Linux Support (Beta)

[Rastuasi]

I was king on win7

There is no such thing as a "king" on windows of any kind. Windows makes you subservient to Microsoft, regardless of the version. Perhaps you could get some argument for 95 and earlier, when home internet was not as common. However, the moment you had internet, the OS became malware and made you its data slave.

[jaab-paradise]

I was king on win7

There is no such thing as a "king" on windows of any kind. Windows makes you subservient to Microsoft, regardless of the version. Perhaps you could get some argument for 95 and earlier, when home internet was not as common. However, the moment you had internet, the OS became malware and made you its data slave.

Yes i now, what i meant was that i could use win7 to such a degree that the last 6 years i used it i had no antivirus whatsoever not windows own version even. And i did not encounter a problem i could not fix...
Antivirus software hogs to much resources on your pc...
But i agree with you MS is a killer on your induavilability.
And let us not talk about all the backdoor on the Intel cpu's some of them you can not patch... Scary!!!!!

[Alan Phipps]

Let's stay on-topic with Linux support issues please.

[ironwill]

Let's stay on-topic with Linux support issues please.

Oh, I have some issues to report.

1. Since 3.0 Beta 5 the Linux client tells me (in the preferences) that my graphicscard does not have enough memory to support certain features. It is an AMD Vega56 8GiB card combined with Mesa 20.0.x. This also shows up in the release version, too. I can't pick a FSAA option except for the blurry FXAA options which are .. uhm .. no fun aka blurry (are there really people using this?). This worked perfectly fine before.

2. The Linux client hangs after shutting down, even keep playing the music, just without a window. I jumped into it using gdb - well, there is not much to do here without debug infos or source - but it looks like something is preventing one or more threads from properly termination making the game to wait for a join (I assume you are using C++ condition variables too keep loops running -> mistakenly made a notify_one instead of a notifiy_all? just a wild guess )

0x00007f86a795da67 in __pthread_clockjoin_ex () from /usr/lib/libpthread.so.0
(gdb) bt
#0 0x00007f86a795da67 in __pthread_clockjoin_ex () from /usr/lib/libpthread.so.0
#1 0x00007f86a5158676 in ?? ()
#2 0x00007ffe529ec6c0 in ?? ()
#3 0x00007f86582eb048 in ?? ()
#4 0x0000000000000001 in ?? ()
#5 0x0000000001a72cce in ?? ()
#6 0x00000000005aadbc in _start ()

[timon37]

@ironwill
can you post your full vulkan-info output?
what distro are you running?

[ironwill]

@ironwill
can you post your full vulkan-info output?
what distro are you running?

Sure ... it is an up to date Arch Linux multilib installation ... and I saw the memory issue with Mesa 19.2.x, 19.3.x and now with 20.0.x. I also used Valves shader compiler ACO from time to time, which improves performance, but doesn't change the memory detecting issue. I run steam in native mode, so it really uses the system libs and not the steam libs.

The log is quite big, so I put it on pastebin. I hope this is okay: https://pastebin.com/WDW6Ug5F

[steve_v]

you cannot run X4 betas on Linux GOG version because you need GOG Galaxy for the betas and GOG did not provide Galaxy for Linux.

lgogdownloader now supports fetching builds using the galaxy API, so what we really need is for GOG to provide such builds. They've procrastinated so long in porting their client to GNU/Linux that the FOSS community has once again stepped up and made them look like incompetent boobs.

[wasted90]

2. The Linux client hangs after shutting down, even keep playing the music, just without a window. I jumped into it using gdb - well, there is not much to do here without debug infos or source - but it looks like something is preventing one or more threads from properly termination making the game to wait for a join (I assume you are using C++ condition variables too keep loops running -> mistakenly made a notify_one instead of a notifiy_all? just a wild guess )

same for me on arch linux. its mostly never getting terminated correctly. i have reported the issue few weeks ago, also sent the core.dumps to egosoft, but it looks like this hasn't been sorted out yet.

Spoiler

Show

hey guys everytime i close X4 via the menu the game isn't terminated normally. right after i got back to my desktop systemd-coredump is running and sptitting a ~500MB file in /var/lib/systemd/coredump. already have six of them.
if this is not a common issue i can send one at ES.

does anybody else have this issue?

i'm running arch @ zen-kernel '5.4.7-zen1-1'
i5-3570k @ 3,8 GHz
8 GB RAM xmp
nvidia GTX-1050ti @ stock
using steam runtime

game version 3.00 beta (378025)

if i can provide any further information just let me know.

UPDATE:
also happens with standart arch-distribution-kernel

[andrewpc]

2. The Linux client hangs after shutting down, even keep playing the music, just without a window. I jumped into it using gdb - well, there is not much to do here without debug infos or source - but it looks like something is preventing one or more threads from properly termination making the game to wait for a join (I assume you are using C++ condition variables too keep loops running -> mistakenly made a notify_one instead of a notifiy_all? just a wild guess )

I have the same on opensuse and have to kill -9 which screws up cloud syncs

[andrewpc]

I have been having issues with logging into the egosoft servers from in game for some time and therefore the venture feature stopped working. Put it down to the Beta so when the release dropped and it still didn't work I decided to raise a forum post and also do some investigation.

The issue is that on opensuse tumbleweed the CA bundle location has moved and therefore libcurl in the game failed. I have to create a link from the old location of CA bundle to the new location and then I could again log into my account from the online menu.

Code: Select all

old location: /etc/ssl/certs/cacertificates.crt
new location: /var/lib/ca-certificates/ca-bundle.pem

I have since noticed a new package in the repos ca-certificates-steamtricks which will do the link for you.

Hopefully if any one else trips over this it will help and posting here as it is linux specific

edit

steamtricks version does this and adds it to the update certificates script so that it is run each time update certificate is computed

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash
if [ ! -f /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt ] && [ -e /etc/ssl/certs ] ; then
  # compatability fix for proprietary software
  ln -sf /var/lib/ca-certificates/ca-bundle.pem /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
fi

[ironwill]

2. The Linux client hangs after shutting down, even keep playing the music, just without a window. I jumped into it using gdb - well, there is not much to do here without debug infos or source - but it looks like something is preventing one or more threads from properly termination making the game to wait for a join (I assume you are using C++ condition variables too keep loops running -> mistakenly made a notify_one instead of a notifiy_all? just a wild guess )

Though, I should mention this only happens if you actually start/load a game. If you enter the client, click around a bit and exit it, it terminates just fine.

[wasted90]

I have been having issues with logging into the egosoft servers from in game for some time and therefore the venture feature stopped working. Put it down to the Beta so when the release dropped and it still didn't work I decided to raise a forum post and also do some investigation.

The issue is that on opensuse tumbleweed the CA bundle location has moved and therefore libcurl in the game failed. I have to create a link from the old location of CA bundle to the new location and then I could again log into my account from the online menu.

Code: Select all

old location: /etc/ssl/certs
new location: /var/lib/ca-certificates/pem

I have since noticed a new package in the repos ca-certificates-steamtricks which will do the link for you.

Hopefully if any one else trips over this it will help and posting here as it is linux specific

are you using the steeam runtime environment? i just can talk about arch linux, where you have two packages for steam in the repo: one 'steam-native' which uses the system librarys and is not recommended due to library compatibility issues. then you have another package which comes bundled with a runtime-environment to increase combatibility... maybe this is somekind of related to your issue?

[andrewpc]

Though, I should mention this only happens if you actually start/load a game. If you enter the client, click around a bit and exit it, it terminates just fine.

I have noticed that if you quit the game and not quit to desktop and leave it for a while and then quit to desktop it doesn't hang so it is just going from in game straight to desktop. Additionally it is related to steam cloud because if I turn off cloud sync I can go straight to desktop and it doesn't exhibit the issue

[Lander1979]

Steam Cloud is not Linux-Friendly and should be turned off alltogether unless you are using it to transfer your save games from another computer.

[smt]

Is there any updates on the alt tabbing issues? this game by far is the worst native experience for windowing and alt tabbing I've had on linux, ever since the first linux beta, alt tabbing can take up to a minute or two and its often just screwed up the display or crashed the game in some way, it works best in a window but this is basically a completely bizarre experience as most linux native games (csgo for instance) can run fullscreen and alt tab instantly with no delay

[wasted90]

Is there any updates on the alt tabbing issues? this game by far is the worst native experience for windowing and alt tabbing I've had on linux, ever since the first linux beta, alt tabbing can take up to a minute or two and its often just screwed up the display or crashed the game in some way, it works best in a window but this is basically a completely bizarre experience as most linux native games (csgo for instance) can run fullscreen and alt tab instantly with no delay

i have no problem with alt-tabbing in fullscreen-mode. maybe its somewhere on your side? maybe a desktopenvironment/ windowmanager or x-server/ wayland issue?

[strask412]

Is there any updates on the alt tabbing issues? this game by far is the worst native experience for windowing and alt tabbing I've had on linux, ever since the first linux beta, alt tabbing can take up to a minute or two and its often just screwed up the display or crashed the game in some way, it works best in a window but this is basically a completely bizarre experience as most linux native games (csgo for instance) can run fullscreen and alt tab instantly with no delay

i have no problem with alt-tabbing in fullscreen-mode. maybe its somewhere on your side? maybe a desktopenvironment/ windowmanager or x-server/ wayland issue?

I've experienced the problem smt is talking about -- any time (under the right circumstances) you alt-tab out of X4, then back in, and when you come back X4 is like, "something changed! Quick, let me occlude the screen with this loading visual, while I think upon the mysteries of the universe for a few seconds". You can actually force the same delay any time you want, by going into the graphics settings and changing certain things (I forget which things, but there aren't too many options on that page).

I've not experienced it being as long as "a minute or two" like smt said, but it was bad enough that I eventually switched to windowed mode because for some reason that's an effective workaround.

Edit: It occurs to me that I wasn't previously thinking of this alt-tab delay behaviour as specific to linux in any way. I think I probably experienced it under windows 7 before switching to linux, because I would have found it a lot more surprising if I had switched OSs and that problem suddenly began. I think I would have found that very memorable.

[steve_v]

Is there any updates on the alt tabbing issues? this game by far is the worst native experience for windowing and alt tabbing I've had on linux, ever since the first linux beta, alt tabbing can take up to a minute or two and its often just screwed up the display or crashed the game in some way, it works best in a window but this is basically a completely bizarre experience as most linux native games (csgo for instance) can run fullscreen and alt tab instantly with no delay

Alt-tab works reasonably well here. Alt-tab out of game is instant, alt-tab into game triggers an ~8 second load screen. That's a far cry from a minute or two, and with a SATA SSD and a 7 year old CPU. It's mildly irritating, but hardly a major problem.

The 2.x corruption issues I haven't seen recur. Yet.
I just alt-tabbed at least a dozen times to look for the old screwiness, but so far no frozen speedo or map update problems. Now, if I can just find a pilot worth hiring, I can see if that hilariously disturbing NPC head glitch is still a thing...

If you haven't already, disable GL acceleration/compositing in your desktop environment. Not only does it make the game run better, it also minimises the chance of getting those alt-tab related problems in game, or at least it did IME with 2.x.
X4 does not like sharing the GPU, not at all.

If you're running GNOME3 however, you're SOL. Over here in the non-braindamage DE world we've been hitting $keycombo to magically have games run better since 2006, but GNOME loves removing features people were using.


Other than the existing flicker-fest on anything but max AA (which a 1070 apparently isn't enough for), 3.0 seems to run just fine here... For a definition of "fine" where being CPU bound into oblivion by the collision detection around stations is normal of course.

[wasted90]

if i alt tab back in the game, it also needs a few seconds to get ready. i always thought this is specific to vulkan or the game-engine and not really an issue.
i took some measurements alt-tabbing while playing the game, but paused:

windowed: instant tab-in and tab-out
windowed borderless: instant tab-out, tab-in 26 seconds
fullscreen: instant tab-out, tab-in 18 seconds

sure, this times could be improved, but for me i deal with it since i rarely tab-out while playing.

for comparison:
i5-3570k @4,5
gtx 1050 ti
8gb ram ddr3
~8 years old hdd
openbox (without compositing)
arch @ zen-kernel

a few months/weeks ago i stumpeled over some reddit posts complaining about issues with tiling windowmanagers regarding to gaming. i don't know if this can be related.
also swappiness can be related to this, but also not 100% sure about this (and most distros are preconfigured with sane values)

[steve_v]

fullscreen: instant tab-out, tab-in 18 seconds
...
for comparison:
i5-3570k @4,5
gtx 1050 ti
8gb ram ddr3
~8 years old hdd

For comparison:
i7-4960X @ 4.3GHz
GTX1070 8GB
32GB DDR3
Modern-ish SATA SSD (too lazy for exact model)
Gentoo amd64 / KDE

I haven't timed anything accurately, but it takes me a lot less than 18 seconds to tab into the game in fullscreen. It could be the SSD (but I ain't paging with 32GB), it could be the extra CPU cores and/or the silly memory bandwidth of X79.
I'd be quite interested in what exactly X4 is doing behind that loading screen, anyone in the know want to enlighten us?

I recon there's either something amiss with @smt's DE/graphics driver, or they are running from a mechanical HDD with borderline RAM and the game is getting paged out (as you say, swappiness)... A minute or two can't be much fun.

Out of interest, has anyone actually timed this vs. Windows?