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Have you been having issues with Steam recently since the new Library Beta? This latest Beta update should make it a much better experience.

The newer Library (and Friends UI) are a bit heavier on your PC, as a lot of people noticed. However, you can enable GPU acceleration to make everything quite a bit smoother. That came at a cost though, as there was an unfurtunate memory leak and it sucked away performance from gaming. Valve have made attempts to address these issues in the new Beta update out.

Now the Library should be prevented from doing stuff on the GPU when the Library window is covered up, a memory leak was fixed if GPU Acceleration was turned on, some Library animations don't run if the Steam window doesn't have focus, the Library failing to load if you have a lot of non-Steam games was fixed and they also adjusted the GPU Acceleration to default on for Linux and Mac.

However, there's still a few issues they need to solve. For me, updating to this version with GPU Acceleration turned on caused my Library to not even load at all. Steam just became unresponsive when I tried. Going onto the Store worked, Collections sort of worked but the Library Home wouldn't load. Reloading Steam again seemed to fix it though. Twitchy, but okay now? Seems someone else reported a bug on that.

Another issue I've seen, is that when I ALT+TAB with a traditional full-screen game running I can no longer seem to interact with the Library—that's a bit of a woops from Valve. I've reported this one.

Just for Linux, they also updated the Steam Runtime. It now disables the obsolete SSLv3 in libcurl which should fix a problem with libcurl on Arch Linux. They also disabled LDAP in libcurl and updated SDL 2.

Release notes can be found here.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Beta, Steam, Update
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Koopacabras Oct 1, 2019
yeah I stopped using the beta because the library gets unresponsive, the issue is still there? when clicking the library the mouse cursor gets stuck at the pointy hand and I have to restart steam to get it working again.
Leopard Oct 1, 2019
Quoting: chancho_zombieyeah I stopped using the beta because the library gets unresponsive, the issue is still there? when clicking the library the mouse cursor gets stuck at the pointy hand and I have to restart steam to get it working again.

Never happened to me. I'm on beta since day 1. But memory leak was also visible on my end.
Koopacabras Oct 1, 2019
just tried the update. The problem is still there the library gets stuck and unresponsive with the pointy hand cursor.
scaine Oct 1, 2019
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I have the same problem with the Library - either it "freezes" (even though button presses still work), or I get a black page with nothing on it. Occasionally going to the Store, and back to the Library will fix it, but most times I have to restart Steam.

Seems to be consistent between Nvidia and AMD too, since me and Liam are on Nvidia, and I see that chancho_zombie is on AMD.

I might try turning off the GPU acceleration next, although I'm not about for the next few days.
2fastHunter Oct 1, 2019
Fingers crossed that Total War: Shogun 2 - Fall of the Samurai is working again with these fixes.
kirgahn Oct 1, 2019
I have to say that I really dislike this new library. While it introduces a few nice features (that I don't care much about personally) it really lacks customization options. There's so much wasted space everywhere and the user can't "fix" most of it. Vertical icons with missing artwork and no legacy icons option, can't hide the left panel, can't reduce the space between icons, obligatory shelves and so on. I'm not too worried about lingering bugs as they will get fixed eventually (hopefully), but this total lack of customization is really putting me off. I'm forcing myself to use just to get used to it, but I certainly wish they would introduce a legacy option there (spoiler: they will not, especially with the need to "enhance" product and events exposure).
Ardje Oct 1, 2019
I have the problems for months that I found my steam crashed. It always seems to have a need to allocate a single contiguous 8GB of RAM that mysteriously was not available anymore. I actually only work in big picture.


Last edited by Ardje on 1 October 2019 at 5:05 pm UTC
scaine Oct 1, 2019
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Huh - I'm the opposite. I love the new design. So much more engaging and eye-catching. I especially love the little "player" icon that appears next to games in your library to show that friends are playing that game - it gives you so much potential to hook up for a game with friends, instead of arranging it manually, or checking friend lists (which I rarely bothered with).

The only thing I'm missing right now, and I haven't spent long hunting, is a way to show what games are taking up the most space on my disk. I have to periodically do that to remove the big-hitters. Even with a terabyte disk, I have to some house-cleaning occasionally and it was pretty straightforward on the old design.

It also doesn't seem to be amazingly obvious when a game is using Steam Play (or am I missing something here)? No big deal though really.

So yeah, huge improvement in my books.
Koopacabras Oct 1, 2019
Quoting: scaineI have the same problem with the Library - either it "freezes" (even though button presses still work), or I get a black page with nothing on it. Occasionally going to the Store, and back to the Library will fix it, but most times I have to restart Steam.

Seems to be consistent between Nvidia and AMD too, since me and Liam are on Nvidia, and I see that chancho_zombie is on AMD.

I might try turning off the GPU acceleration next, although I'm not about for the next few days.

exactly the same as me yeah occasionally clicking on the store or clicking on the profile and going back to the library fixes it, but sometimes the library gets stuck and unresponsive, it doesn't scroll up and down anymore and the cursor is also stuck with the pointy hand, and nothing I click on the library works anymore.

thanks for the reply I thought it was a problem with my distro but it would be really strange because KDE Neon is based on Ubuntu 18.04, it's just Ubuntu with custom KDE gui on top.

UPDATE: so I searched on steam github, this is the bug possible fixes are disabling gpu acceleration and/or setting export STEAM_RUNTIME_PREFER_HOST_LIBRARIES=1.


Last edited by Koopacabras on 1 October 2019 at 5:49 pm UTC
Phlebiac Oct 1, 2019
Quoting: chancho_zombieThe problem is still there the library gets stuck and unresponsive with the pointy hand cursor.

I hadn't seen this before, but ironically just after reading this it happened to me.

Quoting: scaineI'm missing right now, and I haven't spent long hunting, is a way to show what games are taking up the most space on my disk.

On the Home screen, where it has the list of "ALL GAMES" one of the sorting options is "Size on Disk"

Quoting: scaineIt also doesn't seem to be amazingly obvious when a game is using Steam Play

That's the biggest missing feature from the new design, which I've been complaining about since the "leaked" preview.
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