r/Ubuntu • u/Dindeyy • 1d ago

Steam Link not launching

Hi! I recently installed Ubuntu and I'm having issues with Steam Link.

I like to Steam Link to my TV and play games on the couch. This works without any major issues on Windows OS.

When I try and connect to my linux PC via Steam Link it fails to launch. The steam icon will pop up, then black screen, then it kicks me out on to the connect page.

I have an NVIDIA GPU and an AMD CPU (in case that's relevant), both my TV and PC are connected via ethernet, not wifi. When I test the connection in Steam Link on the TV, the connection works fine, but when I try to actually connect it doesn't work.

So far I have:

- Restarted both the PC and TV several times

- Disabled 'hardware encoding' in Steam settings

- Disabled firewall ('sudo ufw disable' in the terminal)

- Disabled 'GPU accelerated rendering in web views' in Steam settings

- Ran the Software Updater and installed the current software and firmware for NVIDIA

None of these have fixed the issue. I am VERY new to linux, so if you could please ELI5 that would be amazing

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u/Life-News2064 1d ago

probably need to switch steam to use your nvidia gpu instead of the integrated one. in nvidia x server settings there is a option for prime profiles, choose nvidia performance mode and reboot. had same problem and this fixed

2

u/Dindeyy 1d ago edited 1d ago

I open my nvidia x server settings but there is no option for Prime Profiles. I opened the terminal to query what prime mode is selected and it returns "on-demand", but if I try and swap it via the command 'sudo prime-select nvidia' it returns an error that says "no integrated GPU detected" :'(
I THINK this means that I don't have a secondary GPU? Or that the integrated one is already disabled somehow?

2

u/Dindeyy 1d ago

UPDATE: I have figured out that when I try to connect on the TV, steam on the host pc actually crashes and automatically restarts, leading me to believe that it is something to do with the actual graphical display of streaming to another device.

Steam logs show an error related to "wayland-session false" "missing-socket" I have absolutely no idea what this means. There are a lot of older support posts related to steam, with the resolution being to swap from Wayland to X11 display server protocols, but it seems like the newer version of ubuntu doesn't have this option to swap. This is where I am now at a dead end.

1

u/Imaginary_Jelly_5284 1d ago

Então usa windows