I’ve been hoping to get Elden Ring up and running before the DLC comes out, but I haven’t had much luck so far. I am a newbie to Linux, currently running Debian 12 w/ GNOME, Ryzen 9 3900X, GTX 1080 Ti.
I have tried every proton version and plenty of suggested launch options with slightly varying levels of “success”, but the best I manage to get is Proton GE with no launch options and the game launches, flashes black, then white and then crashes, the whole time with the game’s custom cursor. Most other combinations get me a black screen before launch, no launch, or nothing (but steam says its running for a minute).
I believe my video drivers are all up to date, but I am a newbie, like I said, so I’m not confident I didn’t miss something. Has anyone else been running into this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Update: I installed the proprietary Nvidia drivers and now only get a black screen or frozen terminal when I launch my PC. I’m currently in recovery mode and attempting to follow troubleshooting guides with no luck. “ERROR: The control display is undefined; please run ‘nvidia-settings --help’ for usage information.” Is one of the errors I keep getting, but I only get part of the help dialogue, the rest is cut off. nvidia-smi just froze everything. Would it be a good idea to just go back to my installation media?
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Secure boot was already disabled, so I’m guessing it might be something else.
You should check proton logs. Add the following to launch options: ‘PROTON_LOG=1 %command%’. Then launch the game, you should see log file appear in your home directory.
Also, what’s your graphics card?
I ran it with the log, set to Proton GE. My graphics card is an nvidia gtx 1080 ti. Unfortunately, the log wasn’t much help to look at for me.
If you are super new to Linux I would suggest another distro besides Debian. Debian is great and I love it but it’s not set up out of the gate for games and newer people in general. Distros like Mint, ZorinOS, Bazzite, and Pop!OS are. Those distros will come with nvidia drivers or help you set up. Bazzite in particular is set up for gaming out of the box, I think it comes with steam and lutris pre installed.
You may be missing some setup for the X server.
One of the last installation steps will offer to update your X configuration file. Either accept that offer, edit your X configuration file manually so that the NVIDIA X driver will be used, or run nvidia-xconfig
More info here: http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/550.90.07/README/index.html
I have been trying to work through this option, I went though the whole installation again and never ran into this option. Unfortunately nvidia-xconfig does nothing. I’m not quite sure where I went wrong with this and it seems like all of the help I could find is assuming I have done/already know something I haven’t/don’t.
I had issues with several distros, here is the direct link for Bazzite with gnome for 1000+ series Nvidia cards. I run elden ring just fine on a 1060.
https://download.bazzite.gg/bazzite-gnome-nvidia-stable.iso
I also personally use KDE plasma instead of gnome so your milage may vary, but it shouldn’t.
Are you running it with EasyAntiCheat enabled? When I had an issue with the same behavior (white screen, custom cursor, then crash) EAC wasn’t initializing properly. If i recall correctly, I reinstalled the proton EAC runtime on Steam to fix it.
Also as another commenter said, don’t expect great performance with that GPU. While I was still using a 1080ti at Elden Ring’s launch I got around 35-45fps at 1440p, while easily hitting 60 on Windows.
I just tried uninstalling and reinstalling Proton EAC Runtime, but nothing changed, unfortunately.
