Linux Port – Feedback, Known Issues, and FAQ

I actually just did some comparisons between Linux Mint and Windows 10 today and found that for my PC, I get at least a 10 fps boost in Linux using the native version with higher settings. I haven't messed around with the Proton version much, but I will do a performance comparison with it too at some point. Since you mentioned you are using a 3400G, it might just be because it is a bit older and not overly powerful (graphics wise). How well have other games (If you have downloaded any) run with proton? Also have you set the power profile to performance in the power management menu? You can also check it by running this command in the terminal: powerprofilesctl

 

Im on a desktop, but linux mint only gives me the option of balanced and power saving. Then again I don't expect really anything to run well in my machine, but any frame crumb I can get works. As for other games, I never benchmarked them on windows before switching and I am not dual booting so I'm not the best for the comparision, but so far they seem to run close enough to windows for me not to find any improvements or fps drops.

That being said I always keep being told that modern proton can make games run better than native windows. Dont know if the difference is running CachyOS or Bazzite there though.

 

try maxing out into performance with tool like tlp https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/TLP

 

I looked it up but it seems that TLP is pretty much for battery savings measure rather than to improve desktop AC power performance, unless there's something I missed about it.

 

im gonna quote one of my post from a few pages back.

beamng through proton literally uses 2-3x more ram than the native linux build.

beamng's native linux build is a very solid contender. i only use it and have had rare vulkan crashes.
meanwhile when i run beamng through proton? i cant even launch career mode because traffic makes beamng pull too much ram through proton.
but the native linux build? i run career mode with traffic just fine with less than half the ram usage.

with 16 gb of ram its no wonder beamng through proton makes your system crash...
the native linux build of beamng is more optimized if you ask me.

 

Honestly curious whats causing this. The game relies on multi processing, otherwise i dont see anything different to other games

 

Funny thing is that the native hasn't crashed for me, but the performance being the same or slightly worse than the windows vulkan version is a headache. That's why I was wondering if there's way to optimize the game beyond setting everything on low.

 

TBF yall can ignore this post.
its a blender related issue and its fixed in the latest candidate release.

EDIT:
i just want to add, i was about to do a bug report on blender side of things, and tried their release candidate 4.5.6 which seems to have this issue resolved.


so to whomever is also dealing with this issue, it should be fixed with the next blender release.

 

Out of curiosity, I decided to do some performance testing between the native Linux port and the Windows version running with Vulkan.

Spoiler: Test Results

Specs:
i7-12700K
32 GB DDR5 6000MHz
RTX 4060
Linux Mint 22.2 and Windows 10
1080p

WCUSA - Lowest:
Linux -> FPS: 243, RAM Usage: 7.62 GB, VRAM Usage: 2.36 GB
Windows 10 -> FPS: 209, RAM Usage: 9.84 GB, VRAM Usage: 2.50 GB
WCUSA - Normal:
Linux -> FPS: 163, RAM Usage: 7.62 GB, VRAM Usage: 3.44 GB
Windows 10 -> FPS: 160, RAM Usage: 10.03 GB, VRAM Usage: 3.56 GB
WCUSA - Ultra:
Linux -> FPS: 95, RAM Usage: 7.62 GB, VRAM Usage: 4.19 GB
Windows 10 -> FPS: 90, RAM Usage: 10.02 GB, VRAM Usage: 3.98 GB

Grid Small Pure - Lowest:
Linux -> FPS: ~850-950, RAM Usage: 4.08 GB, VRAM Usage: 1.07 GB
Windows 10 -> FPS: ~560, RAM Usage: 7.08 GB, VRAM Usage: 1.28 GB
Grid Small Pure - Normal:
Linux -> FPS: ~370, RAM Usage: 4.35 GB, VRAM Usage: 1.72 GB
Windows 10 -> FPS: ~395, RAM Usage: 7.17 GB, VRAM Usage: 1.86 GB
Grid Small Pure - Ultra:
Linux -> FPS: 197, RAM Usage: 4.40 GB, VRAM Usage: 2.36 GB
Windows 10 -> FPS: 200, RAM Usage: 7.53 GB, VRAM Usage: 2.46 GB

Every test I did showed that Linux overall uses less RAM and VRAM, but the FPS doesn't seem to differ too much on graphically intensive maps. The FPS is kinda all over the place on the Grid Small Pure tests, not sure what's going on there. I tried to be as accurate as possible by closing any background programs, and I restarted my PC and launched in safe mode for each individual test as well. I am running Windows 10, so the performance might be a little different compared to Windows 11.

I tried to run the Proton version but for some reason it just kept hanging while loading WCUSA on normal graphics. Even though it was not loading, I could actually still see the RAM usage, which showed something like 15 GB, pretty much double the RAM usage I got with the native version. So yeah, Linux port is definitely the better option, at least for me.

 

Sounds like if I was getting bad enough performance in linux its about as good as it gets without overclocking. Thanks for your benchmarkin!

 

For some reason, my .local/share does not show any BeamNG folder even with Hidden files on show.

 

If you run the game over proton (which is the default) then its not at that spot, but in the prefix of the game. So here
~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/284160/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/AppData/Local/BeamNG/BeamNG.drive/current/

 

I have posted a working (and tested by several people) derivation which provides a Steam-compatible script to set up the appropriate environment and launch BeamNG here: https://www.beamng.com/threads/linux-port-–-feedback-known-issues-and-faq.86422/page-52#post-1882749

I would appreciate it if you could try using it and let me know if it still fails with your hardware configuration, in which case I can add to it and have something that works for everyone. From looking at the derivation you posted it is missing a ton of libraries and is likely failing due to missing `vulkan-loader` and `libglvnd`.

 

Going to throw this here since I hope to find more linux specifics. Didn't experince this on windows.


Extremely weird issue with this. Linux Mint 22.3 Cinnamon, running the native version. Fresh install of beam, fresh install of RLS, no other mods. Upon trying to create a career mode, it just hangs on this screen.
As you can see in the upper left, the fps counter is working, and as you can see here, I can access the console, so the game must think it's done loading, or something along those lines. Has anyone encounted this, and has anyone figured out a fix?

Game files validate successfully, when attempting to do the same using proton, it just locks up and crashes.

Specs are

Ryzen 5 3600x
Arc B580
16gb DDR4
500gb SSD

 

Didn't they release a update for 0.38 for that mod, have you tried that?

also you can go to your user setting and find the beamng.log file to see what's going on in the background instead of relying on the ingame console.
~/.local/share/BeamNG/BeamNG.drive/current/

 

more odd information about the "ErrorDeviceLost" bug ive been having with the native linux build of beamng

ive been modding on my personal project all week, 60+ hours since last week was put into beamng, and i swear, i had a grand total of ZERO CRASHES!!!

cue yesterday...
i decide to go play with traffic instead of modding, game crashes within 5 min.

heres the kicker,
JRI with traffic? crashes
Utah with traffic? doesnt crash.

it seems to be map specific. i was playing with ecusa snowy when it crashed initially yesterday, but it crashes with AND without traffic.

the log is over 15000 char so i cant even see the error device lost in the beamng log, but i do have the linux system logs which are now 900mb and has all of the beamng crashes shoved into 1 massive log.
i hunted it down some bits, and found where beamng crashed.



but heres another extremely annoying issue, when it started crashing every 5 min, i re-toggled the debug mode on, but the game wont freaking crash with debug??
i do wonder, when debug mode is enabled, i cant get more than 30 fps. without debug mode, i get 144fps.
is debug mode stopping the game from crashing? wtf.

there is something extremely weird going on under the hood of this game.

 

Im curious to know what happens if you limit your game to 30 fps without the debug mode. Will it still crash?

 

im gonna run some tests again today. see if it changes anything.

but this bug has been so insanely inconsistent for me, its quite literally insane.
one day, nothing crashes, the next day? crashes every 5 min.
its driving me absolutely NUTS.

im back in JRI with traffic, attempting to make the game crash, but today is a new day!! so of course it wont crash. it likes to alternate between days.
trying to make sense of this bug. its driving me insane.


EDIT:
its been almost 30 min and the game didnt crash today.
im on JRI with all my mods, exactly like yesterday.

and when this "ErrorDeviceLost" bug happens, the game WILL CRASH every 5-10 ish minute.
so when ive been playing for more than 10 min i know the bug didnt occur.

so today is a good day, and tomorrow will be hell again. like clockworks.

does anyone more experienced than me with linux, have a grain of salt of ideas as to what could be causing this?

im tired of going around in circles, support blames mods, i blame the game, in the end its what really? we are just blindly pointing fingers hoping itll magically fix itself.

 

Well lets hope you can conduct the test tomorrow then xD

 

im not mad that it works.
game has not crashed yet today.

that being said, i wish i could figure this problem out so that i stop bugging the devs


EDIT: unrelated bug report
native linux build

i cannot for the life of me, take a screenshot with the in-game picture tool.
every pictures are borked.


makes cool corrupt pics tho xD