Introduction

Gamers usually play games on Windows, but what about playing games on other operating systems? The io16 team managed to play Asseto Corsa from Steam on Debian 12 with just a few steps!

We experienced some problems after attempting to run the game. The source of the problem was related to the graphics card drivers; in our case, we used an Nvidia card. The symptoms were:

• The game crashes after a few seconds on the first loading screen.
• The race never starts.
• The game returns to the menu after the loading screen when starting a race.
• The game returns to the menu after the loading screen when running the benchmark.

If you have an Nvidia graphics card, check the Nvidia drivers section first. To check whether lspci is installed, run this in a terminal:

lspci --version

If the command fails, install pciutils to get lspci:

sudo apt install pciutils

To check which GPU is being used, run:

lspci -nn | egrep -i "3d|display|vga"

Nvidia drivers

First, make sure you have the latest Nvidia drivers installed. You can check this in a terminal with the following command:

nvidia-smi

If the command fails, this means you don't have Nvidia drivers installed. Check the Update/install Nvidia drivers section below.

Make sure your driver version is 525.147.05 or later, and your CUDA version is 12.0 or later.

If your versions are lower, follow the steps below to update your Nvidia drivers.

Update/install Nvidia drivers

1. Open a terminal and run:

   sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
   

2. Add contrib non-free non-free-firmware after main and save the file. It should look like this:

   deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
   deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
   
   deb http://deb.debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
   deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
   
   deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
   deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
   

   You can find more details in the Official Debian SourcesList wiki.

3. Now run:

   sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
   

4. Restart your computer and check your Nvidia version with:

   nvidia-smi
   

Installing Proton

If updating the Nvidia drivers didn't fix the symptoms above, installing GE-Proton, a compatibility layer that lets Steam run Windows games like Asseto Corsa on Linux, usually solves it.

1. Download GE-Proton 8.27 or later from the official GE-Proton repository. Create the folder ~/.steam/root/compatibilitytools.d and extract the downloaded tar.gz file into it.
2. Close Steam, then launch it again so it picks up the new compatibility tool.
3. Go to Steam > Asseto Corsa > Properties > Compatibility, check the option to force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool, and in the dropdown choose the GE-Proton version you installed, e.g. GE-Proton8-27.
4. Launch the game. GE-Proton will install all the requirements needed, this will take a few minutes, so be patient, the game should launch eventually.