Linux gaming with oddball screen setup.

[Ulvhamne]

So I've started getting quite fed up with windows on my gaming computer, it's still running Win10 and it works for playing games but any time I want to do something else, such as play around with development or AI or pretty much anything beyond browsing, playing games or text editing, it gets in my way in new and infuriating ways. The last thing is that it just plain refuses to run docker. I just flipped a few tables, ranted and raved at the universe and then put another drive in the computer and installed Linux.

Everything except gaming just works. Docker? Just apt install and hey presto. Development? Just apt install (and download IDE, I suppose) and hey presto.

But gaming...

Well... I've done gaming on Linux on and off through the years. My first stint was with Quake.

 

So, I wasn't too worried. I've gotten things to work like I want with some hands on poking at all the naughty bits of the OS.

But this time, no. It just doesn't want to work. And my problem is I have 4 displays connected to the TV.

1 - TV

2 - Main monitor

3 - reading monitor

4 - media monitor

 

Mostly.

It works great for when I work, since I can have documentation, code and running interface at the same time on discrete displays.

Now, I bet you people used to Linux can already tell one of the first problems... (0,0) is not on a monitor!

The second problem is that when the games launch, they launch on the wrong display. It's *always* the wrong one. Either the top one, or the left one. Never the main one, or the TV.

Oh well, nothing you can't work around. Or so I though.

No games respect primary display configurations, no matter where or how they are made.

If I window mode a game, drag it to the correct screen and maximize it, for some reason the pointer input is not correctly mapped, and seemingly randomly applied to the game. Most of the time, but not all of the time (even for the same game) it's using the resolution of the wrong display so only a smaller window of the game is available. And buttons are not mapped correctly to render positions. But sometimes, just for fun, the input area is entirely wrong, and on half of one screen and half of another.

If I turn off everything except the main monitor, it all works, but this is not acceptable.

 

Sooo, apart from all the usual "use Big Picture Mode" or "set primary display" or "turn off all the other displays" or "run the game with flag X"...

Is there a solution I am not thinking of? Because none of those mentioned above work.

[CosmicEmotion]

What distro are you using? Ubuntu is definitely not optimal for gaming.

[Ulvhamne]

5 hours ago, CosmicEmotion said:

What distro are you using? Ubuntu is definitely not optimal for gaming.

LMDE. I am not a great fan of Ubuntu so I usually stay away from it. 

[Ralphred]

Have you verified your primary display with xrandr?

[Ulvhamne]

8 minutes ago, Ralphred said:

Have you verified your primary display with xrandr?

Yep. 

[Ralphred]

There is something I'm trying to find more information on. I've only come across it once or twice and seen it referred to as a "desktop hint", as in a hint passed to your desktop environment as to how you'd like this window/application handled. As a KDE user, there is a ui for handling "this sort of thing" and as such it's not something I've ever paid much attention to. I'm racking my brains as to where I've seen the term and visiting the documentation sites for the software my musty brain is associating it with.

 

I only bother to mention this as directly googling "desktop hint" is worse than useless, and I might provoke someone into replying "Yes, I know all about those, here read this man page...".

[Ulvhamne]

4 minutes ago, Ralphred said:

There is something I'm trying to find more information on. I've only come across it once or twice and seen it referred to as a "desktop hint", as in a hint passed to your desktop environment as to how you'd like this window/application handled. As a KDE user, there is a ui for handling "this sort of thing" and as such it's not something I've ever paid much attention to. I'm racking my brains as to where I've seen the term and visiting the documentation sites for the software my musty brain is associating it with.

 

I only bother to mention this as directly googling "desktop hint" is worse than useless, and I might provoke someone into replying "Yes, I know all about those, here read this man page...".

I was asking for things I hadn't tried, and in general I don't mind people retreading what I've already done. I've been in IT long enough to be a tad humble about the possibility of having missed something. 

I have vague memories of fixing this issue once upon a time by somehow making a single screen visible to games or some such, so something similar to what you are suggesting. But I can't for the life of me remember what I did back then so I'm stuck right now. 

 

I suppose I could set up some VM with GPU access with a single display and then just pipe that to my main display, but that seems like overkill and not at all what I want. I even don't run things in docker when I can avoid it. 

[Ralphred]

8 minutes ago, Ulvhamne said:

I suppose I could set up some VM with GPU access with a single display and then just pipe that to my main display, but that seems like overkill and not at all what I want. I even don't run things in docker when I can avoid it. 

I thought scripting the switching of "unwanted" monitors off and on was overkill. ^^ this just speaks to the frustration level of where you are at right now. Don't do this by the way, there are complicated but still easier ways to abstract your "game screen".

 

Quote

But I can't for the life of me remember what I did back then

I did find what I was looking for and it's EWMH, but manipulation is a layers below what you would need, to the point that to be sensible I'd have to be "that guy" and tell you to use kwin instead.

 

The random input mapping etc. smells more like a WM issue than X; try using xdotool to find, un-fullscreen, move, then full-screen your game window.

You using twinview or xinerama?

[Ulvhamne]

23 minutes ago, Ralphred said:

I thought scripting the switching of "unwanted" monitors off and on was overkill. ^^ this just speaks to the frustration level of where you are at right now. Don't do this by the way, there are complicated but still easier ways to abstract your "game screen".

 

I did find what I was looking for and it's EWMH, but manipulation is a layers below what you would need, to the point that to be sensible I'd have to be "that guy" and tell you to use kwin instead.

 

The random input mapping etc. smells more like a WM issue than X; try using xdotool to find, un-fullscreen, move, then full-screen your game window.

You using twinview or xinerama?

Finding and moving the windows isn't a huge issue, I can do that easily. It just doesn't solve the problem of the display input mapping.

I had a random thought about the mapping thing, it might be mapping the surface of the TV onto the 3 other displays. It's the first monitor, so it'd make some semblance of sense for that to be used as the input surface. It seems reminiscent of how the touch screen input was mangled for external displays on a  work laptop I had years ago.

 

So I unplugged the TV and the odd mapping of input area seems to have vanished. Instead, the launcher for cyberpunk for instance just doesn't accept mouse events. The mouse pointer vanishes when it's above it, and no clicks are registered. But that is an entirely new problem that seems entirely linked to whatever shims are used by proton instead, so minor success. The TV is doing naughty things to things even when it's turned off (as in powered down, AND as in disabled in xrandr)...

 

[Ulvhamne]

Argh, no, seems it's still doing the strange input mapping. but not for all games. So probably entirely down to proton not being quite understanding of the odd layout then.

[Ulvhamne]

Haha, seems more people have the same issue:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/492720/discussions/2/1771511442687670599/?l=dutch

CSGO seems to have had that bug as well.

 

So, games being written poorly seems to be one source of the issue as well.

 

[Ralphred]

10 minutes ago, Ulvhamne said:

the launcher for cyberpunk for instance

I know it's a just "for instance", but that is a legendarily fickle launcher IME. Run it with %command% --launcher-skip once things are working.

 

8 minutes ago, Ulvhamne said:

but not for all games

and 

23 minutes ago, Ulvhamne said:

The mouse pointer vanishes

have made me think "different graphics backends". Check protondb.com and make sure you aren't banging your head against known issues.

 

Also if you just post the output of xrandr|grep -v "^ " that'll be able to save a lot of back and fourth about GPU's etc.

[Ulvhamne]

And some further fidgeting with every display unplugged except the main one, seems that resolution scaling also screws up the mouse mapping.

 

Wellp. Linux gaming ain't quite ready for prime time I'd say.

[Ulvhamne]

1 minute ago, Ralphred said:

I know it's a just "for instance", but that is a legendarily fickle launcher IME. Run it with %command% --launcher-skip once things are working.

 

and 

have made me think "different graphics backends". Check protondb.com and make sure you aren't banging your head against known issues.

 

Also if you just post the output of xrandr|grep -v "^ " that'll be able to save a lot of back and fourth about GPU's etc.

Yeah, I actually managed to launch the game though, and the launcher was completely broken before I unplugged the TV, so that's something.

Though Cyberpunk the game runs perfectly fine, so there's that. Shame I've already played it for hundreds of hours and did every last thing there is to do in that game. But it's a shining example of playing nice at least.

[Ulvhamne]

This all makes me appreciate the magically functional Steam Deck even more. Love that thing to bits.

[Ulvhamne]

 

$ xrandr|grep -v "^ "
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 2560 x 1440, maximum 16384 x 16384
DisplayPort-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DisplayPort-1 connected primary 2560x1440+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 527mm x 396mm
DisplayPort-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-A-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI-I-4-4 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI-I-3-3 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI-I-2-2 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI-I-1-1 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

 

And with the two extra displays:
 

$ xrandr|grep -v "^ "
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 4480 x 2520, maximum 16384 x 16384
DisplayPort-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DisplayPort-1 connected primary 2560x1440+1920+1080 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 527mm x 396mm
DisplayPort-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-A-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI-I-4-4 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI-I-3-3 connected 1920x1080+2126+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 477mm x 268mm
DVI-I-2-2 connected 1920x1080+0+1272 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 477mm x 268mm
DVI-I-1-1 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

 

[Ralphred]

Did you "hardcode" the display layout in xorg.conf, or do it with the tools given to you by your DE?

[Ulvhamne]

7 minutes ago, Ralphred said:

Did you "hardcode" the display layout in xorg.conf, or do it with the tools given to you by your DE?

I've tried doing the layout by editing .conf, xrandr and the DE GUI. Currently it's by the DE gui.

 

[Ulvhamne]

Ooh, I just had a peek at the cinnamon monitor configuration file. It looks suspicious, having a whole bunch of monitors defined that doesn't exist with some really strange coordinates and resolutions. An adventure for tomorrow, given that my wife is pulling at my shirt sleeve.

[Ulvhamne]

Extra thanks to @Ralphred for being patient with my wayward mind and helping out.

[xAcid9]

Have you try Gamescope? IIRC you can specify which monitor you want to use. 

[Ulvhamne]

5 hours ago, xAcid9 said:

Have you try Gamescope? IIRC you can specify which monitor you want to use. 

No, I hadn't tried that one. It seems to work well enough. Thanks.