Preamble

In the two years that I’ve been using Linux, I have encountered a lot of bugs; most of them being self-inflicted. The ones that aren’t and that I believe might be relevant for others will be linked here. The scheme for the issues below is as follows:

# Issue
Description
## Solution
Steps to solve the issue
## Other suggestions
Alternative suggestions compiled from the internet

For further context, I use EndeavourOS, which is where the issues originated in unless specified otherwise.

Proton audio crackling

When launching games, you might be able to occasionally hear a popping sound, usually when something bassy happens in-game. It’s seemingly a very common bug, with a lot of conflicting solutions.

Solution

The solution that worked for me is creating the file /etc/pipewire/pipewireconf.d/fix-crackle.conf containing the following:

context.properties = {
    default.clock.min-quantum = 2048
}

This fixed the issue permanently on all games. An alternative solution is to add PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=60 %command% as a launch option for the affected app(s). This adds a delay of N milliseconds, which (assumedly) gives pipewire more time to process the audio. 50 should work in most cases, but more might be needed depending on if crackling is still present.

Other suggestions

  • Installing the faudio package from your distribution’s repository

  • Setting a niceness limit

    Linux manages resource allocations using a ‘niceness’ level, this can allegedly cause issues with Wine. To fix it, add <YOUR-USER-NAME> - nice - 20 to /etc/security/limits.conf.

Apex legends stuttering

Running Apex legends without any special config has been a miss in my experience, with it always stuttering out of the box on both Kubuntu and EndeavourOS. Whether I am just unlucky or whether it is an actually widespread issue I have no idea, but I bashed my head against the wall enough times to get it to run smoothly.

Solution

  • Disable shader Pre-caching

    This is a major hassle even prior to starting the game, when enabled you will see a “Compiling Vulkan shaders” screen which can take as long as several hours to complete! With new drivers, Pre-caching is no longer necessary.

!!! Below only applies to NVIDIA GPUs, I have not verified whether it works with AMD GPUs !!!

  • Set __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __VK_LAYER_NV_optimus=NVIDIA_only __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia DXVK_ASYNC=1 prime-run %command% as the launch options

    A prerequisite for this is installing the nvidia-prime package from your distribution’s repository.

  • Use Proton-GE instead of the stock Proton versions

Other suggestions

None