Steam gets overhauled with new overlay, Steam Deck big stable update

Had lots of trouble with the new Steam.
There had come different things together: nvidia-update, kernel-update and steam-update.
I've figured out with some help, that the latest nvidia didn't work with the new steam, so i downgraded them to 530.41.03 and it worked again.

I've been using this client on the beta train, and I don't get black screens, but what I do get is corrupted buffer contents showing briefly when drawing client window canvas now. It could be anything that was on the screen in the last few minutes, garbled, or sometimes it's just coloured TV "snow" like corruption.

I chocked it up to the browser initializing compositing for accelerated canvas etc. where my X client display is not regulated as such (old school WM). It's more related to X client and drivers I think than the software it occurs in.

It's harmless to me, though could be an embarrassing security/privacy issue for somebody that cares.


Last edited by Grogan on 15 Jun 2023 at 6:27 pm UTC

Nothing against the performance just yet, but the client seems to take a catastrophic amount of RAM : 1 freaking GB, almost as heavy as the entire OS surrounding it... wtf ?

Ah, I was hoping they'd have fixed the Store/Web view going black when switching windows, before labelling it as stable. Maybe next update.

I used to get this all the time on Gnome, but now that you mention it, Ive not had it at all since jumping over to KDE, so maybe it a compositor bug.

Happens to me on KDE any time I minimize the window.

Looks and works great! The only two small things I've noticed so far are:

1. It is not possible to launch selected games in small mode by pressing Enter key.
2. Opening the Steam overlay in CS:GO causes the game to hang and/or crash.

Why Valve keeps on hating us Linux players with 4K+ displays?

Why?

I know, there's a workaround and I'm happily (*) using it. But it's a workaround. I don't want workarounds, I want the XXI Century to knock on someone's door and introduce itself to devs.
___
(*) - for a very, non-overlay definition of happy.

Ah, I was hoping they'd have fixed the Store/Web view going black when switching windows, before labelling it as stable. Maybe next update.

I used to get this all the time on Gnome, but now that you mention it, Ive not had it at all since jumping over to KDE, so maybe it a compositor bug.

Happens to me on KDE any time I minimize the window.

Never had that issue on mine using KDE (Manjaro).

Disrto pacific maybe, GPU driver even?

Ah, I was hoping they'd have fixed the Store/Web view going black when switching windows, before labelling it as stable. Maybe next update.

I used to get this all the time on Gnome, but now that you mention it, Ive not had it at all since jumping over to KDE, so maybe it a compositor bug.

I've been using the beta of this for a few months now and can't recall seeing anything like that, what exactly did you do to trigger it?

Any time I switch to a different workspace / virtual desktop than the one Steam is on, the Store page contents area is black when I come back. As my workflow is heavily workspace oriented, it's fairly annoying.
It's actually not related to my compositor (picom) as it happens whether it's running or not, so it's something in the way my WM (bspwm) handles switching workspaces, but Steam is also the only application that shows this behaviour.

It's all great and I love it all, except, at least on the current Xubuntu with x11, there's an annoying focus-stealing bug that happens every time a Steam Chat notification pops up, requiring switching to another window and then back to the one that you were in so as to resolve it. Fairly irritating when chatting whilst trying to scroll through documents and edit stuff in GIMP!

I did some searching and it seems this was reported back in May, when it was still in beta, so here's hoping that it's fixed soon.

EDIT: A Xubuntu update came in a short while ago, and the issue with Steam seems to be fixed now! I guess it was an Xfce issue (couldn't be compositor - I have that turned off), not a Steam one, in my case?

EDIT: Nope, it's still causing problems. Back to waiting!


Last edited by Pengling on 19 Jun 2023 at 2:37 am UTC

As a grumpy old man who hates change....... No sir I dont like it.......

Whatever update just came out has killed desktop mode for me. Attempting to access it just reboots my Deck immediately and now it is on verifying installation and has been for ages. Am on stable branch, had an update show up and complete, and was working fine before that.

as an artist i dont like it for the same reason im not a big fan of mods... it destroy the artistic vision.

Very odd point of view, for a variety of reasons.
1. It assumes that the modders don't have such a thing like artistic vision.
2. It assumes that the developers artistic vision is in some way superior to that of a modder.
3. It assumes that there aren't games out there with odd artistic visions, which don't suit the wishes/needs of potential gamers.

Many Mods add flavour, depth or whole new perspectives to games. I really can't see how that diminishes the intentions of the developer. In that logic adaptations of music shouldn't be a thing. Besides that, there are also a whole bunch of Mods out there that clear out the bugs of half-assed or underfunded developed games.


Last edited by Deleted_User on 16 Jun 2023 at 7:55 am UTC

Looks and works great! The only two small things I've noticed so far are:

1. It is not possible to launch selected games in small mode by pressing Enter key.
2. Opening the Steam overlay in CS:GO causes the game to hang and/or crash.

Damn you are right, the Enter key launch is gone!
And, indeed, the CS:GO overlay causes the game to crash…


Last edited by Bogomips on 16 Jun 2023 at 8:12 am UTC

as an artist i dont like it for the same reason im not a big fan of mods... it destroy the artistic vision.

Very odd point of view, for a variety of reasons.
1. It assumes that the modders don't have such a thing like artistic vision.
2. It assumes that the developers artistic vision is in some way superior to that of a modder.
3. It assumes that there aren't games out there with odd artistic visions, which don't suit the wishes/needs of potential gamers.

Many Mods add flavour, depth or whole new perspectives to games. I really can't see how that diminishes the intentions of the developer. In that logic adaptations of music shouldn't be a thing. Besides that, there are also a whole bunch of Mods out there that clear out the bugs of half-assed or underfunded developed games.

1)i dont mean they dont have one, i mean they have their OWN artistic vision that differ from the autor of the game.
2 and 3)its not about wich one is superior or inferior, if i dont like one particular game i can just play other games.

this mindset of "i improved your art" is dumb, most of the time, different people like different things, some people prefer realism others fantasy, some people prefer the Akira Toriyama art styles, others prefer the style from Clamp, Studio Ghibli and so on.
people who are iliterate to art might think those horrible "unreal engine ocarian of time remake" looks great, they look horrible in my opinion, or those texture packs, most of the time they claim they improved the graphics, but they just make it look worse, maybe they improved one asset but then everything else didnt match it as an result, maybe they improved a lot but now each asset has their own style, instead of following an consistent art direction.
its quite hard for someone to "nail it" even on official remakes/reboots/remasters.
if you dont like something that is fine, but saying you are better sound arrogant at best.
that reminds me the time when americans changed a lot of stuff in animes like the sound track claiming they were improving it and adapting to their audience, most of the time they destroyed and the audience hated when they figured out how they were scammed and preffer the original version.


now, ofcourse there are exceptions, i dont like the original higurashi game art, it was made by someone who didnt knew how to draw and that was obvious from looking at it, the remake was much better, and im not saying "you should NEVER mod something even for comedy purposes, i just dont like how art is viewed and treated nowadays.
https://xkcd.com/299/

art belong to the artist, if it belong to the public then its just fanservice, if it belong to the investors its just a product.
imagine being an artist and not being able to draw what you want, to write what you want, because its not profitable?
no one liked Dragon Ball Art style before they watched it, people watched it and started liking the style as an result.
if we follow the trends instead of trying to create something then everything will look the same.

now, dont get me wrong, im not against derivative content (eg: fangames, fanarts, even the erotic variants ) even on different art styles.

i just think that if you going to play something, at least give the original some chance to shiny before you tweak it with mods.

take a look at this article for example:
https://www.polygon.com/2015/5/13/8595963/a-pixel-artist-renounces-pixel-art

as for fixing bugs , that is fine but we shouldnt encourage developers to rely on their fans to fix their mess.

as for this overlay, its different because the goal is not waiting for the player to finish an game THEN leting it use an overlay to improve the experience, quite the opposite.


Last edited by elmapul on 16 Jun 2023 at 8:30 am UTC

Bah.

I know a lot of folks really like the new update, but for me it was the final straw which made me abandon the beta branch and try to avoid it for awhile. I know they've said they put a lot of work into making it fast/smooth/whatever, but it just *feels* dog-slow to me. Visible little flickers when a menu activates. Little rendering delays when a window closes so there's a black area visible on the main window until the client catches up. It's just so infuriating.

This!

I hate how every app nowadays is just some Electron-or-whatever webapp, and optimizing that kind of thing properly is nearly impossible. I really miss native widgets.

This, too!

I really like the notes and browser in-game, it just came in very handy trying to work out how to do something while playing. Much better than quitting, looking it up, restarting etc.

I really like the notes and browser in-game, it just came in very handy trying to work out how to do something while playing. Much better than quitting, looking it up, restarting etc.

For a lot of games, wouldn't alt-tab work for that?

I've stayed off the beta branch, so this is my first chance to see the new changes. In general: I like it, especially the new overlay stuff like being able to pin a window with achievements you want to keep in mind as you play. Haven't found any major show-stoppers yet.

It's sort-of fixed a bug I had with Cinammon on Debian, where if I had Steam running when I put my computer to sleep, upon re-awakening the Steam window would look like MissingNo channeling Picasso, which I could only fix by fully quitting Steam and restarting it. It's still not perfect upon reawakening now, but I can just close the window with the 'X' button and re-open it from the task bar icon to fix it, which is a lot quicker.

I really like the notes and browser in-game, it just came in very handy trying to work out how to do something while playing. Much better than quitting, looking it up, restarting etc.

For a lot of games, wouldn't alt-tab work for that?

Yes, for some. But not the one I'm currently playing

Well I'm giving this 2 thumbs down. I have to restart Steam everyday now since the content part of steam gets stuck on whatever was in it on sleep. And performance is terrible, the new achievement popup windows is incredibly laggy it seems it pegs one of my cpu cores at 100% just for a scrolling list of 75 items!