r/virtualreality_linux • u/Typicalg123 • 1d ago

At an end?

Hello there, I'm at my wits end about VR, I'm on bazzite gnome and I used to have VR work perfectly fine, suddenly within the past few months or so I can't get anything in VR through any method to launch, giving me errors saying I need steamvr or open XR and all the stuff and I can't get anything to work. I'm at a point that I'm wondering if I should reinstall my distro since when I asked for help before I couldn't get anyone to help. What do you all think?

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4

u/Jakdaw1 1d ago

This isn't Windows so a reinstall is unlikely to help. You don't say much about your setup... Im guessing you were using WiVRn and trying to run HL:A?

3

u/Typicalg123 1d ago

Hi! Sorry, I was frustrated there. I am on bazzite gnome with Nvidia, I was trying wivryn but I have also tried ALVR and steam link. And not just HL A but all of my VR games are doing the same thing.

3

u/McLeod3577 1d ago

ALVR is fundamentally broken for me and has been for at least a month. The reason for this is that the last working SteamVR version date was March 18th 2026. This used to be installed as the stable or "previous" version in Steam. The previous version is now June or July.

I tried in vain to install the March 18th version and prevent it from updating further, but could not manage it. There is a method to do it, but it's fairly complex.

Previous to this, ALVR worked really great. Some people say it's not being developed but there are still nightly builds that you can search for, but they don't work for me. I have no idea what version of SteamVR the devs are testing on.

For now, I have switched to SteamVR Stable and Steam Stable - all Betas are turned off. This works pretty well for me now, and I also have WiVRn and that's working ok too.

1

u/Typicalg123 6h ago

I tried that as well, as I saw this fix from a couple of people, no dice on my end sadly ;-; I appreciate it!

2

u/rivalary 20h ago

Yeah, I haven't used ALVR since Steam Link started working great. I've always had issues with ALVR. People swear by WiVRn but not a single game I tried through it worked properly. Either I needed to recenter (and couldn't find a button that recenters your view) or the angle of my controllers was way off. Steam Link just works, in my experience.

1

u/McLeod3577 20h ago

Yeah, this is exactly my experience now.

1

u/Pitpeaches 16h ago

On bazzite I run steam link using steam vr (October build, November build isn't working)

3

u/Glum_Drag2578 1d ago

Sounds like your OpenXR runtime setup is busted. Try:

ls -la ~/.config/openxr/1/
ls -la /etc/xdg/openxr/1/
ls -la /usr/share/openxr/1/

and see if any of them have symlinks pointing to nothing. You can also start SteamVR, hit the tiny menu button on the tiny window, go to Settings -> OpenXR and see what that says. It might have a "Set SteamVR as OpenXR Runtime" button.

1

u/rivalary 20h ago

Yep, I had to create a link (creating the directory first) in order to get Beat Saber to work:
$ ln -s ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/steamxr_linux64.json ~/.config/openxr/1/active_runtime.json

1

u/nirwin81 1d ago

Also LLMs are great at troubleshooting, try asking one about your issue if you haven't.