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With the Steam Play Proton 5.13 compatibility tool being a major upgrade, along with it now using the Steam Linux Container Runtime, it did come with some annoying issues that they're now trying to solve.

One of the problems was that since the Windows games are contained and isolated from your system, you couldn't then run tools like MangoHud or the post-processing layer vkBasalt. Valve have now updated the container systems, to allow them to import Vulkan layers from the host system. 

They also noted this about the new way it works:

The container does not have the same /etc or /usr as the host system, so not all system-wide configuration files will be available. For best results, use a configuration file in your home directory. Alternatively, there is a new environment variable PRESSURE_VESSEL_FILESYSTEMS_RO which can be used to pull in configuration files from other directories (although not /usr for technical reasons): for example you could use PRESSURE_VESSEL_FILESYSTEMS_RO="$MANGOHUD_CONFIGFILE:$VKBASALT_CONFIG_FILE".

You can see the full changelog for the original Scout runtime here, and the newer Soldier runtime here.

If you wish to try them out, you need to opt into the Beta of the Steam Linux Runtime and the Steam Linux Runtime - Soldier (the newer one), selecting the "client_beta" option from the dropdown.

For best results, you should also use the Steam Client Beta too.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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15 comments
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3zekiel Nov 26, 2020
yaaaaaaaayyyyyy
Was waiting on that for Atelier Ryza & Crystar which looks way better with some vibrance on color and SMAA + CAS
Xpander Nov 26, 2020
Finally... took some time.

vkbasalt sharpness is a real must for many todays games, cause for some reason many games are blurry as hell.
its also really good for older games to bring up the texture sharpness, give some SMAA and add some effects from reshade shaders like fakeHDR.fx which makes old games look a lot better.
Zlopez Nov 26, 2020
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I'm using the flatpaked Steam and they have problem running the Steam Linux Container Runtime at all (running flatpak inside flatpak is not possible yet). But they provide community build of the new Proton and it works without issue.
ljrk Nov 26, 2020
Quoting: ZlopezI'm using the flatpaked Steam and they have problem running the Steam Linux Container Runtime at all (running flatpak inside flatpak is not possible yet). But they provide community build of the new Proton and it works without issue.

Yes this is due to the design of Flatpak which actually already is a container. So they work on being able to spawn containers from within the Flatpak in order to properly do this. But meanwhile, the community build works fine as well, as it effectively everything runs in a container already.
Homedread Nov 26, 2020
Yesterday, I was almost desperate, any games launch anymore on my new laptop (lenovo 15p) with proton 5.13 (maybe to resent hardware, or Secure boot or whatever else). I spent 2 (no 4) hours to analyse, duckduckgoed error log message without any usefull result, may be something link to icd files, but any work around works, uninstall Steam packages, install flatpak steam, remove, retry with other config, broke nvidia with prime, manage manage to retrieve it modprobe and blacklist stuff, well, so many times spent to try to hack and understand "why Oh why", it didn't work for me as it work for others...
But now, just because of this news, I switch every things to beta and guess what : It works !!!
I don't know what they've done but Thanks to Liam and Proton Valve (and wine and collabora and ..so on and so on) devs ! You made my night !
Sojiro84 Nov 26, 2020
Works as advertised. Awesome job Valve & Co team!
michaldybczak Nov 26, 2020
I don't see such settings for Steam Runtime. Maybe it is because I use Steam Beta already which has it covered?
mylka Nov 27, 2020
i dont get it. what do i have to do to make mangohud work again? i updated linux runtime.
and where do i put this line PRESSURE_VESSEL_FILESYSTEMS_RO="$MANGOHUD_CONFIGFILE:$VKBASALT_CONFIG_FILE" ? launch option does not work
Pendragon Nov 27, 2020
weird .. my version.txt file says i have
steam-runtime_0.20201104.0

..that's not listed on either of the Scout or Soldier links..
I've already been using the Steam Beta client.. so not sure what's up
Rinkutux Nov 27, 2020
MangoHud still doesn't work, but vkBasalt works as expected. Weird. I have my mangohud conf file in ~/.config/Mangohud/Mangohud.conf
Do I need to set a special env variable for it to work ?
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