Steam/Flatpak video and storage issues

osterac

Hi,

I’m using batocera ES v34 2022/5/23 on an older gaming laptop of mine. It has a 6-series i7 and an nvidia gtx 970. While using steam, I noticed that games were running quite slowly and I had to turn the graphics settings way down, even on less demanding games like Rocket League. After a bit of poking around I noticed this:

I assume this means it’s using the onboard intel graphics instead of nvidia. I have the nvidia drivers working in batocera:

and this is what flatpak looks like:

[img]

[root@DECAPITRON /userdata/system]# flatpak list --columns=app,runtime,version,branch Application ID Runtime Version Branch com.valvesoftware.Steam org.freedesktop.Platform/x86_64/21.08 1.0.0.74 stable com.valvesoftware.Steam.CompatibilityTool.Proton 7.0-3 stable com.valvesoftware.Steam.CompatibilityTool.Proton-Exp 7.0-20220728 stable com.valvesoftware.Steam.CompatibilityTool.Proton-GE 7.28-1 stable io.github.sharkwouter.Minigalaxy org.gnome.Platform/x86_64/42 1.1.0 stable net.davidotek.pupgui2 org.kde.Platform/x86_64/6.3 2.6.5 stable org.freedesktop.Platform 21.08.14 21.08 org.freedesktop.Platform.Compat.i386 21.08 org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.default 21.3.8 21.08 org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-510-60-02 1.4 org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.default 21.08 org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.nvidia-510-60-02 1.4 org.freedesktop.Platform.VAAPI.Intel 21.08 org.freedesktop.Platform.VAAPI.Intel.i386 21.08 org.freedesktop.Platform.ffmpeg-full 21.08 org.freedesktop.Platform.ffmpeg_full.i386 21.08 org.freedesktop.Platform.openh264 2.1.0 2.0 org.gnome.Platform 42 org.gnome.Platform.Compat.i386 42 org.kde.KStyle.Adwaita 6.3 org.kde.Platform 6.3 org.winehq.Wine.DLLs.dxvk 1.10.3 stable-21.08 org.winehq.Wine.gecko stable-21.08 org.winehq.Wine.mono

I can’t seem to get Steam to use my nvidia card. What can I do to fix this?
Also I installed a few games and set compatibility to linux native runtime instead of proton and now they won’t run at all. Shouldn’t the linux version be better in most cases?

Besides that, I noticed that there seem to be 3 copies of each game in userdata, taking an obscene amount of disk space.
one copy is here:
\DECAPITRON\share\saves\flatpak\data.var\app\com.valvesoftware.Steam.steam\steam\steamapps\common
another copy here:
\DECAPITRON\share\saves\flatpak\data.var\app\com.valvesoftware.Steam.local\share\Steam\steamapps\common
and another copy here:
\DECAPITRON\share\saves\flatpak\data.var\app\com.valvesoftware.Steam\data\Steam\steamapps\common
can I delete 2 of these? Why does it do this?
Any thoughts?
thanks

Atari

flatpak upgrade
(wiki mentions this btw)

Symlinks can cause inaccurate storage space reports (Wine uses symlinks liberally).

osterac

Atari
I didn’t think of that (symlinks)! Thanks!
How is flatpak upgrade different from flatpak update?

I also have developed a new problem. I reinstalled batocera on my SSD instead of the mechanical hard drive, and now it won’t recognize my nvidia card at all. My PC is a laptop that has both intel and nvidia graphics, so it’s using the intel one now. I tried this in the batocera.conf file:

# enable the nvidia driver (remove the # to enable it)

# nvidia-prime enables the nvidia gpu over the intel gpu in case you’ve an nvidia hybrid gpu

nvidia-driver=true

nvidia-prime=true

But it didn’t help. One person mentioned that the v35 beta doesn’t need this command and uses Nvidia automatically, so I switched to the beta version and took the command out of batocera.conf but that didn’t help either.

Atari

osterac I wouldn’t know, in fact they are probably aliases for the same command. It’s what I used to fix the problem anyway.

If you’re not using a laptop that has hybrid graphics, then using the Nvidia prime switcher could only be detrimental.

If your issue is that Batocera is using your iGPU instead of your discrete GPU, then first make sure that the discrete GPU is plugged in correctly and receiving power (simplest solution is usually the correct one). Then make sure that the GPU isn’t in fact dead, test it with another OS that can see it. If neither OS can see it and you’re sure it’s plugged in and working, check if there’s any settings in your motherboard’s BIOS that could be preventing it from activating (such as something that might be shutting down PCI-e communications).

If that’s still not working, then run some advanced diagnostic commands. Unfortunately I don’t know what these would be as I’ve never had issues with using GPUs in Batocera or in Linux in general. As far as I know, it’s always just been plug and play.

osterac

I got the GPU problem worked out. I was putting the commands to enable it in batocera.conf when I should have been putting them in batocera-boot.conf. I got some steam games working a bit better using the community versions of proton, and after the reinstall of batocera the native linux versions are working, but proton is usually better and often the gamepads don’t work in the native linux version.
I don’t know if you’ve ever messed with this command:

## Choose a driver between bluez, official and shanwan
## bluez -> bluez 5 + kernel drivers, support official and shanwan sisaxis
## official -> sixad drivers, support official and gasia sisaxis
## shanwan -> shanwan drivers, support official and shanwan sisaxis
controllers.ps3.driver=bluez

I find the with the bluez driver, I have problems with where the triggers on one of my controllers will go off without me pressing them. I also had some issues where if I had all 4 controllers connected, the joystick mouse in steam would go all over the place. This could be because the controllers are old (ps3 controllers) but I find that if I enable the shanwan driver the problems go away. If there was an adjustable deadzone feature that might help. The problem with shanwan is the rumble doesn’t work properly in steam with it (or the official driver). As soon as there is a rumble effect in the game, the rumble will stay stuck on until I exit the game.
Besides that, I can’t get flatpak-config to launch in the beta of batocera, but it works in the stable release.

Thanks so much for your help with this!