NVIDIA working with Valve to get Gamescope working on their drivers

Quoting: Liam DaweHowever, it only really works with AMD GPUs right now

While they don't technically offer dedicated GPUs (yet), Intel is also supported.

As owner of nvidia gpu for so long time I would say that it's too late for me to get excited. So far nvidia is not good deal for gaming on Linux. My plans are to buy amd gpu next year. I hope things get better for me after that

As owner of nvidia gpu for so long time i would say i really haven't even had the need for gamescope as everything has been working perfectly with multimonitor for me. Games run, perform, open in correct monitor etc. Cant really complain, but i guess good to hear they are working with valve.

This is wonderful news. I still intend to change back to an AMD GPU (I mean I would even if I didn't use a Linux distro lol), but this will be of great use to me while I wait, and especially those who intend to stick with their Nvidia GPUs.

With any luck, this will solve most of the visual novels I play not being able to be fullscreened.

Though I'm probably misunderstanding something about how Gamescope works.

Re:

Quoting: GithubYou can spoof a virtual screen with a desired resolution and refresh rate as the only thing the game sees, and control/resize the output as needed. This can be useful in exotic display configurations like ultrawide or multi-monitor setups that involve rotation.

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualWith any luck, this will solve most of the visual novels I play not being able to be fullscreened.

KDE has lots of options to force windows to what you want.

That PR also mentions GAMMA_LUT support arriving at some point, which is afaik the missing requirement for night light on Gnome Wayland with the NVIDIA drivers. Very nice and hope it won’t take that long.


Last edited by jens on 25 March 2022 at 12:08 pm UTC

Nice! Looking forward to install SteamOS 3 on my Nvidia PC.


Last edited by Mohandevir on 25 March 2022 at 1:19 pm UTC

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualWith any luck, this will solve most of the visual novels I play not being able to be fullscreened.

KDE has lots of options to force windows to what you want.

If only they had the option to force windows to use the Linux kernel instead of NT...

Quoting: MohandevirNice! Looking forward to install SteamOS 3 on my Nvidia PC.

I'm not sure it would be that good, for now SteamOS 3 is pretty much specialized for the steam deck, and although you can use the desktop on SteamOS 3, it's a bit experimental I would say, you would either have to remove the read-only and see your changes overwritten by updates, or install everything via flatpak, which I'm sure has its limitations.

You can use gamescope on a standard linux distro, like ubuntu or manjaro, just fine. You just have to edit the steam options to use it with the games you want

Quoting: toor

Quoting: MohandevirNice! Looking forward to install SteamOS 3 on my Nvidia PC.

I'm not sure it would be that good, for now SteamOS 3 is pretty much specialized for the steam deck, and although you can use the desktop on SteamOS 3, it's a bit experimental I would say, you would either have to remove the read-only and see your changes overwritten by updates, or install everything via flatpak, which I'm sure has its limitations.

You can use gamescope on a standard linux distro, like ubuntu or manjaro, just fine. You just have to edit the steam options to use it with the games you want

It's all speculation, for the moment. From what I read, Valve plans to release SteamOS 3 for other configurations. It will probably be a little different to what we see on Steam Deck. I'm still willing to at least try it and make my own opinion, but my gaming rig is hooked to my TV, atm... It's a big console... Could be a good match.

Quoting: HoriThey either need to be serious (right now they're anything but... and always have been) about their Linux support in their drivers, or open source them... or ideally both.

Ignoring the very likely legal issues with what you propose, do you really think that just changing the license and dumping thousands of lines of code on GitHub would change anything?

I guess what you are really asking is that NVIDIA sets up there driver development like amdgpu (the kernel part) and Mesa, which essentially means rewriting the complete driver from scratch. I don’t know anything about the NVIDIA driver, but I’m very certain that you don’t do this on a Friday afternoon.

Please don’t get me wrong, I would also prefer that NVIDIA drivers integrates better into the modern graphics stack on Linux and I’m also certain and don’t like that e.g. Wayland adoption is unfortunately way slower due to that. It’s also completely fair that you are switching vendors for your next card. Though please don’t demand a solution which sounds popular, but really wouldn’t work in practice and completely misses the point for this complex issue.

Quoting: Hori

Quoting: kalinAs owner of nvidia gpu for so long time I would say that it's too late for me to get excited. So far nvidia is not good deal for gaming on Linux. My plans are to buy amd gpu next year. I hope things get better for me after that

Cannot agree more.
My next GPU is going to be AMD for sure.
Even if Nvidia GPUs are technically more powerful (though that's very debatable) it doesn't matter much on Linux if they drivers are garbage. On Windows it might make sense to keep using Nvidia, but on Linux I will go with AMD from now on and save myself a lot of trouble, headaches, disappointments and stuff that I paid for but cannot use or works shoddily.

They either need to be serious (right now they're anything but... and always have been) about their Linux support in their drivers, or open source them... or ideally both.

I've used Nvidia GPUs since I've been using Linux, since 2006 and never had any problems. They always just worked and it's very easy to update the drivers on Arch. I recently upgraded my GTX 970 to an AMD RX 6600 and it was incredibly painful. I even had to buy a new monitor! I wish I'd waited for an RTX 3060 at the time.

It's all working smoothly now (eventually) but I'm writing this just for balance as I see a lot of people on here moan about Nvidia drivers

Edit: I also miss GPU hardware accelerated nvenc ffmpeg encoding for my DVD rips.


Last edited by fabertawe on 25 March 2022 at 5:24 pm UTC

Quoting: HoriEven if Nvidia GPUs are technically more powerful (though that's very debatable) it doesn't matter much on Linux if they drivers are garbage.

Nvidia hold people by the balls with Cuda, and the fact they have a huge advance in AI (DLSS) and in ray tracing.

Nvidia drivers have always been "decent" on Linux, I remember the time it was the only viable solution before AMD/ATI opened up the specifications of their hardware and made their drivers open source.

I'm using an AMD GPU and I am very happy about it, I love having open source drivers that work great, and support for Wayland and gamescope.
Although for now I stick with X, games work with XWayland, but Wayland compositors don't yet handle everything that can be done with X, as for instance randr to control monitors (you can with compositors based on wlroots, but for instance kde and gnome don't rely on it), or being able to capture the desktop to stream it with steam link (you can if running steam with -pipewire argument, but then you have to pick which monitor to stream, you can't have all of them), and I really enjoy controlling my computer with my steam controller.

this is exciting as i have a nvidia gpu and have been wanting to play older windows 7 games but they have the old standard resolution from those days causing them to appear in a small windows on a 1080 monitor. hopefully the scaling that comes with gamescope can help with that.

Waiting for Gamescope to get proper fullscreen and VRR support. Atm I think it just does borderless window which disables vrr/freesync etc...

Quoting: silverhikarithis is exciting as i have a nvidia gpu and have been wanting to play older windows 7 games but they have the old standard resolution from those days causing them to appear in a small windows on a 1080 monitor. hopefully the scaling that comes with gamescope can help with that.

I thought Proton (not Wine) can "bilinearly" upscale them when these games are set to fullscreen. But yes, FSR would be better...


Last edited by axredneck on 26 March 2022 at 7:46 pm UTC

Quoting: fabertawe

Quoting: Hori

Quoting: kalinAs owner of nvidia gpu for so long time I would say that it's too late for me to get excited. So far nvidia is not good deal for gaming on Linux. My plans are to buy amd gpu next year. I hope things get better for me after that

Cannot agree more.
My next GPU is going to be AMD for sure.
Even if Nvidia GPUs are technically more powerful (though that's very debatable) it doesn't matter much on Linux if they drivers are garbage. On Windows it might make sense to keep using Nvidia, but on Linux I will go with AMD from now on and save myself a lot of trouble, headaches, disappointments and stuff that I paid for but cannot use or works shoddily.

They either need to be serious (right now they're anything but... and always have been) about their Linux support in their drivers, or open source them... or ideally both.

I've used Nvidia GPUs since I've been using Linux, since 2006 and never had any problems. They always just worked and it's very easy to update the drivers on Arch. I recently upgraded my GTX 970 to an AMD RX 6600 and it was incredibly painful. I even had to buy a new monitor! I wish I'd waited for an RTX 3060 at the time.

It's all working smoothly now (eventually) but I'm writing this just for balance as I see a lot of people on here moan about Nvidia drivers

Edit: I also miss GPU hardware accelerated nvenc ffmpeg encoding for my DVD rips.

Well you are kind of lucky. Nvidia has had some massive repaint bugs on some desktops and window managers that took literally years to get fixed. This alone should have made me switch to AMD but I wanted to give Nvidia another chance, as their gaming performance is really good aside from this.

Quoting: omer666Well you are kind of lucky. Nvidia has had some massive repaint bugs on some desktops and window managers that took literally years to get fixed. This alone should have made me switch to AMD but I wanted to give Nvidia another chance, as their gaming performance is really good aside from this.

Since Gnome went to V3 (long time ago) I've not used a DE, rolled my own, with Compiz as WM. Never had any problems (that I can recall anyway!). Nor any problems with games.

It's funny that I've been "so lucky". Same with using Arch, never a problem, yet some people appear to have no end of woes!

Quoting: fabertawe

Quoting: omer666Well you are kind of lucky. Nvidia has had some massive repaint bugs on some desktops and window managers that took literally years to get fixed. This alone should have made me switch to AMD but I wanted to give Nvidia another chance, as their gaming performance is really good aside from this.

Since Gnome went to V3 (long time ago) I've not used a DE, rolled my own, with Compiz as WM. Never had any problems (that I can recall anyway!). Nor any problems with games.

It's funny that I've been "so lucky". Same with using Arch, never a problem, yet some people appear to have no end of woes!

Neither have I. Been using nvidia since 2004 and all I can recall is one driver update mishap. Most issues seem to have come from compositors that tried to do things "smarter". But gnome (and compiz with the unity desktop) never gave me a big hassle.

Quoting: TheRiddickWaiting for Gamescope to get proper fullscreen and VRR support. Atm I think it just does borderless window which disables vrr/freesync etc...

Don't know how freesync operates, but for GSYNC it really doesn't matter if it is fullscreen or borderless fullscreen window. It's just that the compositor needs to decide to let go of its control. Something that a lot of compositors refuse to do. No idea if this is different for wayland though.