Left 4 Dead 2 on Linux Mint

Out of the box Left 4 Dead 2 will not run correctly on Linux Mint. To resolve this we will want to remove steam from the repository and install it directly from steam.

https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/client/installer/steam.deb

Install Left 4 Dead 2.

Steam on Linux downloads Vulkan Shaders and stores them in /tmp. Now ever time the computer reboots these have to re-download (~4.3 Gb). To stop this we need to disable shader pre-caching. Go to steam - settings - Downloads - and disable Enable Shader pre-caching.

Secondly, some systems will experience crashing when loading into levels. We can prevent this by setting the launch options below. From steam right click Left 4 Dead 2 and select Properties - General - Launch Options.

-vulkan -malloc=system -novid

This article was written for Linux Mint 22