I run a couple of MMOs via Steam.
SWTOR and FFXIV.
Both run very well, better FPS that running on Win11. So, all good so far.
I don't expect anyone to immediately go "Oh yes, that's because..."
The GPU is an AMD 7900XTX. It has 4 ports, 2 x HDMI, 2 x DisplayPort.
The two DP run my two monitors.
I have the 4th port, HDMI plugged in to the AV receiver.
If I have any video playing, YouTube or Twitch, I get the game freezing. Mouse clicks stop working, keyboard stops working. Video still plays but no controls. Even the off button on the case won't suspend. I have to hard reset the machine to get things working.
At the moment Zorin is running from and External USB drive, Samsung T7 and was wondering if THAT was the issue.
I'm waiting on delivery of a new M.2 drive to install the OS on.
I thought the issue might be because I'm taking audio from the same card running the monitors.
So I plugged the AV into the motherboard HDMI which isn't used for anything else.
Audio works fine.
Game still freezes completely if a video is playing.
I personally have not, nor have I heard of this. But there is a few things we can try right away, to nip this problem in the bud.
(1) Please make sure Secure Boot & Fast Boot are disabled in the BIOS.
(2) If you are dual booting with Windows, please make sure to also disable Fast Startup in Windows, as it holds system resources for itself, basically not playing nice with the other kids.
(3) When you are at the login screen, click on your name, a appears. Click on it, and make sure you select Zorin Desktop, AKA X11/Xorg, do not select Zorin Desktop on Wayland.
If you are still having issues, then we can start by getting your system details with Neofetch. Do the first 3 things first please, then we can worry about the rest later.
Games run fine with no freezing while video is running. Good.
However, I now have a severe FPS hit and some very odd things happening with the games display settings.
SWTOR is quite ancient, so I'd expect some oddness. In Full Screen mode it will not run on the primary monitor (4k 240hz) but immediately flips to the 2nd one (4k 60Hz) . Oddly it still lets me set the refresh rate to 240 hz
Running in borderless window it's happy to be on the primary monitor. FPS sits around 100 down from 220 with nothing else changed.
FFXIV is problematic. Have to set it back to low setting to get anything over 70fps, again down from around 200 at max settings under Wayland.
Next test is to uninstall Steam and use the .Deb version. I'll see what happens.
1st test with FFXIV on Xorg, video playing and deb Steam.
Game loads fine. Had to mess around with graphics setting to get decent FPS again.
Noticed keyboard input is really wonky. Keypresses sometimes don't register. Could this be an Xorg thing?
Next, install SWTOR and test with Xorg, deb steam and video.
Installed fine. Had to mess around with the displays again. Will not run full screen and if I have a desktop layout with the top bar active, it rapidly flips from monitor to monitor eventually stopping, but unable to click anything. Had to change the Proton version to fix that but still just get a black screen if I set it to Full screen.
Full screen (windowed) works better but acts like Full Screen in that activating any other windows, on the 2nd monitor, say, it hides the SWTOR window.. just don't have to alt-tab or hot corner switch apps.
Runs Ok with FPS at around 215 the same as under Wayland.
No freezing with video playing.
Next test is to switch back to Wayland and see if it was the Steam client version causing the issue.
Yeah it's a Samsung 990 Evo. I'll move the drive with Windows to the 3rd slot and have Zorin in the top slot. 2nd slot is shared between the two for data.
If you haven't already gone back to Windows, you might try running Steam from the terminal. The command is just steam. I don't expect it to fix anything, but Steam dumps a LOT of debug information to the console that might tell us what's getting stuck.
Yep, one of the first things I've tried. Running from Terminal works, menus work etc. From some reading I've done it's something to do with the command line of the app shortcut, or alias or whatever. Since my new drive will hopefully arive in a few days I don't want to mess around too much.
Once I get that fresh install done at least the drive performance won't suck.
I don't know what the actual difference between the two is, but that doesn't surprise me. Minimally, the .deb installed from Zorin's/Ubuntu's repos doesn't seem to demand the i386 compatibility libraries in Nvidia drivers, and the version from the Steam site does. This much I know as a result of a problem I experienced a couple of times using the packaged Nvidia drivers--the package maintainer had an issue that left out something like libwayland-egl1:i386, which broke Valve's package, but not the version from the repos, because Valve's wanted it as a dependency and the repo version didn't.
If you continue to have problems after your manual delete/reinstall, you may wish to uninstall the .deb, manually delete anything left as you did before, but also get /usr/bin/steam /usr/lib/steam ~/.local/share/Steam (~/.steam/steam symlinks here)
I was only citing the Nvidia thing as the one difference I'm absolutely aware of. Given that there are rather a lot of dependencies demanded by the .deb version from Valve, I doubt that's the only thing. That it seems to be working better for you is good news. I miss FFXIV, but man, Dawntrail was just not what I needed from it.
I feel you regarding Dawntrail. There are various theories regarding why it was as it was. One I'm inclined to believe is that Wuk Lamat was a relatively late addition, and that Koana would have been the main character instead. It would account for Wuk's apparent ignorance about the world she lives in. The writing felt rushed and a lot of hand-waving was necessary to actually make the plot work.
I just hope they produce something enjoyable again. If they expect players to stay for the next 10-year arc, it's going to have to be at least as engaging as the previous one.
As for my issues, most of them have been solved, mostly thanks to this forum.
Audio: good.. 5.1 surround which Windows doesn't seem to support.
Email: Good
Discord: Good
Password Manager: good.
appears. Click on it, and make sure you select Zorin Desktop, AKA X11/Xorg, do not select Zorin Desktop on Wayland.
