Linux, Steam and ATI GPU... Uninstall ATI Drivers to install Steam... What!? Your kidding...?

[zaileion]

I'm not one to be negative, usually, but sometimes things are just so ♥♥♥ backwards i cant help myself. This time i have to say that having to uninstall graphics card drivers of any type to install Steam is the dumbest crap ever...

Come on now, Lets all admit gaming on Linux has been a pipe dream for Linux users for a decade or more and now we are so close... So close...

I'm not sure if everyone with an ATI GPU is having this issue or what the cause but there are several posts throughout a google and yahoo search.

Removing critical system software only to reinstall and reconfigure after gaming software just makes no logical sense... Steam and ATI need to get their crap together if they ever want Steam to take off on Linux...

My intention is not to be a muckraker, but instead would like to start a discussion about solutions for such a problem. Installing ATI graphics drivers and getting it working well on Linux is hard. I certainly don't want to have to uninstall Graphics card drivers just to install Steam. I thought there were developer meetings and such to over come these types of issues? As a solution i suggest (so as to not be a muckraker): AMD and Steam should each send 2 or more employees into a joint venture to resolve such compatibility issues. It shouldn't be that difficult...

So lets say i buy a computer with some distribution of GNU/Linux already on it, Ubuntu for safety sake with an AMD GPU Now lets say i want to install Steam. NOPE... You now have to completely uninstall your ATI drivers... But 1st... you have to be able to put 2 and 2 together enough to realize that Steam and the ATI drivers are the root cause.

Then, to top it off, you have to be able to manage your fancy new Linux computer sufficiently to be able to get it to function enough (like fully boot, use the command line, and 5 million other things) to be able to install Steam without the ATI Graphics drivers installed.

And the cherry on top of the topping is, you then have to know how to re-install your graphics drivers with all that is required to get them properly configured and running properly. If you have multiple monitors and you might as well jump off a bridge if your primary is on the right, xorg.conf, monitors.xml ATI Catalyst, aticonfig, so on and so forth... It's not easy to say the least... To be a bit more direct its ludicrously difficult.

This will never fly with the masses, anyone with any sense can see this which makes me wonder what the hell is really going on...



Why does stuff with Windows work so much better. The corporation is doing better then the free people of the world. Come on GNU/Linux Developers make it happen!! I'll digress since i have no idea what i'm actually talking about and will move on voicing my opinion below...

I don't know if this issue is ATI or Steam or a bit of both (most likely a bit of both) but I do know that ATI Graphics drivers are closed source and this is one of the biggest issues for the GNU/Linux community. Here is my onion on that crap. If i buy a piece of hardware, i should get all the necessary information and "whatever" to make that damn piece of hardware work. To make a piece of hardware work, completely and in its entirety, i need the codes and build structure diagrams (i don't know the official terminology but you get my point) for said piece or hardware. There by allowing me, if i have the skill which i certainly do not, to build my own drivers or allow any OS developer or whoever to build the drivers required. The only way this can occur is to have Open Source Drivers and it should go even further. There should be diagrams, and specs, and whatever else so i can do whatever the hell i want, again if i had the skills. How are these corporations allowed to get away with this crap. Another solution... There should be a law regulating hardware development and manufacturing that states if you fall within these certain specifications (hardware production being one of these specifications) you should have to do these certain things. Some of those certain things should be releasing all the codes and diagrams required to make that piece of hardware work in its entirety. Just my opinion...

Now that i've said my piece, i would love to hear what others have to saY!

[Cybertao]

AMD intend to create an open-source kernel driver that can optionally load a firmware blob for their proprietary code into user-space.
As far as I'm aware it will only support new cards and will take time to develop. All the same I think it is a big bucket of awesomeness on their part and hope Nvidia do the same.

[Cybertao]

Originally posted by zaileion:

If i buy a piece of hardware, i should get all the necessary information and "whatever" to make that damn piece of hardware work. To make a piece of hardware work, completely and in its entirety, i need the codes and build structure diagrams (i don't know the official terminology but you get my point) for said piece or hardware. There by allowing me, if i have the skill which i certainly do not, to build my own drivers or allow any OS developer or whoever to build the drivers required. The only way this can occur is to have Open Source Drivers and it should go even further. There should be diagrams, and specs, and whatever else so i can do whatever the hell i want, again if i had the skills. How are these corporations allowed to get away with this crap. Another solution... There should be a law regulating hardware development and manufacturing that states if you fall within these certain specifications (hardware production being one of these specifications) you should have to do these certain things. Some of those certain things should be releasing all the codes and diagrams required to make that piece of hardware work in its entirety. Just my opinion...

Now that i've said my piece, i would love to hear what others have to saY!

That's all a bit overzealous. If you had the skills to do graphics driver work you'd probably be in a high paying job for AMD or Nvidia, helping build their protected products.

[Drako Frost]

If you are talking about error 730, than it also happens with Nvidia. It's a Steam bug.

As a rule of thumb, when you install your favorite Linux distro, ALWAYS install Steam first, and only after that the proprietary graphics drivers.

[Dusk of Oolacile]

Even if the wall of text makes any sense, not knowing the difference between ATi and AMD (the former no longer existing) just invalidates them all and suggests total incapability to use computers. Ditch linux, buy a console.

[Toquita]

I don't know about you guys, but since today I can't open a few games. CSGO is one of them, don't starve is another.

I'm using Steam with the Free drivers and it was all working until I got onto bed today at 5 AM.

Game update: AppID 730 "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive", ProcID 7018, IP 0.0.0.0:0
ERROR: ld.so: object '/home//.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '/home//.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
pid 7020 != 7019, skipping destruction (fork without exec?)
ERROR: ld.so: object '/home//.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '/home//.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_64/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64): ignored.
/home//.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Counter-Strike Global Offensive/csgo_linux: error while loading shared libraries: libGL.so.1: failed to map segment from shared object
Game removed: AppID 730 "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive", ProcID 7018 

[Cybertao]

Looks like the usual, Steam's included libraries conflict with your system.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Steam#Steam_runtime_issues

[Toquita]

That doesn't work. Nothing is working.

This error happens in some games only, like Don't Starve and CSGO. Others, like ETS2 work fine.

[Cybertao]

That last one is interesting: error while loading shared libraries: libGL.so.1, as Steam doesn't include that one.

[daniel.mantione]

I'm not sure if everyone with an ATI GPU is having this issue or what the cause but there are several posts throughout a google and yahoo search.

I haven't see it. I install Steam via the OpenSuSE Build Service and use the 1-click install button. Works great and I haven't head to touch anything on the drivers.

[Toquita]

Originally posted by Cybertao:

That last one is interesting: error while loading shared libraries: libGL.so.1, as Steam doesn't include that one.

Somehow these games stoppped working if I didn't set Pax flags to them, which is weird because they were working before.

Now it's all fine.

[zaileion]

So i uninstalled the ATI drivers against every shred of discontent within my being, and uninstalled steam, and reinstalled steam, and reinstalled my graphics drivers, and reconfigured my graphics drivers. I was successful as Steam now works. Pardon me if i must insist this is F|_|(k|n& idiotic!!! plain and simple... 14 hours +/- of steady work without backups, but took me 4 hours because i know enough to backup the necessary configuration files that can be restored after drivers and hardware.. I will indicate the best files to backup and how to do so in the future and will link to the new post...

Oh, just to explain a bit further the difficulties this required i also had to remove my 2nd crossfired GPU because installing the ATI drivers and configuring them while both cards are installed yields no improvement from the crossifre. I had to remove GPU drivers, power down PC, physically remove my 2nd gpu, reboot, do the entire installation procedure described above, power down pc again, install 2nd GPU hardware, reboot, and edit several configuration files to activate the 2nd GPU and Crossfile. WHEW! Thats a hell of a lot of work to play a few games... AM i wrong or out of the norm in thinking this is unacceptable?

[Microsoft Word]

I've got the AMD R9 290X and steam has never worked out of the box on any Ubuntu version I've tried (Ubuntu, Kubuntu 14.04, 14.10, 15.04...)

I also read from various places to uninstall, reinstall, remove etc. all sorts of drivers and steam. And then you had to install a specific old version to get things working. But this really wasn't the issue.

However I finally tracked down the problem (at least in my case!). I came across an article which I don't (unfortunately!) remember where it was, but it fixed my problem with the Free Mesa drivers ( xserver-xorg-video-ati ).

This probably works with the proprietary drivers ( fglrx ), too but I'm not interested in them and therefore haven't tested them.

So, remove or rename/replace the following files:
~/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6
~/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/amd64/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6

Reason:
They are outdated and the Mesa drivers use newer c libraries. This is probably the exact same problem with newer proprietary drivers too.

Note:
When you update your steam. Steam will rename the "steam-runtime" to "steam-runtime.old" and download new files to the new folder and fail to launch again. So you have to remove or rename the files in the new folder again. You can probably make a script that does this automatically with a click of a button.

[zaileion]

OOPS, almost forgot to mention (because now Steam doesn't work again, after a single Debain update)... System updates that have some form of kernel update within require removal re-installation of ATI drivers which also require removal and re-installation of Steam. $#!t man, this is one hell of a lot of work to play video games. the false sense of success gained form video game progression isn't worth the huge undertaking and continued maintenance required to keep Steam working on a Linux system. Unfortunately i'll have to keep my Dual boot for now... Even more unfortunate is Windows is way better for gaming, and looks like it will be for quite some time... Sigh... My love and passion for GNU/Linux and Open Source seems to have reached its pinnacle of toleration with regard to gaming...

Oh, and by the way if you have a dual GPU graphics card, HD 5970, 6990, 7990, r9x2, etc.. Only the first GPU works, the 2nd gpu sits there like a bump on a log.. Even though aticonfig --lsch says crossfire is enabled. try aticonfig -lscs and you'll see crossfire is not enameled. i ran benchmarking with a GPU activity monitor and only the 1st GPU in the card hit 100% the 2nd GPU stayed at 0%. If you happen to have found a way to acquire 2 dual GPU cards like 2 HD 7990's you have a highly expensive entire useless GPU setup. Gaming on Linux... Unfortunately a far future prospect... even still in 2015.. Maybe we can all hope for year 2020 when ill be almost 50.

[zaileion]

Originally posted by Microsoft Word:

I've got the AMD R9 290X and steam has never worked out of the box on any Ubuntu version I've tried (Ubuntu, Kubuntu 14.04, 14.10, 15.04...)

I also read from various places to uninstall, reinstall, remove etc. all sorts of drivers and steam. And then you had to install a specific old version to get things working. But this really wasn't the issue.

However I finally tracked down the problem (at least in my case!). I came across an article which I don't (unfortunately!) remember where it was, but it fixed my problem with the Free Mesa drivers ( xserver-xorg-video-ati ).

This probably works with the proprietary drivers ( fglrx ), too but I'm not interested in them and therefore haven't tested them.

So, remove or rename/replace the following files:
~/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6
~/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/amd64/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6

Reason:
They are outdated and the Mesa drivers use newer c libraries. This is probably the exact same problem with newer proprietary drivers too.

Note:
When you update your steam. Steam will rename the "steam-runtime" to "steam-runtime.old" and download new files to the new folder and fail to launch again. So you have to remove or rename the files in the new folder again. You can probably make a script that does this automatically with a click of a button.

I dont have the directories suggested, and i did a search of me home folder for "libstdc++.so.6" and came up with 0 results.

[zaileion]

I certainly would love to chat with one or 2 of the Steam Devs. I would work night and day with some directions to get past this. I know quite a bit and have the time to work things out. I jsut need some directions as to where to start... Again, i posted this issue with steam support 2 weeks ago and they have completely ignored me...