[BUG] Having trouble getting SteamVR working; can't play anything other than SteamVR Home

[CaptainD54321]

Describe the bug I recently bought myself a VR headset (I got an old HTC Vive off Ebay for pretty cheap; the resolution isn't great, but the headset itself seems to be working perfectly), and have been having a lot of trouble getting it to actually work on my Linux machine. After about two days of tinkering, my situation is the following:

• On the old Linux beta (v1.14), I can play SteamVR Home, but if I try to start any VR game from my library, it just sits on the "next up" screen for a while, then the loading popup disappears, like the game failed to launch.
• The 1.27.5 beta gets similar results to 1.14, but after trying to launch one game, many icons on the dashboard show broken image symbols.
• The latest beta (2.5.2) doesn't even load Home, and the dashboard doesn't show up when I try to open it. (The background darkens like the menu is open, and I can even see the laser mouse colliding with where the dashboard UI should be, but no UI is visible.

Also, whenever I switch between versions, just trying to update SteamVR gives me a "disk write error", and I have to uninstall it and re-install the new version to get it to work.

System Information

• Distribution: Linux Mint 21
• SteamVR version:1.14
• Steam client version: 1712795774
• Opted into Steam client beta?: Yes
• Graphics driver version: 545.29.06
• Gist for SteamVR System Information: system information gist

Screenshots I tried to take screenshots of the issues with v1.27.5 and the latest beta, but screenshots in VR didn't seem to be working either

Note: Commenters who are also experiencing this issue are encouraged to include the "System Information" section in their replies.

[ernstp]

Have you tried latest SteamVR stable, 2.4.4?

[CaptainD54321]

After posting this I have discovered that I can actually launch games on either the latest stable (2.4.4) or the latest beta (2.5.2) if I launch from the steam client, but I still have other issues I'm gonna make a separate issue post for, as this one was mostly about my issues with the 1.x versions and I don't want to jumble everything up in one confusing post