Hello, Brand new to Zorin OS, need some help with Zorin Core OS 18.1.
I installed steam like 4 times, and i'm having a lot of problems trying to get games to run well. I installed Steam twice with the flat pack (uninstalled both) and twice with Zorin's install (uninstalled once, second one seems to sort of work), and currently have the Zorin OS version installed, but even with that I'm running into problems.
Biggest problem is that I can't get games to run from one of my external drives. It sees it, installs protons and vulkan shaders, starts to run then just stops. I have proton running, tried different versions, but even old games like Medieval 2 doesn't run from my external HHD's. I've installed games directly onto the same partition as Zorin OS and it runs fine.
Second biggest problem is that the games that do run are VERY choppy. Helldivers 2, team fortress 2 and Phantom Brigade run at 10 fps, and are unplayable.
that would be a problem as NTFS is a Windows format. You need to format it eg. EXT4 Linux format. It might also help on the choppiness you have experienced.
Nvidia cards are bit tricky to get work correctly. You are logged into xorg, check. You may try another Nvidia driver to see if their any improvement.
okay, that makes sense. I'm planning on doing a dual boot in the future, would I need to keep changing the file format for that drive if I do? and can I do so easily without breaking or erasing anything?
I don't exactly know what you mean by xorg or checking for that (sorry, newbie) but how do I find other drivers?
You can't do it without erasing it, I'm afraid. It's up to you if you want to switch the format.
Log out. click the username. A cog should appear. Here you can switch between Zorins Display protocols. Try experiment with it and find the one that works best for you. By standard Zorin is set to use Wayland, but Nvidia cards has a problem with it.
In Zorins menu search for driver, an app should appear. Here you can switch between the different Nvidia drivers.
Dang, okay. I may have to keep it that way considering how much stuff is on it. Is there a way to make steam stop trying to look at it though? I keep removing the drive but Steam keeps wanting to add it to my library.
I added a new driver and will play around with it, but I will use the display protocols too in a bit and report back.
Disable NTFS Automount (If Sharing with Windows): If you are sharing a drive with Windows, ensure Windows has "Fast Boot" disabled. Also, ensure the drive is not mounted with ntfs-3g as read-only. Using ntfs3 (newer driver) or keeping the drive as ext4 is preferred.
I use Steam, installed as .deb package, with external drive to manage games - no problems, at all.
While formatting that drive to ext4 can really help - Zorin OS includes and uses ntfs-3g package which should be ok if you prefer to not reformat that drive.
How is the drive connected? Ports are Bottlenecks. If it is a slower USB Port, that could cause the troubles you are experiencing.
I recommend sticking with the >deb packaging. Flatpak struggles with exterior permissions.
yea, I may have to change a drive over to ext4 for steam.
It is connected via a USB port, but I think it's USB 3. The choppiness I know is more than likely the drivers / different system I'm using, but i'm going to have to suffer with it until I can get a fresh windows install on a new drive (I borked my old one, long story)
Right now, on my good drive, TF2 is working pretty well as it stands, but Helldivers is still unplayably choppy and phantom brigade crashed my computer
If you're running Helldivers 2, just a note that I believe it defaults to DirectX12 now, rather than previously it was DX11. I changed the launch options to force it to launch into Vulkan with -Vulkan, which may or may not be the case of some of your performance issues with that title.
For me it was completely unstable and couldn't play until I did that. I hadn't realized they switched from 11 to 12 for a while, so I felt like an insane person trying to figure out how I broke something when I, in fact, did not.
If you right click the game, and go to properties, you should then find an option for Launch Arguments. In there, you want to try the -Vulkan addition.
I'm not at home right now so I can't get a screenshot, but if you go to ProtonDB and lookup Helldivers 2, there's bound to be others that have done a similar thing. BUT NOTE ON THAT: Some people add arguments that are not necessary, and only create more issues for others. Try one thing at a time and see how things go every time, rather than adding 5 arguments and then having things go catastrophically worse.
I got Cyberpunk 2077 and Oblivian Remastered running and looking great in Steam with Zorin 18.1 with my RTX 4080 Super. For informational purposes, here is what I put in the launch command:
STEAM FULL REZ, DLSS 4.5 PRESET L - Use with Proton GE***********************************************
I'm also on the switch from Windows to Zorin and I had a dedicated NTFS drive for my games. I added the drive to my steam library and while steam did recognize all games, they really didn't want to run. Installing my games on an EXT4 drive works like a charm.
Since I want Zorin to be my main driver, I think I'll partition my games drive in 3.5TB EXT 4 and .5TB NTFS for those games that really don't want to run in linux.
If the games aren't running at all and ProtonDB says that they should be, check Settings>Compatibility to make sure that Proton is running. I've had that happen a few times where I install the game and then after it doesn't work a few times, I remember that I didn't enable Proton compatibility mode.