I have used Gnome for about 5 years now but thought I would install plasma on Ubuntu as an alternative desktop just to check it out. It is a pretty desktop manager but I struggled to get things that just work in Gnome to work in Plasma i.e. VPN which is dead simple in Gnome but takes quite a bit of searching to find that I had a need for a special app plasma-nm to be installed to be able to connect etc. One thing I have not been able to get to work and is quite the deal breaker for me is Steam Proton Games which, again are dead simple to get running in Gnome but will not run in Plasma no matter what I do, They simply won't start and even some native games won't start under Plasma. So that to me means Plasma is quite broken as a daily driver for anyone interested in gaming on Steam. I understand it is most likely a proton issue but since it works with no issues in Gnome my solution is simply not to use Plasma. Let me know if you need any details to help if there is interest in fixing the issues otherwise just consider this feedback.

Could you share what distro you are using, and did you install full KDE or just plasma-desktop? Another thing, are you using wayland or X. I testes steam on Debian 11 on both X and wayland and both worked well.

I am using Ubuntu 21.10, did a desktop, not full install of plasma. Using X not Wayland. I even tried 2 native games, 1 ran and the other failed with an error dealing with vulkan. I will do a full install of kde and try again. I will let you know if it makes a difference.

I did a full kde install but it made no difference which isn't that surprising since I obviously have all the pieces installed for steam and proton to work correctly since it does so in Gnome.

Same computer as when you run Gnome? Same GPU/drivers etc?

1 ran and the other failed with an error dealing with vulkan

I am sure this has something to do with it.

The desktop used won't have a significant effect on Steam, though I am sure it can, somehow.
I have no issues with any Proton games I have here on my PC.
I am using KDE Neon, with Plasma 5.23, same Plasma version as is available to Kubuntu/Ubuntu 21.10 via official PPAs, but on the older 20.04 base.

Yes, everything exactly the same as on Gnome. After playing dying light for a couple of hours on Gnome with no issues I log out of Gnome and log in to the user I set up with Plasma/KDE and try to run dying light and it doesn't start at all, the button changes for a second then goes back to Play, doesn't even try to load the game. I'm glad it works for you but it doesn't for me. I will just stick with Gnome, no sense in trying to fight KDE and I am not willing to start from scratch on my production machine just to try and get KDE to work properly.

My point is, is that it may not necessarily be related to Plasma per se, but perhaps some artifact of having both Gnome and Plasma installed on the same OS install, or something not present via the specific meta-package you used to install Plasma, though you did not specify which specific *-plasma-desktop metapackage you used (kde-plasma-desktop vs kubuntu-desktop, plasma-desktop, etc). I will wager that a Plasma-only setup would not exhibit the same problems you are seeing.


I have not done anything special to get Proton or native games to run, or needed anything special to get a VPN to work - though that can depend on the type one needs to connect to, for sure. Plasma-nm is usually a core part of even a minimal plasma desktop, so it is odd that you were missing this. So I am wondering what might be missing on yours that is effecting games, or what parts of KDE and Gnome may be duking it out behind the scenes.

I am not trying to argue with you, or attempting to minimize your own experience here, but saying

So that to me means Plasma is quite broken as a daily driver for anyone interested in gaming on Steam

is quite nonsense.

Thanks for the reply. I appreciate that it might work fine if I only installed plasma without Gnome but that will not be happening so we are back to the beginning but I do appreciate your input. I installed from KDE back ports ppa so the version is whatever is there. If what you say about KDE fighting gnome for dominance being the cause is accurate I am thankful it didn't break my Gnome install. Lesson learned, I will not try installing plasma in the future on a gnome machine since it has that problem and I wouldn't want my system to get borked just to try something out. Thanks for the effort.

You may try virtual machines, Gnome-boxes is actually a pretty good and easy one