I’ve spent many nights trying to get CS2 to run somewhat smooth in Linux, so I thought I’d share the combination of settings I’ve found to make it run flawlessly.

At 3840 x 1600 @ 160 Hz, my monitor seems to be pushing the limits of what my 6700 XT + i9-9900K desktop is able to handle. Running at monitor native resolution was not a great experience for competitive CS, especially when the FPS was dipping below 160 FPS.

Downscaling to any of the lower native resolutions in CS2 would make the game a blurry mess. With the following settings, my FPS is close to what I’ve been seeing in Windows previously. I no longer dual boot, so I haven’t been able to confirm with actual stats.

Launch parameters

gamescope -W 2560 -H 1440 -w 2560 -h 1440 -f --adaptive-sync --force-grab-cursor -- mangohud %command% -noreflex

Mangohud is optional, so you can run without it if you want.

-noreflex gave me +20% FPS boost, and as far as I understand my GPU doesn’t even support reflex.

If you want to stretch the image you could add -S stretch or even downscale to 1080p:

gamescope -W 2560 -H 1440 -w 1920 -h 1080 -f --adaptive-sync -S stretch --force-grab-cursor -- %command% -noreflex

I’ve found that without --adaptive-sync the game stutters a lot, so beware of that. --force-grab-cursors is also necessary, or the mouse will be inverted and locked to a tiny box in the middle of the screen for some reason.

Refresh rate is not configured in CS without -r [your refresh rate here], but it seems like the game is running at whatever the refresh rate is set to in your DE, even though display settings are saying “60”.`

Gamemoderun made no difference for me, and also env LD_PRELOAD="" did nothing (except disable steam overlay of course).

Graphics settings

When it comes to the graphic settings in CS2 I use freesync + vsync. The input lag here was not noticable to me, and the game felt a bit more smooth. If you don’t have GSync/freesync you should probably disable vsync. Also if you struggle to maintain an FPS above your monitors refresh rate, you should probably disable as well? Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong here.

Advanced graphics settings for balance between quality/visibility

  • Boost player contrast: Enabled
  • MSAA: 4x
  • Global Shadow: High
  • Dynamic Shadow: All
  • Texture filtering mode: Bilinear (this makes player models more visible)
  • Shader detail: Low
  • Particle Detail: Low
  • Ambient occlusion: Disabled
  • HDR: Quality
  • FidelityFX: Disabled

Hw for reference

  • OS: Fedora Linux 41 (Workstation Edition) x86_64
  • Kernel: 6.13.10-200.fc41.x86_64
  • Resolution: 3840x1600
  • DE: GNOME 47.5
  • CPU: Intel i9-9900K (16) @ 5.000GHz
  • GPU: AMD ATI Radeon RX 6700 XT