I'm playing DOOM (2016) on Steam, and while it runs perfectly on Pop OS 22.04 using Vulkan, I've encountered issues on other distros like Fedora, Ubuntu, Nobara, Bazzite, and Linux Mint. In those systems, the game loads for a few seconds before freezing up and crashing, which also causes the whole system to freeze momentarily. This crash only occurs when using Vulkan; OpenGL works but performs significantly worse. I've tried different Proton versions and Nvidia driver versions—including 535, 490, 570, and 580—but it hasn't helped. Pop OS works flawlessly for this game, so what advantages does it have that might cause these crashes in other distributions? Is there a way to replicate its performance on them? Here are my specs: AMD Ryzen 5 1600, GeForce GTX 1070, 16GB RAM, running on SSD.
4 Answers
Always a good idea to mention your distro and hardware specs when troubleshooting issues like this! It helps others give more accurate advice. Have you checked if there are any specific error messages that pop up during the crashes?
It might be worth checking which version of Proton you're using in Pop OS compared to the other distributions. Sometimes, compatibility can change with different Proton versions, and it's important to keep track of which one works best for each system.
Pop OS comes with built-in Nvidia drivers which can often be more optimized for gaming. If you haven't already, ensure that you've installed the correct Nvidia drivers on your other distributions. That might bridge the gap you’re experiencing with Vulkan.
You should take a look at the `dmesg` logs. Open Steam, run `dmesg` in a terminal, and after the crash, run it again in another terminal. This will help you diagnose what’s going wrong by comparing the logs before and after the crash.
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