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Sapphire 5500 XT with Linux
hihu Jan 25, 2020
Hello, after realizing that my Msi 960 GTX with only 2 Gb of memory had too less memory for newer games I decided to buy Sapphire 5500 XT with 8 Gb of memory. However the card works fine on windows I think it’s too new for Linux.

For steamos I tried this guide

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamOS/wiki/Opting-into-SteamOS-Beta

But after adding the beta repository and trying to run the upgrade I get the message that there are no packages to upgrade. What can I Try to make it work. Is the beta repository new enough for the 5500 XT?

I also have Debian 10. Is the testing repository from Debian new enough to make the card work?

Thank you very much for your help. I know you should not buy very new hardware close to release for Linux. But this card was exactly what I was searching for with very low energy consumption.

THX
Redface Jan 25, 2020
last time steamos got updates was 26 Jun, 2019 for the beta, then 2019/7/18 to stable, see https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/1/1640915206447555580/

So there is no difference between stable and beta since then.

Updates used to be announced on this forum https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/1/1640915206447555580/ while Steamos still was in maintenance mode, and there might be some new update at some point, but for now I would say it is unmaintained.

I do not know if Debian testing has a new enough kernel and mesa, but if not then you could just get those packages from unstable until they are in testing.

Last edited by Redface on 25 January 2020 at 3:30 pm UTC
hihu Jan 25, 2020
Thank you very much for your reply Redface.
So steamos is unmaintained right now. Some bugs I reported on github half a year ago are still not fixed. So it’s going forward very slowly. Seems that Valve is dropping support for many products recently. Even the steam controller.

So I have checked. According to Phoronix I would need kernel 5.5 and Mesa 19.3.
So in the back port repository of Debian is only 5.4. So I think I have to wait for some time. Or install the unstable version.

And I could think of installing Debian myself and on top the steamos client in big picture mode. Then I would have more recent software and things working. Can I configure steam that it is starting up in big picture after starting up?
Using a recent Linux distribution with steam client should be on par with the steam os? Or is steamos somehow optimized?
crt0mega Jan 26, 2020
It should be possible. I've got Debian Unstable on my HTPC, I'll test it for you when I'm back at home thursday evening.
mrdeathjr Jan 26, 2020
Quoting: hihuI know you should not buy very new hardware close to release for Linux. But this card was exactly what I was searching for with very low energy consumption. THX

this is completly true specially with amd cards (normally take time to be ready: 6 months or more depending gpu)

with nvidia dont have this problem (0 day support) but must be accept propietary driver

^_^

Last edited by mrdeathjr on 26 January 2020 at 10:12 pm UTC
Redface Jan 28, 2020
I have not tried it yet, and do not know if this is the best way to do it on a debian or ubuntu system, but the install script at https://github.com/ShadowApex/steamos-ubuntu looks pretty straight forward.

It does download the steam compositor as deb packages from steamos. There where recent articles here that Valve will continue to develop that, so might be best to get some packages based on the newest source: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/valve-give-a-little-more-info-on-what-gamescope-actually-does-for-linux-gaming.15783

Edit, I forgot to mention that the steam compositor is one thing that sets steamos big picture mode apart from other distributions just running steam in BPM.

Last edited by Redface on 28 January 2020 at 8:58 pm UTC
hihu Jan 29, 2020
A huge thank you to all of you,

I have different operating systems on my PC. I have 1 windows 10 installation, 1 debian 10 (stable) installation, 1 Steamos installation and 1 openSuse Leap installation, which i upgradet to openSuse Tumbleweed yesterday.

As I upgraded it to tumbleweed which comes with kernel 5.4 the GPU is recognized without problems and works. I installed Raise of the Tomb Raider in Steam. However this wasn't working. In the feral settings was openGL selected. However the game needs Vulkan support according to the website of feral. So maybe it's not implemented into the driver right now.I have to investigate it and the crash log in the evening or tomorrow as I hadn't time to do it yesterday.
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