Stellaris causing total desktop freeze requiring hard reboot | Linux Mint Community🍵 | Page 1

acoustic ridge Apr 18, 2026, 8:50 AM

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I'm not sure this is the correct forum to post this, but this has been the most helpful forum I know of, and if anything it might help me straighten out some question marks

So I enjoy playing Stellaris and in recent weeks the game has been having problems with totally and completely freezing my PC after a few hours of running. I cannot for the life of me get out of the frozen state without hard-rebooting. This is concerning since you shouldn't make a habit of doing that.

The behaviour is really bizarre, and I cannot find any logs to look at.

rancid hearth Apr 18, 2026, 10:21 AM

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Could be a Proton bug, or an amdgpu driver hang

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VRAM running out too, perhaps

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You can try switching between Proton 10 and Proton Experimental

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Update the kernel to version 6.17 to get a more recent version of amdgpu

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And check your VRAM usage (nvtop is a great tool for this)

acoustic ridge Apr 18, 2026, 11:04 AM

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rancid hearth You can try switching between Proton 10 and Proton Experimental

Hmm... I don't use proton at all here. I run stellaris natively.

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But if it is a GPU driver hang, it would explain great many things.

rancid hearth Apr 18, 2026, 12:13 PM

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oh so it's native

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ok then

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Then, take a timeshift snapshot and upgrade the kernel, you can always boot into 6.8 and purge 6.17 later on.

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Then, install nvtop and check VRAM usage while playing.

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There could be a VRAM leak

acoustic ridge Apr 18, 2026, 6:07 PM

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rancid hearth Then, install nvtop and check VRAM usage while playing.

Already done this. I may elect to fiddle with this more tomorrow. 👍

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Thank you for the pointers!

acoustic ridge Apr 19, 2026, 12:07 PM

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Ok, starting this. Gonna remember how to get into GRUB in case shit hits the fan and I can boot back to 6.8.

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Posting this for posterity so I can access it from my phone if needed.

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Posting new neofetch for kernel verification. I should probably install fastfetch or something at some point so I don't use deprecated tools.

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Let the experimentation begin

rancid hearth Apr 19, 2026, 1:49 PM

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acoustic ridge Posting this for posterity so I can access it from my phone if needed.

for UEFI systems that is inaccurate

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You must press ESC once at the manufacturer logo

acoustic ridge Apr 19, 2026, 1:50 PM

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rancid hearth for UEFI systems that is inaccurate

Thank you! I did not know this!

acoustic ridge Apr 19, 2026, 3:01 PM

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After about three hours of gameplay I've not noticed anything problematic. This looks good! I think.

rancid hearth Apr 19, 2026, 5:29 PM

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can you show the output of journalctl -b -X | grep -E "amdgpu|drm" where X is the number of sessions behind the current one where it crashed last

acoustic ridge Apr 19, 2026, 5:30 PM

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I wish I knew how to find the session number out.

rancid hearth Apr 19, 2026, 5:38 PM

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You can experiment

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First line should say "Linux ... 6.8.0 ..." since it only crashed in that kernel

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And then, log should be interrupted abruptly, due to the unclean shutdown

acoustic ridge Apr 19, 2026, 5:39 PM

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Hmm... Okay

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How do I calculate this? I have a hunch on when this might have happened. But I assume every boot is considered its own boot, yes?

rancid hearth Apr 19, 2026, 5:47 PM

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Wdym by that

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all user sessions are saved by journald

acoustic ridge Apr 19, 2026, 5:48 PM

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Yeah, but like, how do I trace backwards? By what accounting should I consider?

rancid hearth Apr 19, 2026, 5:49 PM

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Try doing journalctl -b -1 | grep -E "amdgpu|drm", if it doesn't meet the requirements, replace -1 with -2 and keep going

acoustic ridge Apr 19, 2026, 5:50 PM

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OK!

rancid hearth Apr 19, 2026, 5:50 PM

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actually

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first, run journalctl -b -X, check the output, and then run journalctl -b -X | grep -E "amdgpu|drm"

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since grep won't show everything

acoustic ridge Apr 19, 2026, 5:52 PM

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Oh that is a lot of text

rancid hearth Apr 19, 2026, 5:53 PM

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use page up/down to scroll fast

acoustic ridge Apr 19, 2026, 5:54 PM

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Okay so the most recent one (I think) is from before I installed 6.17

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I forget how to get out of the terminal scroll.

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-# I figured it out

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OH! I think I got something!

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I'm not sure which one of these are the more interesting ones, but JournalThing2 was used with journalctl -b -15 | grep -E "amdgpu|drm"

📎 JournalThing.txt 📎 JournalThing2.txt

rancid hearth Apr 19, 2026, 7:29 PM

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yeah seems like amdgpu is having a tough time in the second log

acoustic ridge Apr 19, 2026, 8:28 PM

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Big sad

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Anyhow, I'll run more attempts in the week to come before new trade school course kicks up a suffering like hell. We'll see how it goes, but it looks promising right now.

acoustic ridge May 9, 2026, 1:03 PM

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It was not promising. Stellaris is getting worse. It's the only game that gets issues on my PC so either the linux build is borked on AMD or my GPU is eating shit, which is something I don't need right now.

I'm hesitant to call out my GPU since it runs every other game I have just fine. It's just Stellaris causing it to eat shit.

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Like there is something with Stellaris that causes the GPU to 'wedge' itself.

acoustic ridge May 9, 2026, 2:07 PM

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I forgor to add txt. to the file extension...

📎 Journalthing3.txt

rancid hearth May 9, 2026, 3:38 PM

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acoustic ridge I forgor to add txt. to the file extension...

It could be a buggy amdgpu or mesa driver, unoptimized game, or (very unlikely) hardware failure

acoustic ridge May 9, 2026, 3:38 PM

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I'm still writing off hardware failure since more load demanding games are working fine for hours on end.

rancid hearth May 9, 2026, 3:39 PM

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Then perhaps mesa doesn't play well with this game, due to it being unoptimized

acoustic ridge May 9, 2026, 3:39 PM

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Yeah pretty much

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I might send paradox a bug report, but I need to test it completely clean of mods (I'm pretty sure it's a mod causing this issue)

rancid hearth May 9, 2026, 3:41 PM

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Clear the mods then

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If the mods don't change how the game renders then it's unlikely

acoustic ridge May 9, 2026, 3:49 PM

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I will do it tomorrow when I'm not as sleepy from choreing all day

acoustic ridge May 12, 2026, 9:38 AM

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After a few hours of testing on a clean save, it's become apparent that this issue persists. A thought comes to me. These issues only came to light after I updated to 22.3. Maybe correlation? Not willing to make it an absolute thing though.

I might opt to run Stellaris through proton in the future, though.

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If it is a driver hang, I wouldn't know how to fix it.

rancid hearth May 12, 2026, 10:09 AM

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22.3 has no base packages changes. So no kernel, driver, and libraries changes. The only thing it changes are Linux Mint components themselves, so for example the desktop environment, window manager, etc.

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The only correlation between the upgrade and the game failing could be a buggy implementation in either the desktop environment and/or the window manager

acoustic ridge May 12, 2026, 12:13 PM

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Mint 21.3 used 5.16-something as its default kernel, though. So it's quite a difference between kernels. Still, I am far too unskilled in these things to make any suggestions worth entertaining beyond amateur conjecture.

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Either way, the amount of time and skill needed to figure this out properly is beyond my means. I'll just speak to paradox to see whether or not they borked something on their end.

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Which is where I am leaning, save for drivers.

low compass May 12, 2026, 12:25 PM

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idk if I can be of help since Im still pretty new to linux overall but I had the same issue tho with a different game, overwatch. The whole system would freeze right before I got into a match and after some research, apparently it happens when memory runs out and since mint doesn't know how to handle it it just freezes until u reboot it. I had pretty low memry, about 8 gigs so I simply increased swap with some healthy headroom (about 32gigs) and the issue was fixed(I also disabled zram). I run ow throu steam proton 9.x I think. Also I havent read the full thread so ignore if the issue has already been solved.

rancid hearth May 12, 2026, 6:44 PM

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acoustic ridge Mint 21.3 used 5.16-something as its default kernel, though. So it's quite a dif...

do you have this option enabled?

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it is by default

acoustic ridge May 12, 2026, 6:45 PM

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rancid hearth do you have this option enabled?

I do not know about this, where find?

rancid hearth May 12, 2026, 6:45 PM

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System Settings -> General

acoustic ridge May 12, 2026, 6:45 PM

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rancid hearth May 12, 2026, 6:45 PM

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it's a good idea to keep it disabled

acoustic ridge May 12, 2026, 6:46 PM

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Ah okay! Will do!

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Any particular reason?

rancid hearth May 12, 2026, 6:47 PM

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low compass idk if I can be of help since Im still pretty new to linux overall but I had the...

btw you should never assign so much swap space because

you're wasting 32GB of disk space for what's considered emergency RAM
you're accelerating disk wear if you're on an SSD
It slows down the system if it is accessed frequently

acoustic ridge May 12, 2026, 6:47 PM

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low compass idk if I can be of help since Im still pretty new to linux overall but I had the...

It has not been resolved, it's something which has caused me the big confusion.

rancid hearth May 12, 2026, 6:47 PM

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acoustic ridge Any particular reason?

just testing

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also is 'Disable compositing for fullscreen windows' enabled?

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that could help

acoustic ridge May 12, 2026, 6:48 PM

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Okie dokie! I'll test it some more during christ-goes-to-space day since there are no assignments.

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rancid hearth May 12, 2026, 6:48 PM

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yeah do enable it

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reduces GPU load

acoustic ridge May 12, 2026, 6:50 PM

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Okay! Thank you, Temmie! You're ever so helpful!

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One million temmie flakes for you.

low compass May 13, 2026, 4:52 AM

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rancid hearth btw you should never assign so much swap space because 1. you're wasting 32GB o...

thanks for ur reply, to address the concerns

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I understand but the 32GB is how much I was willing to lose. For some reason overwatch uses so much memory on linux and whenever I play, 16GB out of the 32 were being used up. Thankfully I have 1TB so 32 isnt too bad

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That was also a major concern of mine when I first heard of it but apparently it would take(and do not quote me on this lol) billions of writes to wear down the ssd and that's yrs which I assume at that point I'll have upgraded.

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idk I can't testify it doesnt for everyone but in my limited experience it hasnt had much of an impact in speed.

low compass May 13, 2026, 5:02 AM

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acoustic ridge It has not been resolved, it's something which has caused me the big confusion.

Have u attempted the fix I suggested? I don't remember the cmds all that well so maybe @rancid hearth could help with that. If it doesn't help u can always revert to default so no harm no foul. I was on bazzite at that time and I used the docs but idk the mint equivalent.

acoustic ridge May 13, 2026, 5:33 AM

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low compass Have u attempted the fix I suggested? I don't remember the cmds all that well so...

It is not appliccable since I run 32GB RAM.

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I also didn't have time yet

low compass May 13, 2026, 8:08 AM

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acoustic ridge It is not appliccable since I run 32GB RAM.

ah I see, anyway hope u can fix the issue

acoustic ridge May 13, 2026, 8:44 AM

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I am sure we will

rapid basalt May 13, 2026, 3:44 PM

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@low compass Bazzite link should work for you now, also your message;

here's the link to the docs, https//docs.bazzite.gg/Advanced/swapfile/?h=swap

acoustic ridge May 14, 2026, 7:31 AM

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Sadly none of the suggested fixes (applicable) have helped. GPUwedged itself again after just a few minutes of running. This is really strange.

#Stellaris causing total desktop freeze requiring hard reboot