So, I discovered weird behavior when trying to play games on an NTFS file system in Linux.

When i auto mount the drive through a fstab entry, it is only able to launch Linux native games (I think I read somewhere that this is a permission issue).

However, if I mount it through steams “select a drive” option, it works without a problem (so far at least).

I assume this is again a permission issue, as when I mount the drive through steam, I get a Polkit password prompt.

Anyone got a clue what’s going on, and/or maybe a way to make the auto mount work, so I don’t have to manually mount it after every boot?

Distro:

Arch

Kernel (according to neofetch):

6.11.1-zen1-1-zen

NTFS driver:

ntfs-3g

Proton version:

GE-Proton9-10

tested games:

  • Terraria (Tmodloader)
  • Project Wingman
  • Hades II

fstab entry:

#/dev/nvme1n1p1

UUID=E01A2CEC1A2CC180 /mnt/games ntfs nofail 0 3

full system update a few hours ago

date for future visitors (dd.mm.yyyy):

01.10.2024 at 14:44 (02:44 pm)

edit: formatting and adding proton version

  • SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.mlOP
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 month ago

    Yeah it’s just games🤷 if push comes to shive i can just reinstall 'em i was just confused by the difference in behaviour depending wether the system or steam mounts it

    • muhyb@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 month ago

      Well, technically Steam expects a file system to act as a Linux file system. Since some features that Linux file systems support do not exist on NTFS, it doesn’t work correctly.

      By the way, if you’re gonna use Proton for a game, you can backup and reinstall it by using that backup on Linux. You don’t have to download it again.

      • SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.mlOP
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 month ago

        no thats the thing, steam works without a problem. it is only when i do it NOT through steam where i get issues.

        but i play mainly on windows anyway, i just wanted to try it out a bit out of boredom and got surprisingly good results.

        i just wait how the windows kernel restrictions influence kernel level anti cheat, and depending on the result i may switch to full linux again if kernel AC breaks and devs are forced to use “normal” AC again