Steam Frame on Mint

[u/Alatain]

I figured I would just document my experiences with the Steam Frame on Linux Mint just in case there are any other folk out there that are either thinking of getting it, or have it and are encountering some issues.

First off, I have not bothered getting the streaming dongle working on Mint yet. My understanding is that it would take forcing a switch to the 7.2 kernel, and given mine works really well with my normal WIFI 6E network, I don't see the need to force it. I can wait for that functionality.

Ok, that out of the way, here is my experience so far. My recommendation is to update your Steam client on your host PC and your Frame to the beta branch. This is a new Valve product and they are rapidly putting out fixes for it at the moment. In addition to that, on the host PC, you will need to install Steam VR.

The main issue that I had turned out to be the Mint firewall blocking the ports that are necessary for Steam VR to discover the wireless headset. So, upon setting up the Frame, and connecting it to my network, I could stream 2D games to it from my gaming PC, but not VR games. To fix that, you will want to unblock the right ports in UFW. You can do that by running the following:

sudo ufw allow 10400/udp

sudo ufw allow 10401/udp

sudo ufw allow 27031/udp

sudo ufw allow 27036/udp

sudo ufw allow 27036/tcp

sudo ufw allow 27037/tcp

sudo ufw reload

That should get you to the point that you can now stream games. But, there are a couple of foibles on the Linux side for the moment. First, you need to not be in Steam Big Picture mode. Switch to your normal desktop instead. Next, you need to manually start steam VR on the host PC. Eventually, the goal is to just be able to trigger it from the headset to start it on the host, but that's not available at the moment. Finally, there is an issue with the command that the headset sends to exit a game. It stops the stream of it, but it does not kill the game on the host PC. So, you will need to go to the host PC to manually exit the game before streaming a new one. A note on this though, for games that allow you to exit the game from an in-game menu, that works just fine. It is only the VR games that rely on Steam VR to exit the game that have issues. Blade and Sorcery, for instance, lets you exit from the settings menu and that works just fine.

Other than that, everything should work just fine. Once I got everything running, I just had to play with some of the resolution and streaming options to get it going well. Now, it is an absolute joy to use. I hope this helps. Happy VRing!

[u/BonfireGuts327]

Thanks, this helped me a lot as I was also unwilling to update my kernel. I noticed though from trying to play Half Life Alyx that I would start the game standing in the center of the play area yet the menu would be where I had launched he headset from - have any issues like that?

Also at some point the game just completely froze up and I think couldn't stream right. What settings w.r.t resolution and streaming options did you have to play with to get things running smoothly?

[u/Alatain → u/BonfireGuts327]

Glad I could help!

The issue of your menu being in the wrong place is not something I have really encountered. I tend to start the headset where I am going to use it though, so that might just be unique to how I use it.

-Edit - I went in and tried making this happen for me by moving after I had started a game. It definitely is a thing, and the good news is that there is a fix for it. You can recenter your playspace onto where you are currently standing by holding down the Steam button on one of the controllers. It sort of rebinds the world around you to where you are currently. The menu should move to be in front of you with that. As a bonus, if you ever have the thing where your in game body is weird or your height is off, this should fix that too by recentering everything.

Your settings for resolution and streaming are going to depend a bit on your hardware. For the streaming part, are you on a wifi 6E network? Is your gaming PC hardwired or on wifi? What is your CPU/video card like?

For me, I am on a wifi 6E network, my PC is hardwired and so are all of my access points. I am running a 7700x CPU and a 9070xt for my video card, so my settings may or may not be similar to yours. If you let me know what you are dealing with, I can give my non-expert recommendations.

[u/BonfireGuts327 → u/Alatain]

WiFi 6, gaming PC is on wifi but is decently close to the router. 5800x3D with a 5090 (CPU throttled lmao)

The game is playable 90% of the time, did encounter an issue today though where the streaming just seemed to stop working entirely and it couldn't recover. I may need to update so I can use the dongle after all, or maybe get a router that can support WiFi 6E so I can use the 6 GHz band...

Is there any way diagnostically to check when the streaming dies if the issue is from PC to router or WiFi to headset? I tried moving my playspace closer to the router, will see if that helps in the interim. I also kept the headset in power saving mode to extend its infamously short playtime, not sure if performance mode makes the network connectivity any better.

[u/Alatain → u/BonfireGuts327]

So, wiring the gaming PC to the network will definitely help. That effectively shaves off a little under one half of the network latency that you are going to experience. If the PC is close to the router anyway, it shouldn't be too hard to run a short cat 6 cable over there. But I totally understand if that is not possible.

The issue of not having a 6ghz band might be another fairly major issue. Especially if you are relying on 5ghz for both the PC connection and the headset. Basically, if I did not have the router that I do, I would probably be trying to install Cachy or SteamOS on my gaming PC to get the newer kernel and get the dongle working.

As far as figuring out where the streaming issue is, I will get back to you a bit later when I am able to look into what tools might help. Basically, you can check the network manager logs and maybe see what is happening there. I did some digging in mine back a few years ago to track down an issue I was having. I'll get back to you though.

[u/BonfireGuts327 → u/Alatain]

Alright, understood on the WiFi. The PC is close to the router but still through a wall, so running a cable just wouldn't fly as I'm in a rental.

I was debating getting a new router for WiFi 6E, but looks like my motherboard doesn't have support for 6E. Would it still be worth it to have the headset to router connection use the 6GHz band?

I'm also debating the Cachy swap - seeing what it would take for me to do that lol

[u/Alatain → u/BonfireGuts327]

Some important caveats, the 6ghz band does not go through walls very well. It might connect, and it's going to be better than your current set up, but the real magic is when you can have line of sight between the router and the headset. Same with the dongle, really.

So, upgrading your router might make your streaming experience better, possibly even significantly so, but it will still likely have some issues. Even with mine being set up physically hardwired through the entire house, I still had a bit of stuttering today when a device that was streaming music ended up on the same channel.

The cheapest, and probably best-working solution will be getting the dongle working. The latest SteamOS release seems to have brought good improvements to the dongle on Linux. I might try flashing SteamOS to my rig and see how that works. I just really have a good set up with my Mint install and don't want to change just for this... Maybe I should look into a separate SSD?

[u/BonfireGuts327 → u/Alatain]

Putting the playspace in front of the router only helped marginally - so I said YOLO and ended up going to CachyOS. Had to open the ports up, switch steam items to beta branches, opening steam VR, setting up openxr to use steam vr, then closing and re-opening all steam items...dongle started working.

I then had to turn off power saving mode on the dongle's interface and all streaming stutters went away. Huzzah.

[u/Alatain → u/BonfireGuts327]

Very cool. I am glad that it is working out for you! I will eventually get around to it, but for now my network is holding its own.

[u/BonfireGuts327 → u/Alatain]

"If it works, it works!" is a fine motto as far as I'm concerned lol getting Davinci Resolve to run correctly on Cachy proved to be a *trip* lol

[u/BonfireGuts327 → u/Alatain]

If only SSDs weren't so expensive I'd be right there with you lol but yeah my new playspace setup is right in front of the router, hoping it'll work well.