[SOLVED] Bethesda Launcher won't start at all

[ISSUE SOLVED - please read post #3 in this thread for the solution]

I’m trying to run the Bethesda Launcher, but it won’t start. After clicking “Play” in the GUI the button changes to “Stop”, but after a few seconds changes to “Play” again without the launcher ever starting. Judging by the logs something may be wrong with my computer and Vulkan. I use a netbook with the AMD E1-2100 processor. According to information on the bottom of this website, the E1-2100 series supports Vulkan, but I am not sure if everything is alright with my system configuration. Here is all the necessary data regarding my computer (per the pinned topic):

The lutris-issue-report.json file uploaded to Ubuntu Pastebin

Additional needed information (I could not include it in the first post due to new user restrictions):

The output of the console after running “lutris -d” uploaded to Ubuntu Pastebin

The output of the Lutris log after trying to run the application uploaded to Ubuntu Pastebin

Thank you in advance for taking interest in this issue and for your answers.

Issue SOLVED. Please read below for a detailed solution.

First of all, I would like to thank Tarulia from the official Lutris Discord server - he helped me to indentify and solve the problem.

TL;DR = My system was using the old “radeon” driver, which does not support Vulkan. It had to be changed to the new “amdgpu” driver.

Longer version:

Tarulia noticed the following two lines in the logs I attached:

INFO 2020-08-14 09:46:49,201 [startup.check_driver:73]:GPU: 1002:9834 1025:0834 using radeon drivers
INFO 2020-08-14 09:46:49,343 [startup.check_vulkan:126]:Vulkan is not available or your system isn’t Vulkan capable

These indicated that the driver in use was “radeon” which is old and does not support Vulkan. I was advised to run the command in terminal which would confirm my currently used driver as well as possible options present in the kernel. Here is the command together with output:

patrol1985@Patryk-V5-123:~$ lspci -k | grep -EA3 ‘VGA|3D|Display’
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Kabini [Radeon HD 8210]
Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Kabini [Radeon HD 8210]
Kernel driver in use: radeon
Kernel modules: radeon, amdgpu

As pictured, the kernel driver in use was indeed “radeon”, with the other option available in the kernel being “amdgpu” (a newer driver supporting Vulkan). Thus, it was necessary to disable “radeon” and enable “amdgpu”.

I found the detailed instructions how to do it on this Ask Ubuntu page, but I will write what exactly I did below:

  1. I edited the “/etc/default/grub” file
  2. I found the line containing “GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT”. The full line looked like this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=“quiet splash”

  1. I commented this line out and added a new one below with parameters switching the “radeon” driver off and the “amdgpu” driver on. The final result was:

#GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=“quiet splash”
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=“quiet splash radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.cik_support=1 radeon.si_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1”

  1. I saved the file, closed the editor, updated the GRUB and rebooted the system:

sudo update-grub
sudo reboot

  1. After the reboot I ran the command to check the driver again and this time it indicated that the driver “amdgpu” was in use:

patrol1985@Patryk-V5-123:~$ lspci -k | grep -EA3 ‘VGA|3D|Display’
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Kabini [Radeon HD 8210]
Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Kabini [Radeon HD 8210]
Kernel driver in use: amdgpu
Kernel modules: radeon, amdgpu

  1. Next, I ran Lutris as usual and then the Bethesda Launcher through it. This time everything worked fine.