Another day another Steam Client Beta release and this time Valve has done some adjustments to the Vulkan pre-caching system for Linux.
This pre-cache system is supposed to download and then process the shaders needed by a game before you launch it. The point is to have games perform well as soon as you hit play, instead of seeing constant stuttering while it builds up as you play. What Valve has now done is reduce the size of "Vulkan pre-caching datasets by splitting and versioning them according to Proton versions and graphics driver capabilities" and so they will start from scratch for the new Beta.
Additionally for Linux the recently introduced PipeWire desktop capture for Remote Play has been disabled by default, instead you can launch Steam with "-pipewire" if you wish to use it.
For all Steam users the Game File Verification has been improved so Steam will try to reuse as much of a corrupted file as possible to save download bandwidth and Steam Cloud got a fix for an infinite retry loop for failed background file downloads.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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15 comments
Ok so let me see if I understand correctly: Is Pipewire a *drop-in* replacement for both pulseaudio and jack?
So any application who utilise either of the two will also work on pipewire without alteration in their setup? Install pipewire and remove jack and pulse, and all should work as before only with potential latency benefits?
It's indicated on the pipewire homepage, but it's not 100% clear to me.
Last edited by Beamboom on 29 September 2021 at 9:09 am UTC
So any application who utilise either of the two will also work on pipewire without alteration in their setup? Install pipewire and remove jack and pulse, and all should work as before only with potential latency benefits?
It's indicated on the pipewire homepage, but it's not 100% clear to me.
Last edited by Beamboom on 29 September 2021 at 9:09 am UTC
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Quoting: BeamboomOk so let me see if I understand correctly: Is Pipewire a *drop-in* replacement for both pulseaudio and jack?
So any application who utilise either of the two will also work on pipewire without alteration in their setup? Install pipewire and remove jack and pulse, and all should work as before only with potential latency benefits?
I get that impression from the pipewire homepage, but it's not very explicit in their dsecriptions.
Yes, it's a drop-in replacement, though it's not that simple as just installing the one and removing the other. Fedora switched to PipeWire by default, other distros might require manual configuration. Steam works fine with PulseAudio so there is nothing to gain from tinkering with PipeWire.
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Quoting: chelobakaSteam works fine with PulseAudio so there is nothing to gain from tinkering with PipeWire.The gain is rather to not have both jack and pulseaudio running, as many of us who also create music on Linux are more or less forced to do.
If one package could merge the use cases of both pulse and jack - as indeed seem to be their ambition - this is a major, major gain.
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superboybot Sep 29, 2021
Quoting: BeamboomOk so let me see if I understand correctly: Is Pipewire a *drop-in* replacement for both pulseaudio and jack?
So any application who utilise either of the two will also work on pipewire without alteration in their setup? Install pipewire and remove jack and pulse, and all should work as before only with potential latency benefits?
It's indicated on the pipewire homepage, but it's not 100% clear to me.
Pipewire is compatible with pulsewire and jack specific applications with pipewire-pulse and pipewire-jack respectively (on Arch, may be different on other distros).
I run catia (Link through pipewire with the command pw-jack catia.
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Quoting: superboybotPipewire is compatible with pulsewire and jack specific applications with pipewire-pulse and pipewire-jack respectively (on Arch, may be different on other distros).
Fantastic. I'll have to look into this. Thanks!
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The more they do, the more I love the magnificent work and effort they're doing for Linux. And therefore for us 
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For those who are not aware: PipeWire screensharing was probably disabled by default, as everytime Steam started, it asked which screen to share. As there is currently no way to have it remember the user's choice it was probably disabled for now.
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Quoting: ScrumplexPipeWire screensharing was probably disabled by default
... enabled ...
*edit*
To be clearer. :)
It was enabled before this version and has been disabled now.
Last edited by Eike on 29 September 2021 at 1:03 pm UTC
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Quoting: ScrumplexFor those who are not aware: PipeWire screensharing was probably disabled by default, as everytime Steam started, it asked which screen to share. As there is currently no way to have it remember the user's choice it was probably disabled for now.
Yep. This is likely exactly why they DISABLED it by default. It was rather annoying to be prompted every single time.
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Ah! I had already wondered why I was asked which monitor to use for sharing. It wasn't a big deal, but I wondered. Makes sense to disable it for now till that kink is sorted out.
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Mohandevir Sep 29, 2021
Quoting: superboybotI run catia
For a split second, I tought my world just got way better... Damn! Not the same Catia(Dassault) I use at work...
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Arehandoro Sep 29, 2021
The first issues I remember with Remote Play started after upgrading to fedora 34, but I did install Pipewire in fedora 33 for Cyberpunk and the test days, maybe I had issues before 34, and Pipewire was the culprit all along.
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Quoting: superboybotI run catia (Link through pipewire with the command pw-jack catia.Looks like https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pipewire-jack-dropin allows to run stuff without typing pw-jack
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Sep 29, 2021
Quoting: axredneckQuoting: superboybotI run catia (Link through pipewire with the command pw-jack catia.Looks like https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pipewire-jack-dropin allows to run stuff without typing pw-jack
Yes. It's great. All the pulse clients can talk to the JACK clients individually now, without doing crazy stuff like setting up a separate pulse-jack sink for each application.
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connecting both worlds has really become easy plus I think pure pipewire applications will get more prominent over time.
But as far as I understood the documentation, pipewire isn't as low-latency as pure jack, yet.Though that info might be outdated by now. Quite a lot happening there...
Last edited by const on 29 September 2021 at 7:07 pm UTC
But as far as I understood the documentation, pipewire isn't as low-latency as pure jack, yet.Though that info might be outdated by now. Quite a lot happening there...
Last edited by const on 29 September 2021 at 7:07 pm UTC
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