[SOLVED] Steam window completely black under IceWM - can you help me with it?

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JAGIELSKI 30 Jul @ 12:20pm

The issue, although purely visual (the menus show up if I click where they're supposed to be and the entire window seems to be interactive), makes Steam unusable under IceWM, which is a shame as IceWM is THE lightest Linux GUI environment (okay, maybe TWM is lighter, but I'm not touching THAT) and I've considered using it for when I want to run heavier games (such as Cyberpunk) to squeeze some extra performance.

Any help on getting Steam window to render correctly under IceWM would be appreciated.

Distro: openSuSE Tumbleweed, the IceWM is the stock one available in the Tumbleweed repos, with no custom config.

Last edited by JAGIELSKI; 31 Jul @ 3:24am

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Showing 1-9 of 9 comments

Bad 💀 Motha 30 Jul @ 3:23pm

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+check+to+see+if+hardware+acceleration+is+enabled+in+Linux&newwindow=1&sca_esv=d0444d30016ff5d8&sxsrf=AE3TifOBRPuqTXwylxOc4c8vGVaC1ql21Q:1753914189852&source=lnms&fbs=AIIjpHyTFN8BbSyNXQ3oA-fn7H5N0_alFIlVM3Dsmdj_aHzoLxwxLLLCfPzthQs1CuDx_B_XX32oQJSgl4l5RwB8NwaLO6XWKcElo_3uxu1JPQvCfB1HSZt4zvjlkEIXW0D8sntYBfg1Nah1PLJSbaXJy3x4p4E0KFr0QqSEsOiswEpxbsTIXGtQoGaVaZLIIX9FaT6ImPtwbvVXfLL5bklFTBBH2ffdt_2IjtUbBZM18OFtBQ-msbI&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjfvILCz-WOAxW0FlkFHZFyGZ0Q0pQJegQIBhAH&biw=403&bih=761&dpr=1.79

JAGIELSKI 31 Jul @ 1:58am

Gee, why didn't I think of that? Oh wait, because glxgears work fine, as well as any 3D game I try to run.

The_Abortionator 31 Jul @ 3:01am

First off, no you aren't getting extra gaming performance from using a WM over a DE.

Second check to see if Steam in its settings has hardware rendering for the client turned on or off and toggle it then restart steam to see if its better.

JAGIELSKI 31 Jul @ 3:18am

First of all, KDE by itself, uses more CPU and RAM (not to mention all that wasted VRAM on Plasma), so I absolutely get more performance, secondly thank you for help.

Last edited by JAGIELSKI; 31 Jul @ 3:24am

The_Abortionator 31 Jul @ 3:26am

Originally posted by JAGIELSKI:
First of all, KDE by itself, uses more CPU and RAM (not to mention all that wasted VRAM on Plasma), so I absolutely get more performance, secondly that did literally nothing.

Its nice to assume used RAM and VRAM translate to a performance delta even though benchmarks show that not to be true but what eves, who needs facts when you can just come to random conclusions.

As far as that doing anything, well now we know (welcome to trouble shooting).

As another test you could try using the flatpak version to see if the same issue creeps up and dif it does you may has a configuration issue in your system. If it doesn't you might need to grab a lib of somekind.

JAGIELSKI 31 Jul @ 4:01am

Flatpak version has its own issues that are unrelated to any DE or WM and works much worse on my system than the one from the repo.

And in regards of performance, sure it won't matter in most games, but for those heavy ones (such as aforementioned Cyberpunk) where every bit of performance is necessary, it will make a difference. Especially in such CPU-bound game.

The_Abortionator 31 Jul @ 4:10am

Originally posted by JAGIELSKI:
Flatpak version has its own issues that are unrelated to any DE or WM and works much worse on my system than the one from the repo.

And in regards of performance, sure it won't matter in most games, but for those heavy ones (such as aforementioned Cyberpunk) where every bit of performance is necessary, it will make a difference. Especially in such CPU-bound game.

This has been benchmarked over and over. No, lightweight DE/WMs do not net you any more performance in games unless that extra RAM used puts you in to oom territory.

The DE isn't rendering while you are gaming so no its not stealing from you, plus most of that VRAM used gets surrendered while the game is rendering.