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Steam Link frame stuttering, skipping on Linux?
I noticed Steam Link has some kind of frame stuttering or skipping (?) issues on my Linux desktop. I am on Debian 13, running Steam Link 1.3.20 from FlatHub on an i7-12700 with no dedicated GPU.

When I stream using the regular Steam client on this device, the streaming experience is very smooth and consistent with no issues whatsoever.

When I stream using Steam Link on the same device/network, I found the streaming experience is sort of OK but starts to feel very choppy and degraded in regular intervals. It's like every 10-20 seconds, the frame latency becomes less and less stable, and then frames are dropped or skipped altogether. After the screen noticeably freezes for a few frames, it seems to recover back to a baseline performance level, then the cycle repeats.

Interestingly, the performance overlay graph doesn't show any spikes in CPU or network latency during these events, and in-game FPS counters don't show any drops either. The overlay reports 0.00% frame/packet loss, so I don't believe my issue is network related. I don't think I am hardware constrained on either host or client either.

For now I have stopped using Steam Link and I am just streaming using the regular Steam client because the experience is better. If there's any diagnostic data I can provide to help Valve devs debug the Steam Link issue, I am willing to reproduce and provide any useful log/diagnostic files.
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Showing 1-4 of 4 comments
slouken
Feb 5 @ 4:44pm 
Could you post a link to your Steam logs\streaming_log.txt from the host PC after your streaming session?
#1
pond7821
Feb 5 @ 10:30pm 
Here's the streaming_log.txt from using Steam Link: https://pastebin.com/gvzG2eAU

Here's the streaming_log.txt from using Steam Client: https://pastebin.com/ywQ9Yj3p

Before each run I closed Steam on the host and cleared out the logs folder. After closing the stream, I also quit steam to ensure log files were flushed.

In both files, the actual 3D gameplay starts after the line containing "setting title to FPS: 0.00 | Vulkan | 0.0.39-18761".

The only notable difference I can pick out between them is that Steam Link loads VAAPI driver version 25.4.5 (newer) while Steam Client loads version 25.2.3 (older), looks like the latter is from package intel-media-va-driver on my system.
#2
pond7821
Feb 5 @ 11:01pm 
To confirm the difference in VAAPI versions wasn't causing my issue, I temporarily overwrote the iHD_drv_video.so from my flatpak runtime directory org.freedesktop.Platform.VAAPI.Intel/x86_64/25.08 with my system iHD_drv_video.so.

After doing this, Steam host logs showed 25.2.3 as VAAPI version when streaming from Steam Link. Unfortunately, the frame skipping/stuttering issue I am experiencing still remained, so the difference in VAAPI version probably has nothing to do with it.
#3
pond7821
Feb 6 @ 12:05am 
OK I found the culprit, turning off socket=wayland for Steam Link in Flatseal seems to completely fix my frame stuttering issue:

https://pasteboard.co/XHMtXBEaidka.png

Perceptible frame latency now feels on par with the native Steam client. I am guessing the Steam client is running fully in XWayland, but Steam Link is running (fully or partially) as a native Wayland app? Maybe something in Steam Link's rendering stack isn't working optimally on Wayland, or just not playing nicely with my compositor? (I am on Gnome Shell / Mutter)

Either way, I'm glad to find this workaround!
#4
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Steam Link > Linux > Topic Details
Date Posted: Feb 5 @ 3:45pm
Posts: 4
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