Arch Linux

ToweringTower

Member

Registered: 2024-12-31

Posts: 2

Steam Games Won't Launch on Old Laptop from 2007

Good tidings all. I am using a Thinkpad X61s that I wanna mess around with and take with me to travels. I successfully installed Arch on it and for the most part does things what I want to do. However, when it comes to gaming with Steam, I have hit a snag. When pressing play, it tries to load the game, but then after a while, the game fails to launch. I tried following this, and unless I did this wrong (I just copied and pasted it exactly as it is in a game's properties>General>Launch Options) that didn't do anything. These are old games that the laptop should be powerful enough to run. I suspect that laptop's age needs me to do something specific to get it to run because I haven't had these issues on modern hardware also running arch.

Here the the specs:

OS: Arch Linux x86_64
Host: 766734U ThinkPad X61s
Kernel: 6.12.7-arch1-1
Packages: 578 (pacman), 7 (flatpak)
Shell: bash 5.2.37
Resolution: 1024x768
DE: Hyprland
Terminal: alacritty
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo L7500 (2) @ 1.601GHz
GPU: Intel Mobile GM965/GL960
Memory: 1186MiB / 1925MiB

And here is what happens in the terminal as I try to launch the game

wine: using kernel write watches, use_kernel_writewatch 1.
fsync: up and running.
wine: using kernel write watches, use_kernel_writewatch 1.
wine: using kernel write watches, use_kernel_writewatch 1.
wine: using kernel write watches, use_kernel_writewatch 1.
wine: using kernel write watches, use_kernel_writewatch 1.
wine: using kernel write watches, use_kernel_writewatch 1.
wine: using kernel write watches, use_kernel_writewatch 1.
wine: using kernel write watches, use_kernel_writewatch 1.
wine: using kernel write watches, use_kernel_writewatch 1.
wine: using kernel write watches, use_kernel_writewatch 1.
wine: using kernel write watches, use_kernel_writewatch 1.
chdir "/home/tower/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Trails in the Sky FC"
ERROR: ld.so: object '/home/tower/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
Game Recording - would start recording game 251150, but recording for this game is disabled
Adding process 7554 for gameID 251150
ERROR: ld.so: object '/home/tower/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '/home/tower/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_64/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '/home/tower/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '/home/tower/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
Adding process 7555 for gameID 251150
Adding process 7556 for gameID 251150
Adding process 7648 for gameID 251150
wine: using kernel write watches, use_kernel_writewatch 1.
Adding process 7649 for gameID 251150
Adding process 7650 for gameID 251150
fsync: up and running.
Adding process 7651 for gameID 251150
wine: using kernel write watches, use_kernel_writewatch 1.
Adding process 7654 for gameID 251150
wine: using kernel write watches, use_kernel_writewatch 1.
Adding process 7656 for gameID 251150
wine: using kernel write watches, use_kernel_writewatch 1.
Adding process 7659 for gameID 251150
wine: using kernel write watches, use_kernel_writewatch 1.
Adding process 7669 for gameID 251150
wine: using kernel write watches, use_kernel_writewatch 1.
Adding process 7682 for gameID 251150
wine: using kernel write watches, use_kernel_writewatch 1.
Adding process 7688 for gameID 251150
wine: using kernel write watches, use_kernel_writewatch 1.
wine: using kernel write watches, use_kernel_writewatch 1.
Adding process 7701 for gameID 251150
wine: using kernel write watches, use_kernel_writewatch 1.
Setting breakpad minidump AppID = 251150
Steam_SetMinidumpSteamID:  Caching Steam ID:  76561198378184178 [API loaded no]
wine: using kernel write watches, use_kernel_writewatch 1.
Adding process 7718 for gameID 251150
pid 7652 != 7651, skipping destruction (fork without exec?)
Game Recording - game stopped [gameid=251150]
Removing process 7718 for gameID 251150
Removing process 7701 for gameID 251150
Removing process 7688 for gameID 251150
Removing process 7682 for gameID 251150
Removing process 7669 for gameID 251150
Removing process 7659 for gameID 251150
Removing process 7656 for gameID 251150
Removing process 7654 for gameID 251150
Removing process 7651 for gameID 251150
Removing process 7650 for gameID 251150
Removing process 7649 for gameID 251150
Removing process 7648 for gameID 251150
Removing process 7556 for gameID 251150
Removing process 7555 for gameID 251150
Removing process 7554 for gameID 251150

This happens on all games (that should run on this laptop). Any help would be greatly appreciated. Getting on a plane soon and would love to game on this little machine. If there's any more information you'd like, let m know.

ToweringTower

Member

Registered: 2024-12-31

Posts: 2

Re: Steam Games Won't Launch on Old Laptop from 2007

Here are some other things I tried. Set

WINE3D=1

in the launch options. Tried both

steam-runtime

and the

/usr/lib/steam/steam

script. Launch from Big Picture mode. Used the .desktop shortcut vs launching steam from terminal. Reboot PC multiple times.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,694

Re: Steam Games Won't Launch on Old Laptop from 2007

The correct launch option is

PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command%

and this will be an absolute prerequisite to get anything at all going. Also what games -- exactly?

Also since it's very likely to have a broken GL with such old HW, what output do you get from

glxinfo -B #mesa-utils

and do you have sufficient swap space configured? I can see you running OOM without one before steam and a wine instance are even up and running.

Last edited by V1del (2025-01-03 17:56:37)