernel.split_lock_mitigate=0 then make sure it took with sysctl -a | grep split. You want to see that kernel.split_lock_mitigate is 0, like you just told it to be, then try to reproduce the problem. If it's fixed, you can use the long term config change: echo "kernel.split_lock_mitigate=0" | sudo tee /etc/sysctl.d/99-split-lock.conf. That's just telling sysctl to do the temporary command every boot, and you can undo it by deleting /etc/sysctl.d/99-split-lock.conf.
I personally experienced the split lock issue while using Zorin. My current distribution defaults to split lock detection off. This is not to say it's the superior distro, configuration, or anything else but that a distribution focused on games found it to be a more appropriate default.
I don't think I see this issue in logs, I did screenshots after I experienced freezes. From what I can see it says Compx 2.4G Wireless Receiver: SYN_DROPPED event - some input events have been lost - which explains why my mouse lags, but I can't connect it to steam being open... I also tried "top" in terminal and it showed steam taking 80-100% CPU as for now, when I download game, but in System Monitor through taskbar right click steam taking only 7-10%.
Unfortunately I had same problems before I updated drivers and kernel
I don't see it in the log either. I'd give the impermanent command a try anyway since it can't hurt ( sudo sysctl kernel.split_lock_mitigate=0), but given what you just mentioned about CPU usage, another thought comes to mind. Using system monitor rather than top, when Steam's at very high usage, try expanding it and seeing if there are one or more "fossilize" processes under it. Fossilize is Steam trying to do shader caching in the background. It's conceivable that it's somehow using too many resources, and top finding it at high utilization while other tools don't kind of makes me think of that. It could also explain why your games are fine. Steam doesn't do this while games are running.
If this is the problem, you can disable it in Steam:
You may only need to disable "Allow background processing of Vulkan shaders." I've chosen to disable it completely because of another, unrelated Steam bug.
1 Like
Noting this...^
You have two different resolutions and two different refresh rates.
When you add to this that the entire desktop freezes, not just Steam, it suggests that the Mutter Compositor is stalling out, needing to translate syncing between the two during frame scheduling.
You might test this by setting both monitors to the same refresh rate
Or disabling GPU acceleration and Gsync...
I tried switching to Wayland instead of X11 after what you wrote, since I didn't even knew that different refresh rate can be a problem, quick search showed that Wayland handles monitor setups better.
Seems like it fixed a problem with steam, too early to judge tho, but will see in a few days. As for now I don't see any lags while it's running. So I can assume the problem in my case was in the way X11 handles different monitors? It's still interesting why it only occurred with steam client open.
So I guess in my setup and usage case Wayland is better option? Is there any rule of thumb when to choose X11 or Wayland, cause X11 is default for ZorinOS?
On X11, Nvidia's proprietary driver will use single compositor timing domain.
With the two different refresh rates, this creates a pause. If there is any burst from Steam in GPU activity, then the compositor can miss a scheduling frame and that will lead to seeing Syn Dropped as these events build up.
If Wayland is solving this issue for you, then I would say - use that.
2 Likes
Now you've opened a can of worms. I see Aravisian replying, and he can provide better explanations of the details than I can, but in a nutshell, X11 is the older way of windowing on Linux. Because of this, it's more mature, but does some things inefficiently. Wayland is newer, but its development has been at an absolute snail's pace, it still handles some things poorly, and the one big benefit it was supposed to bring (improved efficiency) is often lost because it has to run X11 on top of itself for certain matters. It has historically had terrible Nvidia support. About a year and a half ago, when I first switched to Linux, I found that Wayland was unbearable on my Nvidia PCs because in a number of programs (notably Discord), there was weird typing latency. Zorin 17 was especially bad for Wayland for some technical reasons. I actually had no problems using Wayland on Nobara, a Fedora based distribution. So, it's possible that Zorin 18 is better with Wayland.
Regardless, Wayland has a long, storied history of being the next big thing but working badly for a lot of practical purposes, and there's some animosity built up. The bottom line is that if Wayland works better for you on the hardware you're using, use it--but be prepared both to try X11 if something isn't working right, and to be told to switch to X11 as a default first troubleshooting step.
2 Likes
Yes, this is actually a Gnome fault, not X11.
On Wayland, Gnome dumps Compositing onto Wayland to do the work.
On X11, Nvidia's single compositor timing domain means it will make Gnomes Mutter Compositor do all the work - but Gnome does not want Mutter to do the work, it wants Wayland to take over.
This is why users on other D.E.'s won't experience this - it is exclusive to Gnome users.
So, in this case, it is not actually Wayland or X11.
2 Likes
Oh, that's really interesting. I should definitely try other desktop environments on different distros with both x11 and wayland in the future to see if I would still have the same issues; Zorin is my first linux experience so for now it makes no sense to start distro hoping journey before I learn and explore more. But I'll save everything you wrote to explore this topic more.
Thank you both @Aravisian and @Locklear93 for help and replies. I'll test how everything works and switch between x11 and wayland a few times in the upcoming week and if everything stays the same (or follows same pattern) I'll mark @Aravisian answer as solution to close this thread.
1 Like
I installed Zorin OS Core on Asus Crosshair Hero x870E Motherboard, CPU 9800X3D and RTX 4080 Super with Kernel Version: 6.17.0-14-generic (Installation Default as of Feb 14, 2026 when I installed Zorin) and the Installation Default Nvidia Driver: 580.126.09. Steam (Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur's Gate 3) and Star Citizen using the Lug-Helper run fine... Curious about the latest Nvidia driver, I looked at Nvidia's driver page and it said direct quote below:
"Note that many Linux distributions provide their own packages of the NVIDIA Linux Graphics Driver in the distribution's native package management format. This may interact better with the rest of your distribution's framework, and you may want to use this rather than NVIDIA's official package."
Hope this helps!
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.