


Lighting failures causing Black rooms. Sometimes fixed by swiching weapon or turning on/off flashlight.

-game bshift
When the game loads a new chapter it crashes with the message "Out of memory or address space"
The frequent crashes are annoying, but other then that, the game is really fun

Worked decently out of the box
some weird problems with the shadows casted by the flashlight not rendering properly
trying to do anything during loading screens, like alt-tabbing, has a good chance of crashing the game

proforms great on more powerfull hardware

Public Beta is required if you want to play the Native Linux version; the normal release is unplayable due to the lighting.
When not using the public beta branch; lighting was horrid and the flashlight would not work at all.
Some sections would tank in framerate; suddenly going form 150+ fps down to 30-40.
Proton did fix most bugs; but the performance was worse across the board. I'd recommend just sticking to the Native version with public-beta branch for the best performance.
Do not buy this game, it will crash every 30 minutes, play the original

-oldgameui
Sometimes, saving the game just makes the audio completely stop working. It did not always happen. Might be a problem with wireplumber.
Saving sometimes makes device playback stop.
In a particular chapter, the player might view the error "Failed to load vertex buffer". This can be fixed by launching the game with Proton 6-3-8 and -oldgameui

-oldgameui
Out of memory or address space & sometimes instant close down without message
Quite annoying to play. Latest GE-Proton, Proton Hotfix, Proton Experimental, Proton 9, they all have the exact same problem with this game. Game will eventually crash if I play more than 30 minutes or so. Sometimes can be an hour. Native & public beta as of the time of writing is still NOT the one I should pick as the result can be much worse and doesn't solve any mentioned problems at all. Lower graphic settings don't help.

Proton is required to get decent performance out of Black Mesa, and even then you shouldn't use the default recommended one.
Workshop addons that replace models, for example, weapon replacements, show up completely invisible in-game.
Borderless fullscreen does not work properly. You can't escape it with Alt+Tab and the mouse cursor's possible positions don't scale proportionally with the screen.

Quite annoying to play
When going into outside sections, sometimes the grass has no texture, which can become quite annoying.
Significant slowdowns in random sections, where if not paused, the game will just crash
Crashes randomly, especially towards the end of Surface Tension
Will try other adjustments, but running natively is not the way to go

-game bshift
Copied the bshift folder to Black Mesa root directory
When a lot is happening, especially when there's a lot of NPCs around, the game stutters and crashes
After loading new map or chapter, the game just doesn't show anything (either a black screen or the loading screen). I had to quit the game with console (using ` button) and start it again
The Blue Shift mod is not playable on the Native Linux version. I still had to fiddle with proton versions (9.0-4 worked ok, but Experimental had better performance). I also tried finding a good launch option for the crashes, but sadly, nothing fixed it. Right now I'm stuck on the part where the elavator drops down and there's a loading screen; it just can't get past that and shows a black screen (audio works, but the game and UI doesn't)

Fonts to install: corefonts, lucida, tahoma.
Native is basically unfinished/broken, I was able to play with graphical bugs and slow performace, I just kept playing up until Surface Tension, specifically at the mortar bit where the Native version crashes the game. This is where I just tried Proton, regular game version (no public-beta), works flawlessly, better performance and no bugs.
Some ingame fonts look wrong, can be fixed by Protontricks and installing the fonts mentioned in this report.

I completely nuked the Installation Folder, Set the compatibility to Proton Experimental, then reinstalled the game on my OS Install drive, and so far so good. haven't played enough to see how performance does, but rather than running native this fixes the graphical bugs that I have had so far.
Graphical Issues on Native
This worked for me, I'm not sure if this is going to 100% work for anyone else, I had a hard time getting Black Mesa to start in compatibility mode when it was already installed on my system.

Heavy graphical bugs in native build. Such as flashlights not illuminating areas at times unless you take damage. Proton fixes this although opens up new issues
Ran fine in Native besides graphical bugs, but crashes constantly on proton making it a less than enjoyable experiance at times
While there may be a ton of issues with Black Mesa on linux currently, the problems i came across didnt ruin the experiance for me. One thing i highly reccomend is to manually save the game occasionally as you may lose progress when the game randomly crashes.

Game's great, but there are too many issues with it on Linux currently.
public-beta made the game perform better, but there were still minor lightning issues and textures missing, especially in Interloper.
Sometimes the input is buggy and the game thinks you are holding down a key/clicking a mouse button when you're not, could not figure out what causes it
FPS fluctuations, ran at 144 FPS for 40% of the time, with drops up to 10 FPS in some areas
From what I understand after three playthroughs, the public-beta always crashes at two different moments in the game, the first is towards the end of Surface Tension and the second is the very last fight. I had to switch to Proton during those moments, but always came back to the native-version as emulating the game through Proton always made it crash after 50 minutes for me.

Native version doesn't launch. Switched to public-beta branch and forced Proton 9.0-4.
Despite the tinkering there is still a tiny amount of input lag, but it's playable
Other combinations of tinkering methods resulted in greatly reduced framerates (around 40fps instead of 200+)
Why bother making a native version if you can't commit to maintaining it? Runs okay-ish through Proton 9.

Native Linux version has serious issues. The game works with Proton 9 or 8 but crashes too often.
Audio doesn't work in the Linux version.
Out of memory crashes with Proton 9 and 8
Lighting is screwed when first booting up, but upon switching to Proton Experimental lighting is fixed, however this messes up the CC font

-oldgameui -vulkan
Running this game natively results in many visual artifacts and lighting bugs and using proton 9, GE, or experimental results in massively unplayable stuttering even on potato settings. Proton 8 has given the best experience so far on any settings.
Lighting bugs out in nearly every room

I've played this game native for almost 120 minutes before encountering my first "game breaking" graphical bug. Before that, the lighting was glitched (especially the flashlights and some water effects that iirc another user already reported) but it hadn't been causing much discomfort. AFTER switching to Proton 9.0 the glitches disappeared. So yeah, on Nobara Linux (fresh install) it doesn't seem to work ootb. No big deal, but not exactly what I envisioned for a game labeled "Native".

Slow loading times
Native version is terrible compared to running under proton. Lighting issues, input delay and other issues were pretty much all unpresent under proton.
PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command% -oldgameui -force_vendor_id 0x10DE -force_device_id 0x1180
On Native version, game crashes during Surface Tension last part of the mission
Surface Tension on Native version, switching to proton fixes it. Also crashes in the s2nd last mission

PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=60
Problems with lightning on native version
Game is crashing after some maps, it's like playing with dice but i have luck
Using the beta_branch fix some problems with lighting on linux version but not all, with proton experimental fixed every thing but the game takes more time to load, even using DXVK

%command% -oldgameui
Also tested with proton, game crashes and have significant performance problems.

gamemoderun %command%
Unless you use the public_beta branch, lighting will be completely broken in Linux. With it enabled, the artifacts reduce singnificantly, although they still appear specially with weapons muzzle flash and fire/explosions.
Borderless Windowed was acting like windowed
Sometimes it just throwed an engine error out of nowhere
I was pretty disappointed to see that the native build in the stable branch is completely broken and any Proton, no matter the tricks used, crashes constantly. The public_beta branch makes the game playable but it's not a pleasant experience either.

-console
Use console from start and type password ***** to play with friend in coop

-oldgameui
Stutter and flicker with native resolution (1200p)
After installation the game starts with a black screen. Ŵith -oldgameui the game starts but the performance is very slow in native linux. Proton works way better, but it's not possible to play with 1200p (stuttering).

Unless you have the hardware to brute force your way through the performance issues, this is probably not worth playing.
Unless max framerate is locked, the game feels like maybe 25 fps. It feels awful. The game is also poorly optimized forcing me to massively reduce settings throughout the game to reliably hit the maximum framerate as the issue becomes worse as you progress through the game.
Sometimes the game freezes on loads. Also the game sometimes needs to be restarted after changing the graphics settings because of a freeze.
Tried Linux native too. No flashlight, missing textures, and some odd graininess or aliasing. Definitely not ready for prime time.

Native version don't work

Missing testures on Linux Native. When using proton I can look around with mouse but pressing button goes to loading screen....stays stuck.
Sadly both Linux Native and Proton version have issues :(

Game works, but a lot of graphical issues
Huge graphical issues and bugs
I am playing the native version, and I can see through walls sometimes, the flashlight doesn't work in some rooms and there is some terrible fog above the water

Bound sprint on R joystick press Bound crouch on L joystick press
The game sometimes crashes when left in sleep mode with wi-fi on. Disabling wi-fi fixes this.
I have experienced minor graphical glitches when playing without experimental. The default control scheme can be a bit awkward at times.
-windowed
Game couldn't boot. Suspect it was old config from playing on Windows. Had to set -windoed initially to get around this

public-beta is a must. Proton crashing all the time in my experience
Minor texture issues here and there, one area fails to load an ice texture in a freezer and is very hard to look at.
OpenGL instead of Vulkan on native (public beta), Proton runs better but crashes all the time.

On the latest Public-Beta, its pretty solid!
Some lag but not game ruining

Native version is free of bugs and artifacts after 2 years, but it still lacks Vulkan support and runs only with OpenGL.
Switch to proton and you'll have no issue. Switch to Beta branch in order to launch a game in DXVK mode for better performance.

using the beta branch, performance on proton is very smooth. A few stutters when loading textures only
crashes out of memory every 50mins or so, playing on 4k
when loading a save, a "loading" box appears, but hitting ESC dismisses it

Serious graphical artifacts when running natively on integrated gpu. Would not run on dedicated gpu.
prime-run %command%
Game would freeze befrore main menu when trying to run with dedicated gpu

crashes around one hour of play, autosaves are great so not that big of a deal
use the public beta branch and force proton experimental, gives a dramatic performance difference. Also used Ge, worked ok