Valve has released a new desktop update for the Steam Stable Client, and along with it comes the option to use the New Big Picture Mode. However, they broke it on Linux, at least for NVIDIA.
You can try out the New Big Picture Mode by launching Steam with "-gamepadui" as an option to go into it directly or with "-newbigpicture" to launch Steam normally but have the Big Picture button go into the new mode.
It worked mostly fine (outside of a few bugs) for me on desktop, until they also added a special boot-up video for the New Big Picture Mode that was in the last Beta and now everyone has it in the Stable update. For some reason, at least on NVIDIA, you hear the intro video playing but it doesn't actually display anything. So far the only people reporting it are on NVIDIA, so I'm unsure if it's on AMD GPUs too.
Pictured - the New Big Picture Mode on Fedora Linux
Hopefully it won't be too long before Valve or NVIDIA figure out what the issue is. I would quite like to use it on my desktop too as it's a nice improvement.
Here's all the changes:
New Big Picture Mode
General
- Updated Big Picture is now available for testing. You can read more about it in this blog post. Modify your Steam client shortcut and add -gamepadui on the command-line to automatically start Steam in the new Big Picture Mode. Alternatively, pass -newbigpicture to start in Desktop mode and have access to the new Big Picture Mode at any time.
Sign In
- Reduced client startup times for users with large game libraries
- Fixed issue where launching a game would take longer to start if there was no network connection
- Fixed VR flags not showing up in app details for some games
- Center the popup controller configurator window when viewing controller layout
- Fixed circular download progress indicator being broken in game entry list
- Fixed downloads page crashing when starting in offline mode
- Downloads page now properly responds to online/offline status
- Updated “Steam News” popup dialog (again)
Steam Input
- Fix a case where if the sign-in UI had cached credentials which had become invalid, it could get stuck and not accept valid credentials thereafter
- Fixed an input focus bug requiring an initial click on the sign in UI before you could type your username or password
- Fixed issues with dragging or closing the sign in window, and related display scaling issues, on computers with nonstandard desktop scaling
- Fixed an edge case in handling of invalid cached credentials affecting reauthentication
- Fixed issue with sign in refresh UI when the user had already signed in once during the current session.
Remote Play
- Gyro Enabling: The "Touch" option is now available to controllers which do not have capacitive touch sensors - Moving joysticks out of their deadzone now counts as a "Touch".
- All controller types can each now optionally choose to use a Nintendo-style layout. This flips the A and B button and X and Y button universally in Steam and in games.
- The Xbox extended features driver has been updated for Windows 11
- Fixed hang when the Amazon Luna controller rumbles on macOS
- Fixed issue with the touch binding in As Mouse mode releasing before the end of a swipe
SteamVR
- Fixed occasional long hitches during Windows desktop capture
- Fixed glyphs for third party Nintendo controllers while streaming
- Fixed issue that caused some OpenXR app images to not appear properly in SteamVR
On the Steam Deck, that place is reserved for the control hints.
thanks for the post, Liam. Just curious, does the bottom bar stay completely black, or is that a screenshot issue?It should show the controls, but it's likely in that shot I wasn't focusing on any UI element with the mouse.
On the Steam Deck, that place is reserved for the control hints.
Works for me on nvidia 3090 w/ proprietary drivers on Wayland. Just tested that out. Haven't checked on X11 yet though. Ran a bit sluggish in my opinion but it displayed the new ui with the -gamepadui flag.I just get a black outline on X11 with my 3080. Then again I'm using the 510.85.02 driver in Debian Sid, as they haven't updated the driver in a bit.
It works for me on xorg via a 2060 with the 520 driversI'll have to try it under Garuda. Wonder if it's depending on something in newer drivers (I updated to 515 and it's still broken)
Somehow I got it stuck in the busted mode; in other words, starting Steam acts like I started with -gamepadui and it launches into the broken mode, and all I know to do is press Alt+F4 to close it. Anyone know how to get it back to desktop mode?
I can only say that I started it once with the parameter, got the bug, and next start was fine. I guess you didn't edit a starting script or something? Maybe you can grep through the Steam folder for something like "gamepadui"?
See more from me