DISCLAIMER

Hi! It’s winny from the future. This article is:

  1. Very old;
  2. Potentially incorrect in the Debian section entirely!

I decided to leave this article up for the sake of historical purposes, but this issue has been fixed, I believe, since the introduction of the 64-bit client for Team Fortress 2, almost a year ago. As such, please don’t use this article. If you have issues with something regarding Team Fortress 2 and Linux, check TF2’s ProtonDB page. Thank you!

The old article

Hi! I like playing TF2. It’s a fun game, even if Valve doesn’t really give a shit about it. Problem is that I haven’t played in quite some time and I wanted to play it recently. Sadly, I couldn’t due to a new update that introduced a bug, I think. I would tell you more if I knew more. All I know is the fix for this issue, that I found on ProtonDB’s page for TF2.

Fixing on Arch Linux/Anything Arch Linux based

The solution involves installing an AUR package called lib32-gperftools. It’s some Google modified memory allocation functions that improve performance for C and C++, from the looks of it.

Whatever AUR helper you have, use it to install it. I use paru, so for me, it’s a simple paru -S lib32-gperftools. Other AUR helpers should have a similar syntax.

Afterwards, in the TF2 launch options add LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libtcmalloc.so %command%. Put them at the beginning of your already existing launch options. The game should open up now without any issues.

Fixing on Debian/Ubuntu/Anything Debian/Ubuntu based

Since I’m not on Debian, I will guess here. I’m not responsible for breaking your system.

The solution is to install a package called libgoogle-perftools4. It’s some Google modified memory allocation functions that improve performance for C and C++, from the looks of it. Install it with sudo apt install libgoogle-perftools4.

Afterwards, in the TF2 launch options add LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libtcmalloc.so %command%. Put them at the beginning of your already existing launch options. The game should open up now without any issues.

Conclusion

Hope this helped ya! May Gaben give you no bots/cheaters in your casual games and plently of random crits. See ya!