I was having an issue with some Flatpak games not accepting keyboard input. There are specifically two that have been problematic, GZDoom and Xonotic. These are the exception and not the rule and as such, the solution has been eluding me. Not web searching, AI bot questioning nor asking my fellow, Linux enthusiast e-friends could find the solution but that has changed as of today. The solution is but one simple tick in the Flatpack settings box.
Bottom Line Up Front: There are no problems with Flatpak games on X11. If you want to run them on Wayland you have to make one modification to the Flatpak permission settings.
Background
Whenever possible, I much prefer to use Flatpak for installing games on my Linux system. I do this because I know that the collection of libraries required to run this game will be sorted out properly by the developer or packager and tested. Of course, this won’t be 100% but it is a pretty good bet that it will.
I ran into a couple games, the aforementioned GZDoom and Xonotic, that would not accept keyboard input when I tired to play them on my laptop. They mouse worked fine, cursor keys and enter worked fine but not WASD. It was quite baffling. I searched through forums, asked Grok and Llama for direction but nothing seemed to get me quite on target. Ultimately, it ended up being an issue with the Wayland windowing permission flag, it has to be turned off.
Plasma Settings Flatpak Permissions
To turn off Wayland windowing system using the Plasma Flatpak permission interface. Open up the System Settings, type Flatpak in the search, locate the game in question, in this case GZDoom, select the Advanced Permissions and uncheck the box Wayland windowing system.
Select Apply at the bottom of the window and when you next run the game, your keyboard input troubles should be solved.
Flatseal
If you don’t already have the Flatseal application installed, you will need to have that installed. It isn’t installed by default on all systems. Open it up, find the game, again, in this case, GZDoom and toggle off the Wayland windowing system.
There is no Apply button as Flatseal apply the changes immediately.
Final Thoughts
This was a small issue that I was able to, after some experimentation, solve and now share with the world wide web of vintage game and Linux user enthusiasts. I wouldn’t have actually thought to do this until someone on the Linux Saloon suggested that it might be a Wayland issue. Thankfully XWayland can pick up the slack wherever it is necessary. I’m sure that little edge-case problems like this will make this article irrelevant very soon.
I didn’t play Doom for long, it was just a nostalgia fix that I craved which ultimately cost me several hours to get but now that I have worked through this one, should I run into another situation where this comes up, I know to check the Wayland windowing system in the flatpak settings and toggle that option to off.
References
http://linuxsaloon.com
Gaming links on CubicleNate.com
Descent 3 | Freed to Open Source
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