Sorry to bring this up again, but I’d really like to get it working again.

I noticed today that the CPU usage jumps to ~98% as soon as I start WoW. Even just in the main menu. I had previously started CS as a test to see how it behaves there. In CS, the CPU load stays around 25% even when playing against bots (so not just in the main menu) and with significantly higher graphics settings. So it seems there might be some kind of problem with the CPU?! That said, I’m even less sure how to influence the CPU’s performance and why it suddenly seems to be reaching its limits when running much older games.

I’ve attached a graph showing the CPU usage over time, including the values when launching CS, while on the desktop, and when launching WOW.

Thanks for the suggestion. That’s what the console displays when I try to launch Steam. Do you have any idea what that means? :)

markus@markus-PC-Kubuntu:~$ steam
Testing for explicit PulseAudio choice...
...and PulseAudio has been explicitly chosen, so using it.
INFO: filtering /home/markus/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share out of XDG_DATA_DIRS because it is unreachable
INFO: filtering /var/lib/flatpak/exports/share out of XDG_DATA_DIRS because it is unreachable
INFO: filtering /usr/share/kubuntu-default-settings/kf5-settings out of XDG_CONFIG_DIRS because it is unreachable
steam-runtime-launcher-service: no process found
markus@markus-PC-Kubuntu:~$ Found NVIDIA version: 595.71.05
Need NVIDIA 32-bit: True

Edit: Just as I’d finished typing this, the console command installed something after about 3–4 minutes. I couldn’t really tell what it was. But then Steam and also CS finally launched. :D I was kind of hoping that it might have fixed WoW ‘by itself’ as well, but unfortunately not.

Wow, thank you so much for the comprehensive reply and the detailed help.

I’ve tried a few more things, but I’m afraid I’ll have no choice but to reinstall Kubuntu. At some point.

Something is definitely not right. Today, Steam suddenly wouldn’t start at all. Even though the last thing I did yesterday was play CS. I turned on my PC today and Steam isn’t working anymore. Not at all. No error message or anything…

I must admit that I’m losing some of my enthusiasm for Linux. After over 30 years of Windows, I was actually glad that I finally plucked up the courage to try Linux at the start of the year. After all, there are more and more reasons to avoid Windows these days. But if, every time I restart Linux, I have to worry that some programme will suddenly stop working, it’s really demotivating.

Thank you for the detailed reply. As I’m still a beginner when it comes to Linux – I’ve only been using it since February this year – it took me a while to put your suggestions into practice.

It didn’t work out in the end, though. I was able to install mangohud and it did appear in the game settings in Lutris, but it was greyed out so I couldn’t activate it.

In general, there seem to be further issues with my system.

Every time I start up, the KDE Password Manager launches. And until I’ve entered my kernel password there, neither the Wi-Fi nor the browser works. That wasn’t the case until recently either.

If I try to view additional drivers under ‘Software & Additional Drivers’, the page just keeps loading and loading, and even after 20 minutes nothing is displayed. Only when I go via ‘System – Drivers’ do I get to these additional drivers.

Hardly any packages can be installed via Discover. I get the meaningless error ‘Faulty operation’ there.

Thanks for the tip. It actually worked—I was able to at least launch WoW again and log in. But in-game, I’m getting 3 (yes, 3!) FPS :)