Game does not start up in launcher, when I press the play button I am met with an error message that reads "An unexpected issue occured and the game has crashed. We're sorry for the inconvenience." This has been solved for NVidia drivers but not for any other drivers as far as I know. I have updated my driver and am still met with the same error.
https://paste.ubuntu.com/25721073/
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Same error with 1.12.2. I don't know if by crashlog you meant a .txt titled "launcher_log", but if you did here is that: https://paste.ubuntu.com/25721529/ It was pretty long so I only attached the end which seemed like it contained useful information. Apparently it is not able to find a certain file?

Ah, I know that one. It's caused by the !
in your username, which breaks java (and isn't something that Mojang can easily fix, although it has been suggested that the launcher check for this before launching - see MCL-774).
There's some workarounds listed here: either create a user without !
in the name, or change the work directory of the game so that it's located in a folder without any !
.
Thank you for your report!
However, this issue is Invalid.
Your Minecraft version is outdated. We currently take issues for version 1.12.2. 1.8 is outdated by several years and has a large number of security vulnerabilities.
Please update to the latest version as it includes the newest fixes. If you still have this problem after updating, then please reply with a comment here.
In case of a game crash, please also attach the crashlog.
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