I actually do own an external usb sound card, this problem doesn’t happen there. I don’t use it because it has a severe crackling/static noise constantly playing, I could also never figure it out. My luck with audio in Linux is just not there. EDIT: after further testing, it also happens there but I REALLY have to boost both the mic and sound volume. But it happens, which is scary.

I was imprecise in the description of my connection. My headset only has one of 3.5mm who has both micro + headphone combined, like the one you use on your smartphone. I think it’s called TRSS. I then use the Y cable that came from with my headphones to split it into two separate 3.5mm connections, one for input and another for output. When I disconnected my headphones, the Y cable remained connected to audio card. It appears that the Y cable is the source of the problem.

If I only use the microphone jack of my Y cable, and connect my speakers to the sound card output, it works fine. The should outputs the the speakers, the input comes from my microphone and it doesn’t loopback.

I’ve tried a second pair of Y cable but the same is happening. Both are oficial Beyerdynamic cables, maybe swapping to another brand could fix it?

At least now I can make some sense out of the problem, even if I’m unable to fix it. I opened a bug report on pipewire as you suggested but I doubt anything will come out of it. I think I’ll just buy a non-ancient USB sound card and see how that works out for me.

Any idea on how I could possibly debug that?

I use a Beyerdynamic Custom One Pro with a Vmoda Boom ProX microphone. It connects to my internal audio card via a normal 3.5mm jack. The problem happens even after I unplug them.

Optimized gaming distros often have stuff pre-installed, such as nvidia drivers, steam, heroic launcher… But you can pretty much install whatever you want and replicate that behavior.

Bazzite in particular provides a fantastic gaming experience but, in my personal opinion, a bad desktop experience. It’s great for devices used almost exclusively to gaming, not so great if you have to work every day.

If you’ve already installed vanilla arch on your laptop then you’re good to go, that’s the hard part. EndeavourOS has a very user friendly installer but still uses Arch’s official repos. I like to think of it as a quickstart installation, but still feels pretty much like arch. I wouldn’t recommend Bazzite to a main computer, especially since I believe their gaming stack is optimized for AMD.

Gaming on arch/endeavour is pretty straight forward

• Install your nvidia drivers
• Install steam
• Go to Steam > Settings > Compatibility and enable “Enable Steam Play for all other titles”
• Play your games

Boot up a VM and install vanilla Arch Linux using the wiki instead of archinstall. Notice that Arch Linux isn’t very pretty out of the box and take the time to set some “sane defaults”. Imagine having a person who is new to Linux to jump through all those hoops when they’re not even sure if Linux is for them. Imagine all the little things that could have gone wrong in this process and how a clueless person would react to them.

EndeavourOS is extremely easy to install. Next next next and it’s done. It looks pretty out of the box and has sane defaults. The only reason I don’t recommend Endeavour to newbies is because it lacks a software manager/store, which REALLY help newbies out. The very frequent updates are also not for everyone.

I love EndeavourOS but it’s certainly not for everyone.

Isn’t Pop OS super outdated right now, tho?

Is there a (Linux) command I can run to check my power consumption?

I have tried the PROTON_HIDE_NVIDIA_GPU=1 before and I can tell you it definitely helps. The game is unplayable without it, to be honest. The VRAM still fills up but it’s not instantly, it takes quite a while. Makes the problem manageable.

Edit: Several people have reported that this VRAM bug doesn’t happen on AMD cards. If you happen to have one, you might give it a try.

Unfortunately I do not. I bought this nvidia card long before I switched to Linux and boy, do I regret it.

I believe that config needs to be in the working directory context of the game, but maybe I’m misremembering that.

Yep, I tried that as well. I have the exact same file in /gamedrive//SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/Diablo IV/

If upon starting your game, it immediately starts using 10GB of vid mem, then that is what is needed by the game to run. Setting this to 8GB is going to magically make it run by using less.

But the game does quickly fill 10GB with both low and ultra settings. It hints to me that the game doesn’t need 10GB to run. It just makes use of the available memory. My theory is that using 8GB would at least make my desktop usable. Currently, switching to my browser in the second monitor can break the game. If I never focus out of the game it doesn’t break.

• Problem occurs in both x11 and wayland
• Window vs fullscreen makes no difference
• ProtonDB has some additional flags, I tried them all
• I tried several proton versions from 8 to 9, GE and no GE. Made no difference

See if you can force a specific renderer that is more stable.

What are the available options? I haven’t tried this.

Thanks a bunch!

If you try with a Tor browser you’ll get a unique ID everytime.

Feel free to try this one instead: https://www.amiunique.org/fingerprint

Or whatever website you prefer, really. Fingerprinting is not solved by a single extension or checkbox. It’s really hard.

• Go here: https://fingerprint.com/demo/
• Note your fingerprint ID
• Wait whatever time you want
• Try again
• It’s the same ID

You can try to fool it with a VPN, change country, etc but it doesn’t work. Fingerprinting is very strong these days.

I’d upgrade if given the choice to do so. Lineage is stuck on Android 12 for my device so I guess that’s it.

You may find it laughable but it is what it is. Most people does not enjoy signing up for specific product forums. It’s much easier to just add yet another discord server to the list.

I’m very happy to report that I found a solution to the problem: keyd. It’s amazing.

• GitHub project here

• Credits for finding it

Instructions on the github project are crystal clear, but I’ll leave some instructions below for Arch Users

yay -S keyd

sudo systemctl enable keyd && sudo systemctl start keyd

Now you can configure the /etc/keyd/default.conf file to your hearts desire. keyd is very feature rich, check the man page to see everything you can do. You can even add layers to your keyboard. Very sweet.

My personal configuration so far (I will definitely expand it later when I bump into more problems)

[ids]
*

[main]
' = oneshotm(apostrophe, ')

[apostrophe]
a = a
b = macro(space backspace apostrophe space b)
c = macro(backspace G-,)
d = macro(space backspace apostrophe space d)
e = e
f = macro(space backspace apostrophe space f)
g = macro(backspace apostrophe space g)
h = macro(space backspace apostrophe space h)
i = i
j = macro(space backspace apostrophe space j)
k = macro(backspace apostrophe space k)
l = macro(backspace apostrophe space l)
m = macro(backspace apostrophe space m)
n = macro(backspace apostrophe space n)
o = o
p = macro(space backspace apostrophe space p)
q = macro(space backspace apostrophe space q)
r = macro(backspace apostrophe space r)
s = macro(backspace apostrophe space s)
t = macro(backspace apostrophe space t)
u = u
v = macro(space backspace apostrophe space v)
w = macro(backspace apostrophe space w)
x = macro(space backspace apostrophe space x)
y = macro(backspace apostrophe space y)
z = macro(backspace apostrophe space z)

After editing /etc/keyd/default.conf make sure you run sudo keyd reload

That reminds me, I do own a pine64 device! It was the first thing I got on Kickstarter.

It’s a Pine A64, with 2gb RAM. I wonder if it has enough power to run all those things. It’s a budget device from 8 years ago, probably gonna have a hard time but I’ll give it a try if I manage to find it!

Raspberry Pi was my first choice, but apparently I can’t even back order it :/

I don’t agree with this. It creates a monetary barrier to starting a new channel. If uploading costs money the number of uploads is going to reduce considerably, no one likes to throw money away.

I do have an Nvidia card.

I’m on X11, I have an nvidia card and Wayland is way too buggy right now, even with the recent 545 driver.

As always, the Arch Wiki had the answer, I just didn’t see because it seems to describe a different issue. SDL_VIDEO_MINIMIZE_ON_FOCUS_LOSS=0 environment variable seems to do the trick.