I bumped into an issue with this game i play yesterday, where it would randomly stutter like crazy. So I've been testing out numerous drivers in Software & Updates > Additional Drivers and at this point - there are just so many issues that i may need a helping hand with this one.
The current issues i am facing:
I am unable to change any settings in the Display Settings, particularly since the hertz is locked to 60hz and cannot be changed. My primary monitor is a 144hz monitor, so this makes no sense. And my 2nd monitor is currently mirroring my primary monitor. Its all just so weird.
In Steam the graphics card im using (RTX 3060) shows up as Mesa llvmpipe. When i play games that are already on steam, it actually uses my actual graphics card. But non-steam games that needs to use Proton, they use the Mesa llvmpipe card.
For so long i was troubleshooting Proton, but found out later that this has to be related to the graphics drivers.
Video Card:
Driver: Mesa llvmpipe (LLVM 15.0.7, 256 bits)
Driver Version: 4.5 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 23.2.1-1ubuntu3.1~22.04.3
Desktop Color Depth: 24 bits per pixel
Monitor Refresh Rate: 60 Hz
VendorID: 0x10de
DeviceID: 0x2504
Revision Not Detected
Number of Monitors: 1
Number of Logical Video Cards: 1
Primary Display Resolution: 3440 x 1440
Desktop Resolution: 3440 x 1440
Primary Display Size: 35.83" x 15.00" (38.82" diag), 91.0cm x 38.1cm (98.6cm diag)
Primary VRAM: 7168 MB
You could first force the Using of Your Nvidia Card with the Command sudo prime-select nvidia and after that type nvidia-smi and look if Your Graphics Card is detected.
Then I would suggest to reinstall the Nvidia Driver that You use. What Driver do You use?
Okay, that looks for me that Your Graphics Card isn't detected. Does Your System run in wayland or Xorg? to check that, go to Settings>About and look if there stands Wayland or X11. If there should stand Wayland, try it with switching to X11/Xorg.
To do that go to the Login Screen (not the Lock Screen). Simply reboot for that. On the Login Screen click on Your Profile so that the Password Field appears. It has to be appeared. When it is appeared, You should see in the bottom right Corner a Gear Icon. Click on it and choose the Option ''Zorin Desktop on Xorg'' and log in. Then type again sudo prime-select nvidia in the Terminal.
Look if it works. If not, we could try it with uninstall and install the Nvidia Drivers again.
Does the 550 Driver works in the Past? If not, You could try a lower Version like 535 for Example. If yes, You can take it.
For thr purge Command, try this:
sudo apt purge nvidia* libnividia*
If libnvidia* shouldn't be there, You can only take nvidia* in the Command. The other Commands look good for me. But give Attention on the autoremove Command and check what will be deleted before You delete it.
In the first tab Ensure that all four of the first options are checked
Lower down, set Download from to "Main Server.
Once that is done, you can close Software & Updates and launch a terminal.
Add the XSwat team repository sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/updates
When all is complete, reboot and test.
Using either software & Updates > Additional drivers or using nvidia-smi should show you as on Nvidia 550 driver.
If they do not - check your cable. It may be plugged into the motherboard slot instead of the GPU slot.
Also, some cables are one directional and the cable needs to be turned around.
Those commands worked nicely. I am able to configure both monitors again and nvidia-smi now shows up correctly:
kriss@kriss-zorin-os-pro:~$ nvidia-smi
Sat Jan 25 19:40:33 2025
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 550.144.03 Driver Version: 550.144.03 CUDA Version: 12.4 |
|-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU Name Persistence-M | Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap | Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. |
| | | MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
| 0 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Off | 00000000:01:00.0 On | N/A |
| 0% 53C P0 46W / 170W | 942MiB / 12288MiB | 0% Default |
| | | N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes: |
| GPU GI CI PID Type Process name GPU Memory |
| ID ID Usage |
|=========================================================================================|
| 0 N/A N/A 2984 G /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg 374MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 3175 G /usr/bin/gnome-shell 192MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 6176 G ...85,262144 --variations-seed-version 161MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 7184 G ...yOnDemand --variations-seed-version 50MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 9036 G ./steamwebhelper 7MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 9065 C+G ...ebian-installation/logs/cef_log.txt 6MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 11988 G ...nglingPtr --variations-seed-version 119MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 12245 G /snap/alacritty/140/bin/alacritty 8MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
kriss@kriss-zorin-os-pro:~$
There is still one thing i have an issue with. So i play Live for Speed, and since they don't have a native linux version, i play it through steam as a non-steam game using Proton.
That game still is not able to find the graphics card. This is what i originally started troubleshooting, can we all agree that this issue is not related to the graphics card or driver, then?
From my understanding, the llvmpipe driver will be used when a graphics driver cannot be found, or is faulty. I have even tried using Lutris for this, and it just crashes.
I have been playing this game on linux for about 6-7 months now and in the past as well, so i know this should be working. I just don't know where to look smh
I am not sure either. If your system is using your Nvidia driver, the game should be, too. But - this is something that bears quite a lot of complexity.
A game can indeed make a determination on what graphics you use.
Its a game from 2002, but has gotten consistent game updates. There's even a setting in the graphics settings where i can change the adapter/driver to use.
You mentioned using Lutris, which is telling me you are likely using Lutris, and not Steam.
On Steam, you can play most Windows games on Linux, because you activate compatibility features, with the use of Proton.
I am not an expert on Lutris, I don't use it, because I use Steam. But this problem is either Lutris is not passing the hardware GPU info to the game, or among all those game updates you said about, they didn't update the game to recognize modern GPU's.
I've been through this situation before as well, so I know how it feels.
yea i initially started playing this game on Lutris, until a friend of mine told me that Proton performs slightly better. Ever since then i have been playing this game using Proton on Steam. That must have been about a year ago.
Thanks for the reply anyways. At this point i am considering a complete re-install of Zorin. Possible write myself a script that installs all the necessary applications i need.
I actually installed it to troubleshoot. I didn't try Lutris, but as the OP said, he runs it from Steam now anyway.
In my tests, the game worked fine detecting my 4090 in Steam. In fact, it even ran with wine and soda outside of Steam. Not too surprising; the game predates the existence of Proton by a lot. Unfortunately, it really does look like it's something about his system.
I made an attempt at this but it looks like the proton implementation in lutris is quite poor, it requires for an app id from steam. I couldn't ever get past that, can't exactly get the app_id from a non-steam game.
I ended up re-installing zorin anyways, the first thing i did was update the zorin related packages and verify that i didnt have the same issue. It had been resolved! Though till now, i still don't know why that game wasn't able to find the graphics card, throughout all the years of playing that game this is the first time i have had that issue (I've been playing since 2010).
Yes, i tested with native wine as well. The game crashed and mentioned something about a driver, i assumed it was facing the same issue as proton. At some point i updated my proton-ge package as well, but same result there.
Thanks for testing! I appreciate you taking the time. Though sadly this kind of issue is hard to reproduce.
If someone by any slim chance do stumble upon this post at a later time looking for answers. I hate to break it to you, but i can't help you - i seriously don't know what could have caused this. Though, in my opinion - it can be one of two things:
Proton issue
Graphics driver issue
Though i do have to say, thanks to everyone who were involved!
I'm going to bed now, I've been at this since 11 am this morning and it is now 01:28 AM.
If the game exists on steam it’s very easy to do this. Find it in steam and go to it’s page. Now look at the url bar and find the number in it. That’s the game id
