From 4d4f9a0b5e01149b05569da8624143fca9fd40a4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Miguel Palhas Date: Sun, 5 Jul 2026 14:59:22 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] steam: stop Big Picture GPU sandbox crash (-cef-disable-gpu-sandbox) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Steam's CEF UI intermittently crashed its GPU child (exit_code=8704) on NVIDIA+Wayland, falling back to CPU rendering and making Big Picture a slideshow at 4K/HiDPI. Bake -cef-disable-gpu-sandbox into every steam invocation via extraArgs so it covers all entry points (desktop, CLI, Sunshine's Big Picture tile) — launch flags only apply on the invocation that first starts Steam. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) --- hosts/common/features/gaming/steam.nix | 15 ++++++++++++++- 1 file changed, 14 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/hosts/common/features/gaming/steam.nix b/hosts/common/features/gaming/steam.nix index df37a33..c0f16ce 100644 --- a/hosts/common/features/gaming/steam.nix +++ b/hosts/common/features/gaming/steam.nix @@ -1,9 +1,22 @@ -_: +{ pkgs, ... }: { programs.steam = { enable = true; remotePlay.openFirewall = true; + + # Steam's UI (store/library/Big Picture) is a Chromium/CEF app. On NVIDIA + + # Wayland its GPU child process intermittently trips the CEF GPU sandbox and + # crashes (cef_log: "GPU process exited unexpectedly: exit_code=8704"); + # Chromium then permanently falls back to CPU rendering for that session + # (--disable-gpu), which turns Big Picture into a slideshow at our 4K/HiDPI + # scale. Streaming (NVENC + game load hammering the GPU at once) is a common + # trigger. -cef-disable-gpu-sandbox drops the sandbox around *only* Steam's + # own UI renderer so the GPU process stops crashing and Big Picture stays + # hardware-accelerated. extraArgs bakes it into `exec steam ... "$@"`, so it + # applies to every entry point (desktop, CLI, Sunshine's Big Picture tile) — + # launch flags only take effect on the invocation that first starts Steam. + package = pkgs.steam.override { extraArgs = "-cef-disable-gpu-sandbox"; }; }; hardware.steam-hardware.enable = true;