Steam for Linux

Steam for Linux

READ THIS - Slow, stuttering, CTD at start with new Steam client.
It's not your game or your system, it's this DAMN CEF CLIENT.

It's allocating VRAM like it's a fire sale!

Disabling HW Acceleration does *NOT* fix this, it only slows it down, it's mitigation not eradication. however Installing Wayland may circumvent the issue, if you're willing to. I am not.

Disabling hwaccel just takes it longer, but even just running the Steam client, messing around, watching little icons become video clips, etc.. it will eventually chew up many gigs of VRAM.

Luckily this insane Xorg VRAM consumption thing is flushable just by closing the CEF crap, shut down the processes or the whole client. The CEF-only client is not fully functional, anyway. Lots of people still get the empty window thing from however you're doing the redraw, it was like that on the old client too, some people could only have windows of certain dimensions or exact increments of 16 on both axis, other craziness. But at least that one was SOLID and didn't STEAL VRAM.

Yes it kills Xorg. Makes it allocate more and more VRAM to Xorg until you cannot play a game that requires even 512M of VRAM, nope, Steam took it.

Valve - I am not your unpaid beta tester, and my daily life is impacted by your arrogance.

FIX YOUR SHI... CLIENT!
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Not even playing a game, just staying in the Steam client,
looking at Summer Sale, the "new" animated discovery queue, etc.
BTW is is normally between 60 and 180M, not 841M
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Processes: | | PID Type Process name GPU Memory | | Usage | |===================================================================| | 1834 G /usr/libexec/Xorg 841MiB | | 114787 G ...local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam 3MiB | | 114798 G ...re/Steam/ubuntu12_64/steamwebhelper 3MiB | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+

Playing The Outer Worlds, 1920x1080 on Ultra, all good but damn!
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Processes: | | PID Type Process name GPU Memory | | Usage | |===================================================================| | 1834 G /usr/libexec/Xorg 1007MiB | | 114787 G ...local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam 6MiB | | 114798 G ...re/Steam/ubuntu12_64/steamwebhelper 4MiB | | 114887 G ...eam/logs/cef_log.txt --shared-files 83MiB | | 116086 C+G ...es/Win64/Indiana-Win64-Shipping.exe 4933MiB | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+

Even with no game running, still holds it, still growing.
Not ideal, that.
+------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Processes: | | PID Type Process name GPU Memory | | Usage | |===================================================================| | 1834 G /usr/libexec/Xorg 1065MiB | | 114787 G ...local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam 6MiB | | 114798 G ...re/Steam/ubuntu12_64/steamwebhelper 4MiB | | 114887 G ...eam/logs/cef_log.txt --shared-files 95MiB | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+

Let client sit open but idle, then browse Steam Summer Sale,
let some "live" feeds stream, etc. Tried to launch Fallout 4.
It crashed launching. Want to guess why? Insufficient VRAM.
+------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Processes: | | PID Type Process name GPU Memory | | Usage | |===================================================================| | 1834 G /usr/libexec/Xorg 3117MiB | | 114787 G ...local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam 40MiB | | 114798 G ...re/Steam/ubuntu12_64/steamwebhelper 4MiB | | 114887 G ...eam/logs/cef_log.txt --shared-files 68MiB | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+

Xorg chewing up over THREE GIGS. And no game running. This has to stop.

Now, soon as I close the new all-CEF Steam client? Well look at that:
+------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Processes: | | PID Type Process name GPU Memory | | Usage | |===================================================================| | 1834 G /usr/libexec/Xorg 94MiB | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+

Xorg's back to a normal amount of VRAM allocated.

I thought you were using VRAM like cache, like linux does with regular RAM, which is fine. As long as you can make Xorg release it instantly, who cares? But this is NOT the case - once Xorg has it, you cannot allocate it. You gaming will suffer badly. Details in-game will get less and less and less til you just CTD in most things (I've only tested 3 - The Outer Worlds, Fallout 4, Cyberpunk 2077 --- results were, crash, crash, drop to 4 fps and made me quit out before the crash)

=-=-=-=-=-=
TLDR - Gamers - the best solution right now, is to exit the client completely, shut it down, then re-launch it, don't open the GUI interface, and fire off your game from notifications area icon with a right click. Seems to last the longest that way, but my testing is not that through. If you need to or want to open the clent, go for it. Just remember if at any time you start to feel a strange "why is this so freakin' slow?" scneario, exit your game, exit Steam, start again.

Yes it's stupid, but it only takes seconds, instead of not playing or playing with no resources allocated to the game. I'm sure they'll fix it - eventually.
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Three Words 13 Jul, 2023 @ 10:35am 
Not cool. I just installed Zorin OS 16.2 Core (X11) and am using Steam + Proton to play RuneScape.

I may have to see if the RuneScape flatpak works well enough so I can avoid using Steam until this memory leak among other weird issues is fixed.

I greatly appreciate Valve because without them, I wouldn't be able to stop using Windows to play games. However, the June 14th update to Steam and beyond has not been great.

I wish things were different; that either CEF was resource friendly or that Steam itself was able to be built from scratch in a way that it never needed CEF.

Thanks for the heads up, OP.

CPU: i7-9700K
GPU: GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER
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