Wanted to share an anecdote (I hope that’s OK). I jumped to Linux on my gaming pc last August (Bazzite) and I’ve been having a blast. Almost everything works either out of the box or with a minor tweak (the tweak being updating Proton). But I am the sole linux user in my D&D/gaming group, so obviously this is the source of some of our banter.
Last night, we decided to play some Valheim. Bought it before switching to Linux and never tried it, so steam had to install some compatibilty stuff. But once everything was installed, it too worked like a charm (surprise surprise). We were having fun, sailing around on our crappy raft mighty longship and striking a nice pose while doing so. I decided to take a screenshot, but didn’t know if there was a keybind to disable the HUD, so I asked the two more experienced Valheimers with whom I was playing. Neither of them knew it by heart, but one of them looked it up. He said: “It should be Ctrl + F3”. I tried it and it didn’t work for me, but it did for him. “Wow, imagine playing on linux where nothing works” our other friend chimed in (jokely, don’t worry). Our first, more helpful friend said: “Maybe try Ctrl + Alt + F3?” So I did. Then, my whole computer froze, just as we landed on the edge of a dark forest with our raft. I thought: Oh fuck what did I do this time. Pressing again didn’t help, but after about 20/30 seconds, I was greeted with a shell login. Now I could hear my friends and the game in the background again, and they could hear me, but all I saw was a shell. I decided to log in, and still only got a shell. So, as my friends were frantically fighting a skeleton, I was searching for what on earth happened, and, more importantly, how to fix it.
Thankfully, I wasn’t the first idiot to start pressing random buttons on their Linux system, and someone had this exact issue years back as well. I had a quick read, and learned that apparently the Ctrl + Alt + Fx buttons switch between virtual terminals. The post on the Ubuntu forums mentioned needing to switch to terminal 7 (Ctrl + Alt + F7), which also didn’t work. But trying the other buttons, I found that the desktop environment is on terminal 2 (at least on Bazzite/Fedora).
And the funny thing here is that, even though I was essentially gone for a full minute, maybe a minute and a half, my character was fine, my Linux naysayer friend had died to a skeleton, and I had learned something new about our great OS :)
That shortcut to switch between different virtual consoles is very useful. If somehow your desktop crashes, this can be used to login and fix.
They hate us cause they ain’t us 😎
This is very true, I have learned of 1001 ways in which I can break my OS.
Yeah, virtual ttys can be a lifesaver! Definitely something to keep in your back pocket.
I’m guessing you’re playing on a laptop? If so, it sounds like your Fn Lock is on. Usually laptops have some Fn key combo to turn it off, Fn+Esc is a common one.
Nope, PC. But honestly now that I know of the feature it won’t be an issue anymore. In fact, as many have pointed out, it can be very useful if something is messed up. Given that the distro is atomic that chance is slim, but still.
It also opens the door to experimentation too. If you’re comfortable with using a terminal to undo a change you made and restart your DM/windower, suddenly you’re not afraid of trying things out that might hang your windower.
TTY’s are one of those thing that aren’t as often required these days as they used to be, but - and trust me on this - should you ever encounter one of the increasingly rare situations where you really need them, you’ll suddenly be very, very glad they exist.
Oh I not bashing on the feature, don’t worry. I was just very surprised when my computer seemed to freeze XD.
Out of curiousity, what kind of use cases do/did they have?
When you get a moment, you could try switching over to the tty again, login to the shell, and then try typing in the command
btop(which I think is the Bazzite specific version of the default “top” command, and should be installed by default). Top is basically a task manager, and you can see what programs are running (and taking up resources) right there in the terminal. If your system freezes up, you can often unfreeze it by killing the unresponsive programs. It’s probably useful to familiarise yourself with that interface before you need it.Well, as an example, when nvidia next demonstrates that one of the biggest companies on the face of planet Earth just cannot possibly afford to hire a couple of more developers to maintain their drivers and keep up with Kernel development and your Window Manager consequently fails to run, a TTY is nice for downgrading the drivers to a version that actually works. :)
When your entire desktop environment freezes, on Windows you’d have to do a hard shutdown, risking data loss or corruption.
On Linux you switch to another TTY, kill the process that’s locking up everything, and go back to work.Troubleshooting and fixing your system when your desktop environment is broken
You don’t need a desktop for a server. A local TTY allows the same stuff as connecting over SSH but you can do whatever you need to bring up the network. The drawback is having to go to the data centre…
Sadly most times I needed one, I either didn’t know enough to be able to use it properly, or the PC was under too heavy a load that even the TTY was not responding.
Valheim runs natively on linux. No need to install compatability layers. Can also probably use steams screenshot button or whatever your desktop enviroment uses.
The key part is “disable the HUD”
Ah then I don’t know what steam was installing XD. It did download and install something before installing Valheim, so I assumed it had to do with compatibility. Either way, I’m just happy that it works, and works well :)
It is possible that you are running the windows version. You can find out in properties of the game. If the ‘force compatability tool’ is checked, under compatability, it will download the windowns version and run it through compatability layers. Otherwise you might have just seen the dialog about precompiling shaders.
Worth noting that sometimes developers make a linux version of their game, but neglects maintaining it. In those cases it is preferable to just run the windows version with comp layers. I think the linux native valheim version is alright though. Good devs.
I’ll investigate when I get home, but yeah it might be the shaders as well
So what was the right shortcut for the screenshot in the end?
For Steam it is F12, for the OS it is just Print Screen.
I recommend the latter since you can also do a partial screenshot, draw on it and it gets saved in your Pictures folder automatically.
That is handy, but I think OP was looking for an in-game function to turn off health bars and quest indicators prior to taking a screenshot.
That probably is the same as on Windows, but OP’s shell was intercepting it as instructions for the desktop and not passing it into the application itself.
I think Alt+F3 is the shortcut for “exit fullscreen” for native KDE applications.Indeed, I wanted to know the keys to disable health bars and such to make the screenshot prettier. I’ll try to rebind the keybind in Valheim when I have the time. Thank you!
Or, if you never intend on using multiple virtual desktops, you can go into (I’m assuming KDE) keyboard shortcut settings and unbind Alt-F3 so it can pass into Valheim.
That makes sense. Didn’t even know Valheim had a screenshot feature.
It doesn’t. It has a feature that hides the HUD.
Ctrl-F3 switches to the third virtual desktop in KDE if you have at least three virtual desktops. If you don’t have at least three virtual desktops, it doesn’t do anything, but also prevents the input from reaching Valheim to turn off the HUD.
Ctrl+F3 disables the hud.
Not working. Maybe if i do Ctrl+Alt+F3
Traditionally virtual tty 1 through 6 were text terminal. So X used the 7th, that’s why some older forums tells you to go there.
Nowadays, the graphical session manager will spawn on vtty 1, and sessions will dynamically use the others. So on a mostly single user computer, Ctrl+alt+F2 is likely to work. With multiple users, you can actually switch users or come back to the session manager this way.
If you switch to an unused vtty, systemd will spawn a text login prompt. And when you login, some logind dark magic makes the system realize your are entitled to hear the audio output of your application still running on your graphical session.
Valheim uses proton? I’m pretty sure it ran natively a few years back.
i‘m glad you learned about how to switch tty! now this is a very rare situation, but if you log into your computer, then switch to some tty, log in there too, do things, lock it, and leave the computer, the other tty is still unlocked because you need to lock both the tty you logged into.
i know this is a super rare/ hypothetical situation, but i think you should know.I hadn’t considered this, so thanks for the info
That is indeed good to be aware of, thank you!
Hah, I did that too in my first weeks with linux x3… I think I wanted to hit alt + f4, but for some reason I also hit ctrl with it… had a mild heart attack when my screen just went to CLI, but I figured it out :3
Sums up my experience here pretty well too XD
Vital feature.
Just in case your game fogot to put in a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_key
Dwarf Fortress is its own boss key.
“Jokingly, don’t worry” come on man you’re not walking on egg shells just by saying something negative
I’m part-way through Valheim right now. Single-player on Windows, I’m gonna change to Linux in a few weeks I think.
