Gaming and Streaming on Linux Mint With an Nvidia GPU

[TromboneSteve]

Just wanted to share my experience with gaming and streaming on Linux Mint before the video of that portion of the challenge is released.

I've been using Mint since 2015, so I've dealt with the exact same issues Luke is probably going to run into. I've tried once a year to switch my game stream setup completely to Linux, but I've had a bad experience every time except for when I tried a couple of months ago. I'm actually pretty satisfied with my current setup and am using Mint for my game streams more and more. I had the same issues for years until I just installed KDE and started logging in to a Plasma session whenever I wanna game and/or stream. I recently streamed a game running through Proton that has BattlEye enabled just fine, which is pretty cool.

• There's some kind of stuttering issue with Mutter/Muffin and the proprietary Nvidia driver. If you're just gaming, it's usually not an issue, but sometimes you definitely will have issues on certain games. It's a huge problem when you try to stream games, though. There's almost always a noticeable stutter. Disabling flipping in the Nvidia driver settings seems to resolve this issue for gaming, but the OBS capture usually misses at least 10% of the frames due to rendering lag. KDE's KWin seems to have resolved these issues for me with both gaming and streaming. These stuttering issues were extremely frustrating to me for several years, and the only way I could resolve them was with KDE.
• PulseAudio sort of sucks for streaming. idk. Mint doesn't have Jack or Pipewire installed by default, so stream audio just sort of sucks. VST filters don't seem to work well with OBS and PA. There's sometimes some crackling to the audio, too, that I'm assuming is PA's fault. Yes, the audio can be fixed by at least a few different methods, but doing so on the current LTS is just sort of a bad experience. It sort of reminds be of the hassle of having to deal with audio on old DOS games, though it isn't that bad. Pavucontrol, which I believe still isn't installed by default in Mint, is necessary for a stream setup. OBS sometimes just randomly routes audio in incorrect ways, and Pavucontrol is needed whenever that happens.
• Games open on the wrong monitor in a multi-monitor setup. This seems to be another issue caused by Mutter/Muffin and the proprietary Nvidia driver. You're able to move the game to the other monitor with some games, but not all. KDE also resolved this issue.
• Alt-tabbing or clicking outside of a full screen game will usually make you have a bad time. Some games end up off-center on the monitor. Mouse input will be messed up and unusable until the game is restarted. Switching to KDE also resolved these issues for me.
• UVC video devices, like webcams, seem to just freeze up in OBS when trying to change their settings. I have to unplug the device, plug it back in, and then add it back to OBS for it to start working again. I'm actually not sure what causes this, and I'm curious to see if Linus or Luke will have this same issue. Once the settings are set in OBS, they seem to save between reboots which is really nice.

Those are the main issues I've had with a Linux Mint + Nvidia proprietary driver game streaming setup. I still use Mint on all of my PCs at home, but almost always in a Plasma session on my game streaming PC. I do prefer Cinnamon, so I use that on PCs that I won't game on. I installed kde-standard on my game stream PC, but I'll probably install kde-plasma-desktop next time since it installs way less stuff I don't need. I honestly don't recommend my setup unless you have a decent amount of experience with desktop Linux. I've done a lot of distro hopping and this is the setup I found works best for me. Kubuntu LTS should get you pretty much the same results. I personally prefer my weird setup, though.

 

On a somewhat unrelated note, I'm really curious if/how Linus is gonna get back the missing OBS features from the main OBS package in Pamac. I used tytan652's package in the AUR the last time I tried Manjaro, and it seemed to get back almost all of the features. There's different ways to work around this issue, though.

[D-reaper]

12 hours ago, TromboneSteve said:

Just wanted to share my experience with gaming and streaming on Linux Mint before the video of that portion of the challenge is released.

I've been using Mint since 2015, so I've dealt with the exact same issues Luke is probably going to run into. I've tried once a year to switch my game stream setup completely to Linux, but I've had a bad experience every time except for when I tried a couple of months ago. I'm actually pretty satisfied with my current setup and am using Mint for my game streams more and more. I had the same issues for years until I just installed KDE and started logging in to a Plasma session whenever I wanna game and/or stream. I recently streamed a game running through Proton that has BattlEye enabled just fine, which is pretty cool.

• There's some kind of stuttering issue with Mutter/Muffin and the proprietary Nvidia driver. If you're just gaming, it's usually not an issue, but sometimes you definitely will have issues on certain games. It's a huge problem when you try to stream games, though. There's almost always a noticeable stutter. Disabling flipping in the Nvidia driver settings seems to resolve this issue for gaming, but the OBS capture usually misses at least 10% of the frames due to rendering lag. KDE's KWin seems to have resolved these issues for me with both gaming and streaming. These stuttering issues were extremely frustrating to me for several years, and the only way I could resolve them was with KDE.
• PulseAudio sort of sucks for streaming. idk. Mint doesn't have Jack or Pipewire installed by default, so stream audio just sort of sucks. VST filters don't seem to work well with OBS and PA. There's sometimes some crackling to the audio, too, that I'm assuming is PA's fault. Yes, the audio can be fixed by at least a few different methods, but doing so on the current LTS is just sort of a bad experience. It sort of reminds be of the hassle of having to deal with audio on old DOS games, though it isn't that bad. Pavucontrol, which I believe still isn't installed by default in Mint, is necessary for a stream setup. OBS sometimes just randomly routes audio in incorrect ways, and Pavucontrol is needed whenever that happens.
• Games open on the wrong monitor in a multi-monitor setup. This seems to be another issue caused by Mutter/Muffin and the proprietary Nvidia driver. You're able to move the game to the other monitor with some games, but not all. KDE also resolved this issue.
• Alt-tabbing or clicking outside of a full screen game will usually make you have a bad time. Some games end up off-center on the monitor. Mouse input will be messed up and unusable until the game is restarted. Switching to KDE also resolved these issues for me.
• UVC video devices, like webcams, seem to just freeze up in OBS when trying to change their settings. I have to unplug the device, plug it back in, and then add it back to OBS for it to start working again. I'm actually not sure what causes this, and I'm curious to see if Linus or Luke will have this same issue. Once the settings are set in OBS, they seem to save between reboots which is really nice.

Those are the main issues I've had with a Linux Mint + Nvidia proprietary driver game streaming setup. I still use Mint on all of my PCs at home, but almost always in a Plasma session on my game streaming PC. I do prefer Cinnamon, so I use that on PCs that I won't game on. I installed kde-standard on my game stream PC, but I'll probably install kde-plasma-desktop next time since it installs way less stuff I don't need. I honestly don't recommend my setup unless you have a decent amount of experience with desktop Linux. I've done a lot of distro hopping and this is the setup I found works best for me. Kubuntu LTS should get you pretty much the same results. I personally prefer my weird setup, though.

 

On a somewhat unrelated note, I'm really curious if/how Linus is gonna get back the missing OBS features from the main OBS package in Pamac. I used tytan652's package in the AUR the last time I tried Manjaro, and it seemed to get back almost all of the features. There's different ways to work around this issue, though.

Don't. Use. Anything. With. Nvidia. Period. Especially with KDE Plasma.

 

I can't stress this enough as a full time Linux user myself; who had used a Nvidia GPU for over 5 years on Linux dealing with drivers, screen tearing, font issues, etc.. After going to an AMD RX 570, I will never buy another Nvidia GPU again. So I can vouch for this. Especially with a system that has an older Nvidia GPU. I recently had to chuck out a 15 year old laptop that had a Nvidia GPU that my mom used because the legacy driver didn't support newer kernel releases. Went to a used AMD laptop and everything has been smooth. No messing with drivers either. Just plug and play.

 

Takeaway from this is, the older the Nvidia GPU, the harder it will be to use with any Linux distro. But yeah. For the sake of sanity, avoid Nvidia GPUs at all costs. I wish I switched to AMD as soon as I started shifting over to Linux.

[TromboneSteve]

57 minutes ago, D-reaper said:

Don't. Use. Anything. With. Nvidia. Period. Especially with KDE Plasma.

 

I can't stress this enough as a full time Linux user myself; who had used a Nvidia GPU for over 5 years on Linux dealing with drivers, screen tearing, font issues, etc.. After going to an AMD RX 570, I will never buy another Nvidia GPU again. So I can vouch for this. Especially with a system that has an older Nvidia GPU. I recently had to chuck out a 15 year old laptop that had a Nvidia GPU that my mom used because the legacy driver didn't support newer kernel releases. Went to a used AMD laptop and everything has been smooth. No messing with drivers either. Just plug and play.

 

Takeaway from this is, the older the Nvidia GPU, the harder it will be to use with any Linux distro. But yeah. For the sake of sanity, avoid Nvidia GPUs at all costs. I wish I switched to AMD as soon as I started shifting over to Linux.

Works fine for me. idk. I did a ton of distro and DE hopping to figure out what works best for game streaming for me. Gnome and Mate worked fine until it's time to game. They're mostly unusable for streaming. They had the same stuttering and window issues I did with Cinnamon. Mate did a lot better with just gaming for me, but it still wasn't good for game streaming. Yes, I wouldn't have had those issues on an AMD GPU, but I'm not switching. I still need to play some games in Windows, and dealing with AMD's Windows GPU drivers is not a good time.

 

Telling new Linux users who switched from Windows to just swap their Nvidia GPU for an AMD one doesn't seem like a good solution for most people. Trying out KDE Plasma seems preferable. It's a quick install, and if they find that it doesn't work for them, they can just not use it. If KDE solves their problems, then that's way easier than swapping hardware.

 

 

 

Pic somewhat unrelated.

[D-reaper]

2 hours ago, TromboneSteve said:

Works fine for me. idk. I did a ton of distro and DE hopping to figure out what works best for game streaming for me. Gnome and Mate worked fine until it's time to game. They're mostly unusable for streaming. They had the same stuttering and window issues I did with Cinnamon. Mate did a lot better with just gaming for me, but it still wasn't good for game streaming. Yes, I wouldn't have had those issues on an AMD GPU, but I'm not switching. I still need to play some games in Windows, and dealing with AMD's Windows GPU drivers is not a good time.

 

Telling new Linux users who switched from Windows to just swap their Nvidia GPU for an AMD one doesn't seem like a good solution for most people. Trying out KDE Plasma seems preferable. It's a quick install, and if they find that it doesn't work for them, they can just not use it. If KDE solves their problems, then that's way easier than swapping hardware.

Then why are you talking about issues with Nvidia then? If it just works for you as you put it?

 

This is where it's at; AMD for Linux (Because it just works better on Linux than on Windows ironically), and Nvidia for Windows (Because it can just suck on Linux; and I have the former experience to vouch for this).

 

Anyway, telling people to swap the Nvidia one for AMD may not seem like a solution. But with companies like Nvidia that treat Linux users as second class citizens and barely puts in the effort to support the Linux platform, what can you do?

 

BTW, distro hopping isn't going to fix this fault on Nvidia's end. So realistically speaking, if Nvidia doesn't want to cooperate with the open source ecosystem (barely), there is only so much that the Linux community can do about that. That's just the facts here.

 

To further empathize my point:

 

The takeaway from this is, you can't expect Linux to work exactly like Windows with all of your hardware; especially if certain companies won't go out of their way to support the OS. Or barely. This is also something Linus Sebastian is discovering.

 

Again, the open source community can only do so much if manufacturers don't want to put any effort into supporting the OS. It's the same as expecting all hardware to work on a Mac; it won't. Even Windows doesn't support all hardware. It supports most. But take my old graphics tablet for example. It no longer works on Windows. As it's no longer supported on Windows. But it works perfectly on Linux.

 

So for anyone going to a different OS, they need to make adjustments in order to make things work properly. That's just how it is.

 

If Nvidia made an open source driver for Linux like AMD and Intel have where it's integrated into the the Linux kernel, the situation would be totally different. Most likely for the better.

 

Want to know what I did with my old Nvidia card? I set it up with GPU pass through on top of Linux. So that I can use it with a Windows virtual machine. That's the only way I managed to make use of it. You could do the same yourself. Then you wouldn't need to dual boot anymore just to play a game.

[TromboneSteve]

This is my first post on the LTT forums and I'm already annoyed.

 

 

[D-reaper]

3 minutes ago, TromboneSteve said:

This is my first post on the LTT forums and I'm already annoyed.

 

 

Why?

[Arpan05]

2 hours ago, TromboneSteve said:

This is my first post on the LTT forums and I'm already annoyed.

 

 

Sorry to hear that @TromboneSteve. 

 

I personally have not streamed from Linux but  have recorded several videos/screencasts using OBS. 

 

Has worked for me. However I must mention that I'm using GNOME in Ubuntu. 

[D-reaper]

1 minute ago, Arpan05 said:

Sorry to hear that @TromboneSteve. 

 

I personally have not streamed from Linux but  have recorded several videos/screencasts using OBS. 

 

Has worked for me. However I must mention that I'm using GNOME in Ubuntu. 

Again, Nvidia does not help in this regard.