[OW2 Crashing Alternative Fix] OW2 On Linux Guide Video

Technical Support
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Good morning/afternoon people,

EDIT: have also decided to make a quick (non-professional) live recording of the process, Should take about 25 minutes without all the talk and wasted time

Purpose of this thread: Explain my perspective on the issue and to suggest/offer an alternative possible solution while breaking down some of the common thoughts/questions others are asking/doing.

For this purpose, i’ll call it the 2.5 min crash as that was my average

UPDATE: New proton GE version released with a targeted for Overwatch 2 available here Release Wine-GE-Proton7-33 Released · GloriousEggroll/wine-ge-custom · GitHub

EDIT: I’ve extended some of the information in here as others are also having success with Linux where windows failed non stop.

But if you do decide to try linux, Please read over this if you are new and then decide on a distro before watching a basic video or two on YouTube about a basic install.

  • Linux has more than one way to do things (why it works n why i love it)
  • All you need is a spare hard drive
  • I’m willing to bet this will fix the game fails to open issue (someone test it)
  • Performance wise, i’m running Epic while streaming
  • There are some catch 22's, iCUE and similar are not/might not be supported

Testing Note: You should just need to leave the game idle in the menu, It crashes there and wont get you a penalty/temp ban

What is going on with the Crash/Freezing, What can we speculate with observation?

The crash itself is not limited to any single or combination of the following

  • GPU/CPU Architecture, Core/Thread Counts, Generation Of CPU/GPU
  • Any hardware in general unless its an old / below spec system

The reason i’ve listed the above two, They seems to be the common fixation in one of the main threads yet when we consider

  • People with the same hardware/setups have no issues
  • More powerful equipement/setups have the same issue (crashes even quicker at times)
  • Some people have had success with --tank_WorkerThreadCount which just limits/restricts the hardware
  • Plenty of people have not had an issue/do not know about this (we’re a small group)
  • I went from crashing every 2.5 min on two different computers to having a reliable unrestricted working game with no inbetween point (no hardware/sys mods)

What possible fixes are there for this current 2.5 min crash issue?
Each of these are possible solutions that might work, but probably will not for the majority (a fix means you can play non stop, not just longer)

  • Disable SMT/HyperThreading (via bios)
  • Adding the command line argument of --tank_WorkerThreadCount 2 or --tank_WorkerThreadCount 4 to the launcher (Honestly, try 1 upto your physical core count)
  • Disable any software that interacts with your GPU/CPU (monitors/overclockers(hell even RGB))
  • Disable any other software running (extreme measure, read below about cause)
  • A new windows user (seems it works for some, just makes me question MS more lol)
  • Re-install/upgrade/downgrade Windows

Nvidia Cards Shaders Performance/ Initial Stuttering
As pointed out by Giggity below, the use of an environment variable can help improve the performace of Nvidia cards due to their default shader cache being only 128mb/256mb (last size i could find, may be different now)
– I’m unable to test/confirm these myself being non Nvidia, but the following should apply

  • __GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE_SKIP_CLEANUP=1 will disable the clean up process of shaders there for allowing the directory to grow as it needs/no limits
  • __GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE=1 I believe will enable the ability to specify a directory to cache to (next var) or simply turns on/off caching
  • __GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE_PATH='/bla/bla/bla/somedir' to specify the cache directory

You should only need to use the first one, others provided for debugging purposes.

What Is Causing This Issue (Speculation)

If i had to guess what is happening here, a few different situations/thoughts come to mind.

  • Part of the overwatch process/application is accessing shared system resources/processes and can not correctly handle timeouts/exceptions or race conditions and causes the process to crash (if windows does not respond in time to the app)
  • Another process/application on the system (possibly windows and not third party) is trying to monitor/read/access the overwatch process/application and as a result causes it to lock up (overwatch process should be able to handle this correctly)
  • The detection and utilization of available threads on a CPU is incorrectly calculated and would explain why a larger number of users have success with the --tank_WorkerThreadCount argument.

What Fixed My(& Others) Issue? (And reasons to try it)

I wont beat around the bush, its using Linux (as i have daily for gaming for the past few months)

DO NOT RUN AWAY!!! … its not scary…, Even if it just gets you gaming until they fix it…

  • I was not able to play a single game, The game would crash/freeze even in the menu, it never failed to fail around 2.5 minutes.
  • I tested two updated windows 10 installs with all the latest drivers/bla (& tweaks) but it still crashed as it did initially on linux
  • All i had to do was download a new runner for lutris
  • If you have gone to the effort of re-installing windows, whats another hour or two?
  • If you have a spare hard drive, You can do it safely by removing/disconnecting all other drives
  • A fix could arrive in an hour, It could be a week? hopefully not a month?
  • There is a chance it may not work, But if you use caffe-7-18 i can bet some more people will get it working

What would the steps be to do this?

This is off the top of my head, So understand it is not a guide and something to google/youtube or maybe if enough people want to then i can update.

  1. Download a Linux Distro (a distro is a variant) ISO
  2. Use something like rufus or etcher to copy/burn the ISO to a USB key (8gb)
  3. Shutdown the computer and swap the hard drive(s) (disconnect others, connect the spare to be safe)
  4. Boot the computer and boot from the USB key (may need to press F8/check bios boot order)
  5. Start the installation of Linux onto the hard drive (Should only be one)
    – Popular Distros make installation just as easy as windows/watch a video
    – You pretty much tell it to auto partition the hard drive
  6. Reboot into the newly installed Linux (install time can range/its fairly quick)
  7. Start installing the software / below

Stuff To Install After Linux/OS Install:

  • *Optional Drivers = Possibly GPU (stock drivers work fine tho, dont worry about CPU/Motherboard n so on unless its needed/an issue)
  • *Optional A good gaming kernel if the Distro is not a gaming Distro (easy to find with google)
  • Flatpak & Lutris or Flatpak & Bottles (package manager and wine launcher)
  • Open Lutris or Bottles and install the runner caffe7-18 (custom tweaks to run windows games that work for OW2)
  • Install blizzard battle net into Lutris and then launch and download the game
  • Launch the game via the launcher (No custom settings needed)
  • Let the game run in the menu, see if it crashes like before

What To Do Next!

  • If in luck like others, it keeps running… It might run slow but runs (performance now)
  • At this point… Learn about your distro and setting up a gaming kernel/tweaks and the gpu driver
  • Monitor your hardware temperatures (new os, be safe)
  • Check that your fans are running when they should (i use amdgpu-fan for my GPU)

Please Note: That the *Optional steps above will be the ones that provide you with FPS/performance. (It should still run and not crash before doing these, but they could help make it stable if it does/rule out everything!)

Common/Recommended Linux Distros:

  • Debian (i’m using it) = A lot of distros are based from it, less bulk/junk (steps above for debian)
  • Pop!OS = Generally the most common/top gaming distro(amd & nvidia iso’s)
  • ArchLinux = A build it yourself step by step/part by part (advance/time)

Handy Things:

  • protonup-qt to install various proton version to steam/bottles/lutris
  • https://github.com/FeralInteractive/gamemode To stop cpu govenors and enable more peformance / stop power saving modes

End note:

Yes i use linux already, but there is a reason for that…
Security and reliability (hence was able to get the game working over windows)
Its not for everyone and i suggest if you do, use caution if you leave any other drives connected.

  • But at the end of the day, All of my games work and i was able to stream this one without any issues finally
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I can confirm that this indeed works and fixed my crash issue but i do have some FPS stuttering happening that I never had with windows.

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Performance still needs tweaking as I did not cover that in the threads/ I would suggest a gaming kernel and updating the GPU driver then see how the game runs.

If the game runs without crashing, now you can focus on the performance and try to get the frames up.

The kernel I use https://liquorix.net/
The optional steps above = performance steps

Edit: Updated original/base post

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Ok so the kernel worked like a charm! Overwatch runs even better than Windows. It needs a couple of minutes to load the shaders when opening the game but better than crashing hehe.

I also used __GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE_SKIP_CLEANUP and put the value to 1 in the enviroment variables that really helps with the shaders.

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this issue just started last night for me in the middle of my grind which is what has me the most mentally twisted. nothing changed at all on my system, just all of a sudden crashes identical to how you describe.

im sure linux is a fix, but that is outrageous to require this for users. the QC on this release is embarrassing!

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Interesting to see that Nvidia drivers default to a 128mb cache size, I’ll add that to the above as guessing a few people on here could do with that env var. (cheers for highlighting that one :+1:)

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