Arch Linux

superlex

Member

Registered: 2025-03-08

Posts: 13

[solved] Installing steam (or nvidia 32-bit drivers) makes monitor 4:3

I followed the steam installation guide from the arch wiki on a relatively fresh i3 system from archinstall (which had been rebooted quite a few times with no issues). I rebooted after installing steam, and my monitor appears to be stretched and stuck in 4:3 or 640x320 or something like that (I do not know how to check). Also, my second monitor is not just black but seems to be no longer recognized as I can't move windows to it with super+shift+right. I have an nvidia card and when promped to install a 32 bit vulkan (I think?) library, I followed the table and chose the second option of lib32-nvidia-utils. It's maybe worth noting that also the vga or whatever terminal that is displayed before the x session is opened is also stretched in this way.

The odd thing is that this exact issue also happened to me when I did this on sway a few weeks ago. I couldn't find a fix for that and regardless was bumping up against some of the few rough edges in wayland, so I switched to i3 on a new install and presumed this issue wouldn't happen again, but it did. I did not change any x or wayland settings on either before trying to install steam.

Photo: https://imgur.com/a/DtwTnjt
I found this post https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=289295 for the same/a similar issue which a) seems to have a poster agree that this also happened on both x11 and wayland and b) went cold.

Please tell me what I can provide to help debug this, as I have no clue what would be needed. Thank you.

Last edited by superlex (2025-03-08 22:58:56)

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,365

Re: [solved] Installing steam (or nvidia 32-bit drivers) makes monitor 4:3

What all nvidia packages do you have installed? pacman -Qs nvidia

superlex

Member

Registered: 2025-03-08

Posts: 13

Re: [solved] Installing steam (or nvidia 32-bit drivers) makes monitor 4:3

local/egl-gbm 1.1.2-1
local/egl-wayland 4:1.1.18-1
local/egl-x11 1.0.0-1
local/lib32-nvidia-utils 570.124.04-1
local/libvdpau 1.5-3
local/nvidia-utils 570.124.04-1
local/xf86-video-nouveau 1.0.18-1 (xorg-drivers)

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,365

Re: [solved] Installing steam (or nvidia 32-bit drivers) makes monitor 4:3

Why in the world did you choose nvidia-utils if you're not using the nvidia drivers? Decide which drivers you want, right now you've got bad mixture of nvidia and nouveau.

superlex

Member

Registered: 2025-03-08

Posts: 13

Re: [solved] Installing steam (or nvidia 32-bit drivers) makes monitor 4:3

Okay, that would make sense. I didn't mean to install them from two different sources.
Let's say I'll get the nvidia drivers. How would I get rid of the nouveau drivers / replace them? Are nvidia-utils and *-nouveau the conflicting packages, or is the issue that I have the 32-bit proprietary drivers and the 64-bit nouveau ones? Thank you for your replies.

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,365

Re: [solved] Installing steam (or nvidia 32-bit drivers) makes monitor 4:3

Check the nvidia wiki page. It'll tell you what packages to install and how to configure things.

superlex

Member

Registered: 2025-03-08

Posts: 13

Re: [solved] Installing steam (or nvidia 32-bit drivers) makes monitor 4:3

Thank you, got it fixed.