Hi everyone! There is a problem with launching the game Dota 2 (it is native to Linux). Here are the specs of my laptop:
Operating System: KDE neon 5.27
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.8
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.110.0
Qt Version: 5.15.10
Kernel Version: 6.2.0-32-generic (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 8 × 11th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-11370H @ 3.30GHz
Memory: 15.3 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa Intel® Xe Graphics
Manufacturer: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
Product Name: ASUS TUF Dash F15 FX516PM_FX516PM
System Version: 1.0
While playing Dota I don’t notice anything, then after a random time the game freezes, the sound loops or remains and the entire environment freezes. (including where). I think it’s because I’m using X11, but in case I click USE Wayland I just get a black screen. Nvidia driver (proprietary, 525)
It seems that Dota is famous for random crashes as you describe. Depending on how willing you are to mess with your system, my first suspicion is that the issue may be sound related. I have traced a few odd crashes in some game engines to sound events. There may be a mismatch between the pulse config as set, and the pulse config asked for. Things like sample rate, bit depth and so on.
There are two possible ways to address this, neither of them trivial.
Force a config on Pulse
Enable Pipewire.
Much like X11, I have found a lot of the old ways of doing things no longer work with Pulse, so you may need to do some digging on how to get it to play nice. You may need to force pulse itself, or force the game with some cli args (Cyberpunk needs a sample rate set for example).
Instructions to migrate to Pipewire in Neon can be found here in the link below. I have not tested it on recent updates with Neon, but of a couple of months ago, this worked:
Failing that you might take a look at the Steam Linux Community as you may find useful suggestions.
I’ve had similar issues with Dota 2 freezing on Linux, and in my case, switching from X11 to Wayland helped a bit, but it wasn’t perfect. Sometimes, it’s also related to Nvidia drivers not playing nice with the system.