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thomas83

2 Aug @ 2:58am

Gothic on Linux Mint causes black screen on start

Hi - I'm very new to linux.
I installed linux mint cinnamon and steam and a couple of games.
Very few games run out of the box but most cause problems.

When I start Gothic 3 (Proton 10.0-2 beta) the game seems to run - I can hear the intro sounds and can even skip them till I'm in the main menu - ONLY that there is only a black screen. What can I do?

System details:
Linux Mint Cinnamon 22.1
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D 8-Core Processor × 8
Gigabyte Radeon RX9070 XT Gaming OC 16 GB

Any step by step help appreciated. Since I'm really new to linux...
Thank you!

< >

Showing 1-9 of 9 comments

Yoth

5 Aug @ 11:21am

Gothic3 uses DX9. Try Proton 9. If that also doesn't work add the launch option:

PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command%

LAYERS OF REALITY has Steam for Linux

7 Aug @ 4:17am

Originally posted by Yoth:
Gothic3 uses DX9. Try Proton 9. If that also doesn't work add the launch option:
PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command%

proton version has nothing to do with dx version. trying older proton versions might help, but for different reasons.

Yoth

7 Aug @ 5:28am

Originally posted by _@N+0n_n3trUnnER_:
proton version has nothing to do with dx version

I just mentioned DX9 for context. I didn't mean that the 9 in Proton 9 stands for DX9 if that's what you're implying. Proton 9 is just the previous version that comes before 10 (the current version) and has different screen and input handling. It's always worth a try if games give you trouble. It's usually not worth trying anything lower than 9. The other option is using the WineD3D OpenGL implementation instead of DXVK.

thomas83

9 Aug @ 11:30pm

Thanks for your answers!

Trying Proton 9 just caused another issues and the game crashed before starting at all.
In addition with the launch option [command] PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command% [/command] it did start with pictures and I could get as far as loading a new game. But before the intro video was played it crashed again. Trying Proton 10 beta with the launch option did just the same.

Now I tried Proton experimental with the launch option. That gets me even past the intro of the game but crashed just at the first fight with the orcs...

Another question:
Sometimes upon lunching the game it wants to install NvidiaPhysix. I always aborted that. Should I rather install it? Since I don't have any Nvidia stuff in my setup. I'm all AMD...

Yoth

10 Aug @ 12:20am

The game doesn't require PhysX to run but if you don't install it you will miss out on cloth simulation and other features. You don't need an Nvidia card to use it. In fact the newest generation of Nvidia cards doesn't even support it anymore. It will run on the CPU instead.

Tbh, I'm not surprised that Gothic 3 doesn't run well. It was always plagued by memory leaks and bugs. On Windows this will lead to OS corruption and eventually bluescreens. Linux is less lenient and kills the application if it doesn't behave.

Yoth

10 Aug @ 8:03am

I was curious and just tried the game myself on basically the same hardware (9900X / 9070 XT). My system uses wayland/xwayland, proton hotfix, kernel 6.15.9, mesa 25.1.7, vulkan-radeon 25.1.7 and I installed PhysX when prompted. I don't see any issues. Videos played fine, I could start a new game and get past the intro with the orcs without any issues. I didn't even use the PROTON_USE_WINED3D setting, just regular DXVK. Maybe you need a kernel and mesa update. You could try installing the HWE kernel (6.14.0) and the kisak-mesa fresh ppa (25.1.7) if you haven't already.

sudo apt-get install linux-generic-hwe-24.04-edge

https://launchpad.net/~kisak/+archive/ubuntu/kisak-mesa

If you're comfortable using an even newer kernel customized for gaming you can install the Liquorix kernel (6.15.9) ppa (packages linux-image-liquorix-amd64 linux-headers-liquorix-amd64):
https://launchpad.net/~damentz/+archive/ubuntu/liquorix

Last edited by Yoth; 10 Aug @ 8:23am

thomas83

24 Aug @ 12:29am

Thank you, Yoth, for your input! Very much appreciated!

Well, here`s my system setup in detail:

System: Kernel: 6.8.0-78-generic arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 13.3.0 clocksource: tsc Desktop: Cinnamon v: 6.4.8 tk: GTK v: 3.24.41 wm: Muffin v: 6.4.1 vt: 7 dm: LightDM v: 1.30.0 Distro: Linux Mint 22.1 Xia base: Ubuntu 24.04 noble Machine: Type: Desktop System: Gigabyte product: B850 GAMING WIFI6 v: N/A serial: <superuser required> Mobo: Gigabyte model: B850 GAMING WIFI6 v: x.x serial: <superuser required> uuid: <superuser required> UEFI: American Megatrends LLC. v: F5 date: 07/16/2025 CPU: Info: 8-core model: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D bits: 64 type: MT MCP smt: enabled arch: N/A rev: 0 cache: L1: 640 KiB L2: 8 MiB L3: 96 MiB Speed (MHz): avg: 1357 high: 3032 min/max: 600/5269 cores: 1: 3016 2: 3032 3: 600 4: 600 5: 600 6: 600 7: 600 8: 600 9: 3030 10: 600 11: 600 12: 600 13: 3014 14: 600 15: 600 16: 3029 bogomips: 150108 Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm Graphics: Device-1: AMD vendor: Gigabyte driver: N/A pcie: speed: 32 GT/s lanes: 16 bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:7550 class-ID: 0300 Device-2: AMD vendor: Gigabyte driver: amdgpu v: kernel pcie: speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16 ports: active: none empty: DP-1, DP-2, DP-3, HDMI-A-1, Writeback-1 bus-ID: 13:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:13c0 class-ID: 0300 temp: 41.0 C Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.11 with: Xwayland v: 23.2.6 driver: X: loaded: modesetting unloaded: amdgpu,fbdev,radeon,vesa dri: swrast gpu: amdgpu display-ID: :0 screens: 1 Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 508x285mm (20.00x11.22") s-diag: 582mm (22.93") Monitor-1: Unknown-1 mapped: None-1 res: 1920x1080 hz: 60 size: N/A modes: 1920x1080 API: EGL v: 1.5 hw: drv: amd radeonsi platforms: device: 0 drv: radeonsi device: 1 drv: swrast gbm: drv: kms_swrast surfaceless: drv: radeonsi x11: drv: swrast inactive: wayland API: OpenGL v: 4.6 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: mesa v: 25.0.7-0ubuntu0.24.04.1 glx-v: 1.4 direct-render: yes renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 19.1.1 256 bits) device-ID: ffffffff:ffffffff Audio: Device-1: AMD driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: speed: 32 GT/s lanes: 16 bus-ID: 03:00.1 chip-ID: 1002:ab40 class-ID: 0403 Device-2: AMD Rembrandt Radeon High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16 bus-ID: 13:00.1 chip-ID: 1002:1640 class-ID: 0403 Device-3: AMD Family 17h/19h HD Audio vendor: Gigabyte driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16 bus-ID: 13:00.6 chip-ID: 1022:15e3 class-ID: 0403 API: ALSA v: k6.8.0-78-generic status: kernel-api Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.0.5 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse status: active 2: wireplumber status: active 3: pipewire-alsa type: plugin Swap: ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 2 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2 file: /swapfile Info: Memory: total: 32 GiB note: est. available: 30.46 GiB used: 2.52 GiB (8.3%) Processes: 352 Power: uptime: 1h 43m states: freeze,mem,disk suspend: deep wakeups: 0 hibernate: platform Init: systemd v: 255 target: graphical (5) default: graphical Packages: 2253 pm: dpkg pkgs: 2242 pm: flatpak pkgs: 11 Compilers: gcc: 13.3.0 Shell: Bash v: 5.2.21 running-in: gnome-terminal inxi: 3.3.34

Well, I've tried Proton Experimental now. It's the same: I can get to the point with the first fight and then it just crashes with no note...
And without

PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command%

I get only black screens at start up.

Before I install a new kernel - I don't even have a clue what exactly that means - can I "keep" the old kernel and switch between them? And how?

Xenophobe

24 Aug @ 6:58am

looks like your gpu is not being detected properly per:

Originally posted by thomas83:
Graphics:
Device-1: AMD vendor: Gigabyte driver: N/A pcie: speed: 32 GT/s lanes: 16
bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:7550 class-ID: 0300

this is what mine looks like on that line in Linux Mint:

Graphics:
Device-1: AMD Navi 21 [Radeon RX 6950 XT] vendor: XFX driver: amdgpu v: kernel arch: RDNA-2 pcie: speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16 ports: active: HDMI-A-1 empty: DP-1, DP-2, DP-3, Writeback-1 bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:73a5 class-ID: 0300

to change kernels, open Update Manager>View>Linux Kernels ... I'm currently using the 6.14.0-28 myself.

to boot using an older or different version of an installed kernel tap (repeatedly) the esc key during system reboot to access the grub menu. you can have several different kernels installed and switch between them using the grub menu.

Last edited by Xenophobe; 24 Aug @ 3:03pm

Yoth

24 Aug @ 2:58pm

Originally posted by Xenophobe:
looks like your gpu is not being detected properly per:
Originally posted by thomas83:
Graphics:
Device-1: AMD vendor: Gigabyte driver: N/A pcie: speed: 32 GT/s lanes: 16
bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:7550 class-ID: 0300

That's correct. The 9070 XT is only properly supported (and runs without crashes) on kernel 6.13 or higher. Version 6.8 is over a year old, the GPU didn't exist back then.