Steam opens to a black screen after login

I just installed Bazzite on an Intel + AMD Laptop. After log in to steam, it opens to a black window as shown in the attached screenshot, and It keeps closing and opening again continuously, until I close steam again.
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47 Replies
abdorithm
abdorithmOP•2mo ago
It appears it only works in big picture mode, but I don't need to switch from it to windowed mode every single time I open steam.
wolfyreload
wolfyreload•2mo ago
Close steam fully and open it from the terminal with bazzite-steam or just steam see if you can see any useful error messages.
abdorithm
abdorithmOP•2mo ago
bazzite-steam and steam both open steam successfully, with bazzite-steam giving a ton of ld.so not found in LD_PRELOAD errors, but steam opens at the end. It appears the black window only happens when I launch steam from the KDE plasma application menu, I will probably need to manually make a .desktop file to open it from the app menu successfully. thoughts?
wolfyreload
wolfyreload•2mo ago
That makes it much more difficult to diagnose. Yeah just make a custom.desktop file and see if it launches from that
abdorithm
abdorithmOP•2mo ago
From the existing steam.desktop file, this entry Exec=/usr/bin/bazzite-steam %U is what causes the black window. Somehow removing the %U solves the issue. I think it means user mode or smth...
wolfyreload
wolfyreload•2mo ago
That's weird, it's been like that for more than a year that it executes in that way or at least it's been that way since I started using Bazzite. What happens if you run /usr/bin/bazzite-steam %U in the terminal?
abdorithm
abdorithmOP•2mo ago
It works. wow, so the issue is only with the app menu? I don't know. running the command in the .desktop file in the terminal works but running from application menu does not, which is weird since the app menu use the same .desktop file
wolfyreload
wolfyreload•2mo ago
Please run rpm-ostree status I want to switch to your image on my kde test machine and see if I can reproduce it It might not have been reported/discovered since most users have steam set to autostart
abdorithm
abdorithmOP•2mo ago
I did remove steam from the autostart once I installed bazzite. Just a sec...
abdorithm
abdorithmOP•2mo ago
wolfyreload
wolfyreload•2mo ago
Tried that image and it launches for me with the $U and without it. Super weird
abdorithm
abdorithmOP•2mo ago
weird indeed. I will just make another .desktop without %U for now thanks a lot for your time ā¤ļø
wolfyreload
wolfyreload•2mo ago
Cool. Wish I could figure out the underlying issue but at least it works šŸ™‚
Raevenant
Raevenant•2mo ago
I believe that the .desktop file that comes with Bazzite uses the dedicated GPU to launch. If you do switcherooctl launch -g 1 steam you can replicate the issue from terminal and get output for debugging Wait seriously?? That's mega weird. Imma try that
abdorithm
abdorithmOP•2mo ago
2 messages forward, it doesn't. Only launching from the app menu does, which is weirder šŸ˜†
Raevenant
Raevenant•2mo ago
oh that makes way more sense because this line is in the .desktop files: PrefersNonDefaultGPU=true it makes it use the dedicated GPU you'll get the same result of you go to a terminal and do switcherooctl launch -g 1 /usr/bin/bazzite-steam
abdorithm
abdorithmOP•2mo ago
okaayy it makes sense now
Raevenant
Raevenant•2mo ago
fyi @wolfyreload
abdorithm
abdorithmOP•2mo ago
I didn't look at any lines except the Exec= ones
Raevenant
Raevenant•2mo ago
could also be this one tbh: X-KDE-RunOnDiscreteGpu=true but regardless, for whatever reason, running Steam on the dGPU seems broken rn it's not bazzite-steam specifically either, it's Steam itself switcherooctl launch -g 1 steam also doesn't work DRI_PRIME=1 steam doesn't work either. Is real weird @abdorithm wanna see something that makes actually no sense? use the KDE menu to open big picture mode directly then from big picture mode, just exit back to normal steam
abdorithm
abdorithmOP•2mo ago
It will work fine :clueless: I described this behavior earlier
Raevenant
Raevenant•2mo ago
oh perfect
abdorithm
abdorithmOP•2mo ago
here
Raevenant
Raevenant•2mo ago
maybe I got the idea from you šŸ˜‚ OH SHIT I just did something that fixed it lemme narrow down which damn thing did it (I changed like 4 settings)
abdorithm
abdorithmOP•2mo ago
nice
Raevenant
Raevenant•2mo ago
got it Hardware acceleration
Raevenant
Raevenant•2mo ago
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Raevenant
Raevenant•2mo ago
@wolfyreload @Kyle Gospo I realize this is probably on Steam's or mesa's side, but I'll ping you both anyways in case there's something we (royal we ofc) can do about it on bazzite's side ah damn, it makes big picture mode run like shit though
abdorithm
abdorithmOP•2mo ago
it is no big problem tho. I just run another .desktop file or open bpm and switch. I still love bazzite and use it for primarily development. it's my first time with immutability and it is cool af
Raevenant
Raevenant•2mo ago
it's awesome yeah šŸ˜„
wolfyreload
wolfyreload•2mo ago
Yeah that's the "fix" for nvidia GPUs to run smoothly and it breaks the menus (sometimes). Thanks for investigating Raevenant. I wonder if it's possible to dynamically turn that on for big picture mode and off for normal mode
Raevenant
Raevenant•2mo ago
I'm AMD 😭
wolfyreload
wolfyreload•2mo ago
That's probably why I can't reproduce what you getting. Hopefully the issue is reproducible for one of the Bazzite maintainers.
Kyle Gospo
Kyle Gospo•2mo ago
It's not Already tested this on multiple frameworks Can't reproduce
Raevenant
Raevenant•2mo ago
@Kyle Gospo this appears to be fixed in latest bazzite
Raevenant
Raevenant•2mo ago
No description
Raevenant
Raevenant•2mo ago
wait nvm, what? I'm confused facinating. switcherooctl launch -g 1 bazzite-steam works fine, but switcherooctl launch -g 1 steam does not. These were both broken (for me) in previous bazzite, so did you guys do something?
Kyle Gospo
Kyle Gospo•2mo ago
Nope
Raevenant
Raevenant•2mo ago
man, I am cursed lmao
Beteigeuze
Beteigeuze•5w ago
maybe ujust fix-reset-steam
Raevenant
Raevenant•5w ago
tried, didn't help. It's still fixed in latest bazzite though, so beats me
abdorithm
abdorithmOP•5w ago
Hey guys, just wanted to report that the issue no longer exists since I rebased to bazzite-dx
$ rpm-ostree status
State: idle
Deployments:
ā— ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bazzite-dx:stable
Digest: sha256:f2ade0123dfa624c6b0a688b037e37d7d569aa618ad38d09d4fdb799b98b38a6
Version: 41.20250331 (2025-03-31T07:20:18Z)

ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bazzite:stable
Digest: sha256:a4a2c0458a6e01af8fbcfae5f6192d09c0429cacee50604489b1a7072101efa1
Version: 41.20250325 (2025-03-25T20:38:57Z)
$ rpm-ostree status
State: idle
Deployments:
ā— ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bazzite-dx:stable
Digest: sha256:f2ade0123dfa624c6b0a688b037e37d7d569aa618ad38d09d4fdb799b98b38a6
Version: 41.20250331 (2025-03-31T07:20:18Z)

ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bazzite:stable
Digest: sha256:a4a2c0458a6e01af8fbcfae5f6192d09c0429cacee50604489b1a7072101efa1
Version: 41.20250325 (2025-03-25T20:38:57Z)
@Raevenant
Raevenant
Raevenant•5w ago
yeah, regular bazzite-stable also works Also since when do we have bazzite-dx what??
abdorithm
abdorithmOP•5w ago
I wanted the gaming stuff from bazzite and the dev stuff from aurora/bluefin and I found this šŸ˜‚ https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite-dx
GitHub
GitHub - ublue-os/bazzite-dx: The Bazzite Developer Experience
The Bazzite Developer Experience. Contribute to ublue-os/bazzite-dx development by creating an account on GitHub.
Fenaer
Fenaer•5w ago
Super interested in that. What features does it give?
wolfyreload
wolfyreload•5w ago
The major features for me are vscode, docker and android sdk platform is preinstalled.

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