CS2 Freezes on opening menus as of 07/11/2024 Update

[Doomguy1364]

System information OS: Arch Linux KERNEL: 6.9.9-arch1-1 CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 8-Core GPU: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX (radeonsi, navi31, LLVM 18.1.8, DRM 3.57, 6.9.9-arch1-1) GPU DRIVER: 4.6 Mesa 24.1.3-arch1.1 RAM: 32 GB

Text file with steam runtime diagnostic print: Runtime.txt

Have you checked for system updates? Yes, as well as completely reinstalling CS2

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible: When switching to a new part of the UI or opening the pause menu in-game CS2 Will hang for a few seconds before recovering. This issue was introduced as of the 07/11/2024 update; Before this update, the game had no issues with freezing in menus!

Steps for reproducing this issue: Launch CS2, switch to inventory or play, game will freeze. Or once in game; Open menu via escape, game will freeze.

Below are a few snip its of things that around the game freezing as well as a full log from a game from boot to close with multiple freezes from switching around some menus as well as starting and ending an offline practice game opening and closing the pause menu.

Full developer console log: consolelog.log

[Developer] Failed to find ui preference 'panorama_play_movie_ambient_sound' [WorldRenderer] CWorldRendererMgr::ServiceWorldRequests long frame: 15.031560ms

Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 7 allocations Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 3 allocations Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 5 allocations Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 44 allocations Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 261 allocations Warning: have 6 in use and 0 free per-frame memory stacks outstanding. The oldest stack was created at present 1, and we're now on present 3099 Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 7 allocations Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 3 allocations Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 5 allocations Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 44 allocations Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 261 allocations Warning: have 6 in use and 0 free per-frame memory stacks outstanding. The oldest stack was created at present 1, and we're now on present 3100 Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 7 allocations Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 3 allocations Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 5 allocations Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 44 allocations Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 261 allocations Warning: have 6 in use and 0 free per-frame memory stacks outstanding. The oldest stack was created at present 1, and we're now on present 3101 Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 7 allocations Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 3 allocations Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 5 allocations Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 44 allocations Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 261 allocations Warning: have 6 in use and 0 free per-frame memory stacks outstanding. The oldest stack was created at present 1, and we're now on present 3102 Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 7 allocations Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 7 allocations Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 3 allocations Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 5 allocations Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 44 allocations Warning: have oustanding per-frame memory stack with 261 allocations Warning: have 6 in use and 0 free per-frame memory stacks outstanding. The oldest stack was created at present 1, and we're now on present 3103

[Developer] Failed to find ui preference 'panorama_play_movie_ambient_sound' [Developer] Failed to find ui preference 'panorama_play_movie_ambient_sound'

[Developer] Failed to find ui preference 'spec_autodirector_cameraman'

[remixmabix]

+1

I would really consider to ask a refund of all what I spent on this game due to this problem.

[thechitowncubs]

This has become ridiculous, I would like to play Valve! How can people spend to open cases and inventory when the game is 50% unplayable!

Love your Steam Deck and Linux users please.

[jb55]

The only workaround that kinda works for me during competitive play is unbind tab.

It can still freeze if you press escape but just don't do that.

[spikederailed]

Honestly I dont even dare try competitive, the menus are the MOST LIKELY to just hang for 20-30 seconds. But i get random freezes in the middle of gun battles just playing casual that can last anywhere from 5-15 seconds(making death inevitable).

[davidovitch]

I have been playing competitive reliably for days as long as I activate the Gnome activities overview when searching for a match, loading a new map, and after it hangs. If I get disconnected from a match simply quit CS2 first before reconnecting (no need to restart the Steam client). After restarting CS2 press reconnect and wait for the game to become smooth again while the Gnome activities overview is activated (you'll still see what is going on in CS2 but at a low FPS in obviously in a very small window). Don't press escape, don't press tab too often (can trigger a hang, just only ace rounds so you know you are top of class) and the moment the game hangs, press super to go into the gnome activity overview and wait a few seconds for the game to come back.

I am on latest Gnome (Arch Linux) but not so latest hardware (Ryzen 1800X with a Radeon RX580).

Addendum: Regarding email notifications, you may want to unsubscribe from this thread, it's not uncommon for a bug affecting many users to get hundreds of replies, and users poking around in the dark can contribute to a developer finding a solution as well, and those users need a place to discuss and coordinate as well.

Most people are here to complain while adding zero new information. That's just spam and is to be avoided. If someone posts something that also applies to you, just like or react with whatever emoji you think is relevant.

[xMonologue]

I get the same issues, skins take a while to load, I get freezes non stop in the main menu and in game, it disconnect me from the server, I have 2 monitors, one for GPU passthrough in a VM and one for my main Linux machine, it get worst each updates, I use a nvidia rtx 3060 TI card, anyones found a fix? I use arch Linux with KDE plasma on the latest version, I attached my specs down below

I tough it was an issue on my end but it seems its with the game since it does not do that to any others games with protons. I tried running cs2 on native linux without success

UPDATE: ISSUE RESOLVED

ISSUE NOW FIXED! I installed the Linux-TKG kernel with PDS and added the -vulkan & removed "enable presahder caching" (In the steam settings > Download) command line via cs2 on steam and it works like a cham, no freezes and I get the double of FPS thanks to u/CuantosNombres & u/Sentaku_HM . I will update the github post I made, here are the links

Please upvote so people can see this, I cannot edit the original post

https://github.com/Frogging-Family/linux-tkg#install-procedure

Original post which fixed my issue

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1en1ux6/cs2_freeze_non_stop/

@lou-perret @ndv99 @ioannedelea

[ioannedelea]

Can also confirm this issue.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/cd65a968-e30e-4dd8-9eae-24d3c8931f45

This is my configuration:

[xMonologue]

Can also confirm this issue.

cs2-menu-c2.mp4 This is my configuration:

I tough I was the only one, weird I can't find any fixes

[ndv99]

Confirmed on my system as well. Immediately freezes when I open the settings menu, or the ESC menu while in a match.

Happened to me during a live match a few weeks ago, the game would freeze almost as soon as I loaded into the match as well. Had to relaunch a load of times and eventually I ran out of time and was force-abandoned.

---

ETA: Nvidia driver version is 535.183.01, running X11 display server. Steam installed through official deb package, CS2 running natively with Steam Linux Runtime 3.0

[sentakuhm]

same issue menu shows perfectly but pressing any button it freezes Arch Linux zen kernel, KDE/Gnome on wayland, R7 5700X3D, Rx 6800. when i add -vulkan to launch options game seems to work fine.

[olealgoritme]

Something that has helped reduce the freeze/lag a bit, is disabling animated avatars.

Settings > Communication > Game > Allow animated avatars > Set the value to "No"

Let me know if this also helped reduce it for others.

[lxmadabc]

The issue seems resolved for me after reinstalling manjaro on my system. Even though I got an NVME SSD, my system never felt as responsive as it should be. The only explanation why load times stopped being abysmal after reinstalling manjaro is that there was a memory bandwidth bottleneck somewhere and CS2 expects a fast SSD (theory is probably wrong since it did work well beforehand). After a fresh install my SSD seems to perform as intended and CS2 loads a lot faster.

Based on the amount of comments this is not yet fixed and I doubt every person commenting uses a slow file storage system or has a misconfigured SSD. Still, maybe something to look into...

[lou-perret]

Still occurring after today's update for me

[Faulto]

idk about installing linux-tkg but i did notice a significant improvement running with -vulkan and disabling preshader caching. I'm still getting freezes but its 1-2 seconds only on menus sometimes instead of freezing the game completely and requiring alt tabbing to unfreeze the process.

Could also be luck though i have noticed that this issue is a bit random. i can sometimes launch the game and play without any issues but after a few matches or specifically the map Inferno the game becomes unplayable and it then becomes a persistent problem. Restarting the game or operating system makes no difference at that point.

If anyone wants to test this and let us know if it alleviates the symptoms. i don't have the time today to sit down and play a few games but from what i tested locally and in deathmatch it seems to have improved my situation.

[3zet]

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/csgo-osx-linux/issues/3803#issuecomment-2276733163

Tried that, issue still persists. No change whatsoever.

[fagnerln]

Hey people, please... Don't install a custom kernel because of a game, this is silliness, if you don't know what changes it make, simply don't do it.

And CS2 uses dxvk, so it only uses Vulkan, -vulkan doesn't have effect. It's placebo.

[mariog0ncalves]

Something that has helped reduce the freeze/lag a bit, is disabling animated avatars.

Settings > Communication > Game > Allow animated avatars > Set the value to "No"

Let me know if this also helped reduce it for others.

Unfortunately, that seems to not help it much better. I did see less fps lost on matches with few players opening the scoreboard, but was just that.Also, since this seems to be kind of a random bug, I can't even tell that was the case.

But yeah, new update came today and issue is still not fixed.

Main Menu:

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/87fa9452-7a2f-454c-a73e-addf443a8624

Gameplay:

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/7a6bebde-c0ef-4465-a92c-a36e4ea0b256

As for the other fix, I think changing kernels might be a little overkill.At best the solution, if it really is fixed on that kernel, would be to try to find out as to why it's causing this issue on all the other official ones but not on that one.

Edit:

Support finally aknowledged the problem. I've sent them this thread alongside the explanation.Let's see if it sticks.

[ndv99]

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/csgo-osx-linux/issues/3803#issuecomment-2276909738

It's actually interesting that you mention Inferno being unplayable in particular - I had the exact same experience on that map. Other maps were half playable, but I could never rejoin an Inferno competitive match without it instantly freezing. Eventually had to just abandon and take the cooldown

[PNunesDev]

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/csgo-osx-linux/issues/3803#issuecomment-2276733163

Fixed? Installing a custom kernel is now fixing an issue?

That is a workaround, not a fix! This needs to be fixed by valve itself.

[xMonologue]

Replying to #3803 (comment)

Fixed? Installing a custom kernel is now fixing an issue?

That is a workaround, not a fix! This needs to be fixed by valve itself.

I never said it didn't need to be fixed by valve. In my case it improve a lot but there is still a need for this to be fixed by Valve. I don't see what is the actual point of starting a hate train and down voting my post. I was just trying to help people find a temporary fix until valve fix their shit. There is an issue on linux with cs2 and thats not a lie but knowing valve it will take ages to fix. So that was my fix in my case but does the issues still persist? Yes but its less frequent. You guys need to take a chill pill

[PNunesDev]

@xMonologue Not on a hate train, didn't downvote you, and workarounds are cool for who wants to do it. I just want you to choose your words carefully since most mods in github as soon as they see someone saying that it is fixed, they will close down the bug in no time. :)

[IMarkoMC]

Installing a random kernel to "fix" something is as stupid as it sounds. There's no need to change a perfectly working kernel for another random one.

Incredible that this is not fixed a month later. good one valve

[Tiagoquix]

Also happening on kernel version 6.9.12-200.fc40.x86_64 (64-bit), Fedora Linux 40, NVIDIA proprietary driver.s

[jb55]

Something that has helped reduce the freeze/lag a bit, is disabling animated avatars.

Settings > Communication > Game > Allow animated avatars > Set the value to "No"

Let me know if this also helped reduce it for others.

sometimes I can make it through a couple games without the lag at all, and then all of a sudden in some games it starts happening. considering different users may be triggering it an it only happens in menus, maybe avatars are a factor. will try this and report back...

[fluckx]

Ah! I am kind of glad I'm not the only one. I had a few games this afternoon where it didn't happen and I thought I had finally fixed it. And then I played one competitive game tonight where I needed 5 rounds to be able to reconnect and tons of lag / freezes at the start and end of games.

Here's hoping they find a fix soon. It's bugging the hell out of me :(

[ageisen2000]

My response from my support ticket, which seems like a copy paste:

Steam and CS2 for Linux is currently only supported on the latest version of 64-bit Ubuntu LTS with Unity, Gnome, or KDE desktops.

If you are running another distribution of Linux, 32-bit Ubuntu, or an older version of Ubuntu we will not be able to provide support. We recommend you install the latest version of 64-bit Ubuntu for the best Steam experience on Linux.

If you wish to attempt to run Steam on a different distribution or version, it's best that you use Github to discuss them with our developers and other Linux users.

Because we have provided all the information we have for your issue I'm closing this help request. If you have an unrelated issue please open a new help request and we will be happy to help.

Steam Support William B

[spikederailed]

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/csgo-osx-linux/issues/3803#issuecomment-2282200206

Funny they say that because their own OS is Arch based now. That not withstanding, im experiencing this exact issue on the latest Kubuntu LTS 24.04. Ubuntu LTS 24.04 base, KDE WM, X11, everything fully updated.

Sadly my internet has been intermittent since Debby rolled though and havent got to play in the last 2 days.

[mariog0ncalves]

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/csgo-osx-linux/issues/3803#issuecomment-2282200206

Yeap got the same reply also. Fortunately I was able to reply and reinforce that it was not an issue of the machine or the distro in question. Before that update everything worked fine. This was their final reply so far:

Thanks for taking some time to provide feedback about Counter-Strike 2. I'm forwarding your comments on to the
team so they can take a look.

Additionally, if you wish to share an opinion, suggestion, or idea with the Counter-Strike 2 team please do so using Counter-Strike 2's Steam Discussions.

The Counter-Strike 2 team regularly checks Steam Discussions for feedback from players which may help improve the
game.

Steam Support Roger

Edit:

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/csgo-osx-linux/issues/3803#issuecomment-2282218742

lol @ageisen2000 he's just trimming down the "fat" of quote replies with the link to the comment itself 🤣. It makes replies look more cleaner. But yeah, at least someone's looking at the hottest issue on this repo (4th most commented overall)

I've checked some reddit posts and also sent a bug report email to cs2team@valvesoftware.com explaining the situation and linking this issue. Here's hoping the dev team take a look into this.

[ageisen2000]

Lol @kisak-valve edited your comment @mariog0ncalves. But still no replies from valve themselves.

Well at least now we know someone is at least looking at the thread from valve.

[wojgie]

Please stop spamming if there's nothing new about this issue. They know about this issue

[jb55]

spamming will continue until morale improves

[xMonologue]

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/csgo-osx-linux/issues/3803#issuecomment-2282200206

You're lucky you even got that type of response mine told me to report this to the github repo and said this:

Greetings,

We're sorry you're having issues with Counter-Strike 2 on Linux.

Please submit all issues and bugs to the bug database using a GitHub account. This database is regularly reviewed by the Valve developer team.

In the meantime, the best source for further troubleshooting steps and suggestions can be found in the Steam for Linux community discussion.

You can also find current support documentation for the Steam for Linux client here.

Steam Support James Lin

[jb55]

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/csgo-osx-linux/issues/3803#issuecomment-2278685884

this didn't help at all

[nadanke]

I can confirm that with the tkg kernel with PDS scheduler the problem is basically gone. When booting with the normal Arch kernel, the hangs return (immeadiately noticable in the menu). I haven't testes the -vulkan option yet.

[funforums]

Just posting my +1 here. AMD Ryzen 5800X, 7900 GRE, Arch Linux with normal kernel - also massive freezes while playing, also massive hangs while navigating the menus, the only difference between wayland and x11 being that on wayland the entire plasmashell crashes and restarts when the game freezes, while plasmashell on X11 somehow survives.

as others have also mentioned, inferno is also especially dramatic. no option seems to help.

[gamertyke]

How has this been a problem for a month on the biggest esport game in the world? Not to vent but you even have pros tweeting about poor performance on Windows as well. Please just make the game playable for crying out loud.

[SawFowl]

I can confirm that with the tkg kernel with PDS scheduler the problem is basically gone. When booting with the normal Arch kernel, the hangs return (immeadiately noticable in the menu). I haven't testes the -vulkan option yet.

I also tried building the kernel myself. This helped to get rid of the hangs. Sometimes I still see microfreezes in the menu, but in general nothing serious.

[gitreelike]

I have this issue on Arch linux.

On the Steam Deck, I have micro stutters in the menu which I suspect have the same root cause. But I have no freezes on the steam deck.

Since valve support indicated only Ubuntu being supported for @ageisen2000 , did anyone try reproducing the issue there?

If Ubuntu doesn't have the issue, we might be in the unfortunate situation of "unsupported configuration".

[justpie]

Since valve support indicated only Ubuntu being supported for @ageisen2000 , did anyone try reproducing the issue there?

Can confirm that its unplayable in a fresh install of Ubuntu 24.04 using Nvidia-555 in Wayland and x11.

[marcschuler]

Since valve support indicated only Ubuntu being supported for @ageisen2000 , did anyone try reproducing the issue there?

Can confirm too on Ubuntu 24.04, Wayland, Radeon 7800XT

[Dwyriel]

Though really not a solution, compiling and using tkg-pds really did help. Before the hangs would keep getting worse and worse until I got disconnected and had to restart the game to get it to be "smooth" again. Now it seems to be fine even after 1 hours of gameplay.

I had been trying to debug this since it first started happening a month ago, whenever the game is frozen, no resource is being used (gpu, cpu, disc read/write.. nothing). Might not be the real problem but I've only ever experienced this when you 2 or more threads from a program are waiting on each other, causing the program to hang until one of them times out. I had tried different kernels before (vanilla arch, LTS and zen) and even downgrading drivers, etc. but it did not make any difference (most likely cuz they use the same thread scheduler). Really do hope valve fix whatever the problem since using a custom kernel is, at best, a bandaid.

[gitreelike]

Since people keep mentioning the pds scheduler, I tried setting the nice value for cs2 and cs2.sh to "-8" (so pulseaudio is still more important). That in combination with alt-tab spamming yielded a better but still questionable experience. I had no connection losses and was able to accept all games for 1 session. But the menu was still bad and I did have some in game hangs of 1-3 seconds.

I did not test yet if this was due to the nice value or alt-tab spamming.

This was on arch with vanilla kernel.

[Dwyriel]

@gitreelike I tried setting the niceness to the lowest possible (-20) and was usually playing with it at -15 (above even pipewire) and it didn't really help much, still got and still getting (just tested it again) freezes during matches.

The menus for me always froze for a second or so ever since the game released, it got worse after the july update but with a different thread scheduler it's back to how it used to be.

ps: Afaik the steamOS kernel uses a modified version of the base arch kernel. Pretty sure they have some zen/zenify modifications and, since this does not seem to affect steam deck, most likely a different/custom thread scheduler as well (since power consumption is important on a system like the Deck).

[lorenzo-ulter]

I run Nobara on a full AMD desktop tried everything and nothing fixed the issue, I flashed the TKG kernel with PDS and that solved it, but at the cost of like 100 FPS and chooppyness. I downloaded the game on a laptop that I have running Fedora Intel + Nvidia with 6.8.8 Kernel and the game runs perfectly fine, I tried for a logn time but the game never gave me freeze issues, so I must assume the issue is not for everyone on Linux, I went back to 6.8.7 on my Desktop but the issue was still present.

Then I realizewds on my laptop I have shader pre-caching on, so the game took a long time to open, I had disabled this on my desktop a long time ago, I re enabled it in steam settings and so far the issue seems gone, will do more testing but could this possibly be the problem?

[gamertyke]

Then I realizewds on my laptop I have shader pre-caching on, so the game took a long time to open, I had disabled this on my desktop a long time ago, I re enabled it in steam settings and so far the issue seems gone, will do more testing but could this possibly be the problem?

Wow interesting find. I turned it off as well due to how long it takes and how often it needed to be done. I will test on my end too

[M-Reimer]

The alternative kernel also likely brings other defaults for "sysctl settings". Maybe it would be interesting if someone who already built the tkg kernel could dump all sysctl settings, then switch back to the original kernel and do the same. With both dumps it would be easy to find differences.

[gamertyke]

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/csgo-osx-linux/issues/3803#issuecomment-2289247305

So just to confirm, you reset your cache, redownloaded them all as the game started with steam and nothing improved?

[gamertyke]

Replying to #3803 (comment)

I simply disabled precaching and re-enabled (showing 0 precache) and started CS2. CS2 build the shaders when loading the map, then freezing when going into menus as usual.

With pre-caching, shouldn't it build the shaders before launching the game?

[gitreelike]

@Dwyriel thank you for trying this out.

If even -20 doesn't help, I have trouble believing that this issue is related to the CPU scheduler. But who knows.

Edit: removed incomplete sentence

[koreanfan]

On archlinux/debian/manjaro/ubuntu lagging, freezing. Also huge fps drops after 1-2 matches or huge fps drops if you change resolution in game. At least i dont have cursor stuck at up vertical movements direction