Wallpaper Engine
Another issue that I noticed, with KDE Plasma, if you drag the window outwards into the taskbar area (to move it out of a way) something strange happens with the window as shown here:
Heya, very curious what your experience is now if you tried this on the newest version of Proton?
I've tried on the latest proton experimental version with the KDE plasma plugin. Video wallpapers work perfectly (same as windows) but any wallpaper of type scene works with a lot of slowdown to the effects being rendered on screen. Also, when changing wallpapers from video to scene, X11 server crashes
Tested this on Manjaro.
Heya, very curious what your experience is now if you tried this on the newest version of Proton?
It seems to be more functional, but at the moment, the wallpaper editor has some issues (the file/edit menus won't work at all, there's no resizing, things are bugged), and I have to use "Play in Windowed" > "Maximized View" alongside some window rules to get it to display sort of like a wallpaper. Well that, and the wallpaper properties section is missing now.
The downside to this method is that you can't automatically set a wallpaper on startup.
I've tried on the latest proton experimental version with the KDE plasma plugin. Video wallpapers work perfectly (same as windows) but any wallpaper of type scene works with a lot of slowdown to the effects being rendered on screen. Also, when changing wallpapers from video to scene, X11 server crashes
Tested this on Manjaro.
The KDE Plasma plugin is a thing, but from my experience using it, it's incredibly buggy with web wallpapers that rely on WebGL due to some internal shenanigans with how GPU acceleration is disabled with the functionality they're using for that.
linux-wallpaperengine would be a solid choice, if not for the fact that GPU utilization seems much higher and the framerate seems much lower and has far worse stuttering and framerate drops compared to Wallpaper Engine running in Proton. At least on a GTX 1650, Wallpaper Engine on Proton only takes up 48-50% of my GPU resources, while linux-wallpaperengine takes like 75%.
Proton versions
proton experimentalx2 2025-10
Compatibility Report
System Information
I confirm:
Symptoms
This is not exactly a game, but rather an application that is available on Steam, that can run on Proton, but with some glaring issues. The reason I am filing this report is since the alternatives for using Wallpaper Engine wallpapers either have massive downsides (being unable to adjust wallpaper settings, requiring a terminal to use, or not being able to use webpage based wallpapers) or haven't been maintained in a while, and since the developers are unlikely to have a native release, I figured I'd test it out in Proton itself to see what needs work.
For starters, there's random crashing issues, which may possibly be memory leaks or something else entirely. With the 32-Bit launch option, it seems to be more stable at the moment. The wallpaper editor seemingly has issues around being sluggish and the top bar being colluded by KDE Plasma's built-in titlebar when maximized.
When a window is focused over Wallpaper Engine, a blue border that is normally used as decoration for the Wallpaper Engine GUI surrounds it.
Attempting to start a wallpaper does nothing (As I'd imagine there would need to be some sort of protocol in place to pipe the output to something that Linux desktop environments could work with), but right clicking the wallpaper, and going to "Play in Window > Maximized Preview" works fine, assuming you are fine with a black bar on the bottom of the screen, and use some window rules in KDE Plasma to force the "steam_app_431960" window class with a window title of "Wallpaper Pop-out" to be fullscreen, keep below other windows, force it to appear on all virtual desktops, skipping the taskbar/pager/switcher, and to not have a titlebar and frame.
Dragging the window seemingly causes the contents to strobe/flicker between a grey state and it's intended contents rapidly.
In the GUI, the properties section is hidden, so you're unable to adjust the properties of the wallpaper, or things like the hue, color scheme, or positioning.
Reproduction
Steam Runtime Information Gist: https://gist.github.com/KingKrouch/0e25e930f7b1cf14499b4b838d42facc
I don't believe I have seen a single person in the GitHub issues section file a report for this Steam application in particular.
I have uploaded a logfile of just using the UI, but it went over the 25MB requirement, so I zipped it up. If need be, I can do some things in the editor, and upload a separate log file:
steam-431960.zip