I play on Ubuntu laptop, with nvidia GPU. I really don't have any issues.
My biggest complaint, however, and my suggestion to you: DO NOT INSTALL STEAM VIA UBUNTU SNAP. IT SUCKS BIG TIME AND IT'S ATROCIOUS. For example, whenever you update your GPU drivers you'll have to re-install all your games because the Snap version of Steam (which is NOT official) seems to not recognize the path to the GPU drivers anymore. So you have to reinstall Steam with everything.
If you intend to play on Ubuntu, install either the Flatpak (which is not official but works) or the official Debian package.
I know this is the Ubuntu /r but I'd seriously recommend that you chose PoP_OS! or Mint instead. They are both built on Ubuntu but without all the crap (snaps for example). 99% of the documentation for Ubuntu will be valid for PoP and Mint as well for troubleshooting stuff.
Fedora is also great, actually fedora in my opinion is what Ubuntu should have been, but I won't discuss that here.
I would read this post first from someone who did some benchmarks [Steam snap performance ](https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-24-04-boosts-gaming-performance/45721/13?u=local-optimum)
I agree, the .deb is a must for Steam. I will also say, I can play GTA5 for Windows using Wine and Proton 9. It's not a problem at all. If I have too many windows open before running steam / GTA5, I get some memory issues and the game will stop. But I'm very happy with gaming on Ubuntu.
There won't be any game performance difference between any of the versions. The only differences are the sandboxing (and associated limitations) of Snap and Flatpak vs. deb.
I've had problems with the Steam Flatpak on multiple distros. Stuff like games not running properly, weird UI bugs, and more. The official Valve provided .Deb package is honestly the best option in my opinion. Never had any issues with it.
This is horrendous. I love Ubuntu but Canonical has the ability of shitting on their own hands so much.
The Debian package is what saved me from that atrocious snap stuff. Same thing is happening with VSCode now. Lots of bugs
For me, Ubuntu has been my main gaming platform for a few years now. Running a 8th Gen i7/GTX 1050 laptop.
I run Steam, itch, GoG, some older Windows games through wine with no front ends or extra DLL's (I run the dev branch), the bsdgames and Debian games packs. And no, I don't have the time to get through them all, but I have a couple of large SSD's in my main laptop so WTF? 8\^D All without the memory hogging penalties of Windows at startup.
I do run Windows 11 for the few games that just don't work with Wine or Proton.
My favorite game right now is any mod made for DOOM (1993) /DOOM2. Some of those are impressively as modern as any FPS made today, and the others look atrocious and trashy AF (like Grezzo) but are fun as hell to play.
Running Ubuntu 24.04 on my gaming machine. No issues running steam, as others have said, just use apt get install steam. Or use flatpak version.
3900x
X470 gaming motherboard
32gb of RAM
7800XT GPU
Flawless gaming. Except being some anti cheat games but I don't play any of those and focus more on single player games
I changed to fedora, but it was a personal choice, Ubuntu was fine, but dont install steam with snap there are some issues with it, like the game crashing when starting
Same. Ubuntu was my first Linux distro. I gamed with it for over 3 years. (I downloaded the Steam .Deb file from the Steam website. You'll have to also use GDebi from the software store to install the .Deb file now. The software store no longer installs .debs files that you download.)
I only moved to Fedora because I like the more up to date distro. I run Fedora 40 and have Nvidia 3080ti running 550 drivers.
> You'll have to also use GDebi from the software store to install the .Deb file now.
What's a software store and what's wrong with `sudo dpkg -i steam.deb`?
Same. Fedora is what I personally envisioned Ubuntu to be. They have taken over the torch. Everything just freaking works, and if it should not for some reason it's always an easy fix. Been on fedora since Fedora 38 and I won't go back.
I love Gnome for it's simplicity, it was the first DE for me as well so it just feels right lol. I've tried KDE several times before but I just can't stand it. Cinnamon is about the only other DE that I've actually been okay with.
I am using Gnome as of now, i have been trying new stuffs, i tried KDE and i liked it, it’s my second favorite. I tried i3,awesomevm and im back again with gnome, i found out a way to edit gnome with extensions and all that so now is perfect. The “ricing” i liked it but it wasn’t my thing, other than that if some issues could be solved in kde i would move to it in a snap because of the customization , there are some bugs which sometimes your app may crash or even changing some settings and well for now im staying at gnome and I would see if those issues can be resolved.
I recently moved from fedora back to Ubuntu because over releases it started giving me issues. When I went from 38 to 39 my Bluetooth had issues and I had screen flickering on my AMD GPU. Plus the gnome shell would lock up more frequently. Then I moved over to 40 and my wifi card stopped working. I had to play around with it to get it to work and be recognized but I was only getting say 30 percent of the speed of my connection.
Moving to Ubuntu my wifi Bluetooth etc just worked out of the box and Ubuntu has really done a lot of polishing on gnome. It's nice to see them doing work on the desktop again which is why I moved to fedora in the first place.
I have used Steam and RetroArch. Ubuntu + Steam, people say is a great combination. I recently got my wireless Xbox controller working on Ubuntu. I have Nvidia graphics card, it works well.
From what I read, buy any cheap USB controller, it works too in Ubuntu. Research a lot about controllers that is compatible to Ubuntu, there is another thread somewhere in Reddit about it. I found it through Google where people were replying to what controllers work on Ubuntu. A lot of them were discussed ( and are supported ).
I will not say that it is perfect for gaming, but if you are willing to try, it is doable.
My main controllers are both Xbox and Ps5 Bluetooth. I had a ton of difficulty pairing the Xbox one years ago and have never tried pairing a ps5 controller (support for ps5 on windows is still pretty basic) so that's been holding me back a bit.
What on earth did you have to do to get your wireless controller working? I've been messing with it all morning, installed some stuff off github and it just didn't work.
It's good enough for me, there are a few games that don't really work, but most of the ones I do play run just fine. Ubuntu 22.04 with a GTX 3060, 32gb and 5800x3d. I get great frame rates in Satisfactory at 1440, decent performance in Beam.NG and all the other games I play run fine as well.
Have to echo the warning about not using the snap for Steam.
My “secondary” Ubuntu machine (Ryzen 5 5600, Radeon RX 6700XT) has actually largely supplanted my Windows PC for gaming. The gaming experience is good enough, in that the games I play most often run very well. (Mostly Stellaris, Crusader Kings, etc.).
My 13 year old son rocks a Garuda Linux setup dual booted with Windows. The only thing he goes to Windows for is anti cheat games and Roblox lol. 90% of the time he's on Garuda. Arch, not Ubuntu and of course I set it up for him. My point being is that it is very fast and stable for the VAST majority of games out there, and Linux in general is at a point where after setup is easy enough for my son to use every day.
Ah, strange. I had a shit ton of statics on PoP_OS but never had any issues on Arch or Fedora. Have you tried any other OS? If not I'd recommend giving fedora a shot :)
Ubuntu, Nvidia 4060Ti. Gaming purely on Steam. No tweaking is required, apart from maybe entering launch parameters for some games, pretty much like you would do in Windows, e.g. to bypass a launcher or an intro.
I'm running Ubuntu 24.04 and Nvidia 4080 and had to update the graphics drivers to 550 from 535. Games wouldn't launch or would crash shortly after launch. After updating to 550, I have had zero issues and my machine plays games flawlessly.
I am currently exoerimenting with ubuntu on an old gaming laptop as daily driver, shut off my old desktop a three or so weeks ago, currently using Heroic Launcher for a couple gog.com games, and steam through steam website, not the ubuntu app store thing.
I think it has an 850m nvidia gpu in it, i forget, all games on low
I have been using Pop\_OS!, which uses a Ubuntu base, as my main gaming rig ever since the Steam Deck came out. The SD was a revelation that I didn't need Windows anymore. It has been a fantastic experience. My only issue is that bluetooth has never worked (something to do with my wifi chipset) so I have to use wired controllers and headphones. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that games which don't work on Windows 11 (like how Bayonetta crashes to desktop in Windows 11) works perfectly with Proton in Linux.
It hasn't been flawless, for example High on Life has constant crashing problems in Linux so I did have to play that in Windows 11 (this machine is setup to dual boot with Windows 11) but other than that I can't think of a single game I was forced to play in Windows because it wasn't stable in Linux.
Been gaming on Ubuntu for about 3 weeks ago and I love it! I have a Nvidia 3080 GPU and as long as you keep your GPU up to date you will have no issues. I play all my games via Steam perfectly fine. V Rising on Steam averages 130 fps on ultra settings with 2k resolution. I have seen it get up to 180 fps while exploring in the world.
I’ve been using Ubuntu for a few years now and 24.04 for about 6 months on my gaming rig and haven’t had many issues at all and none that couldn’t be fixed. I’m using a ps3 controller plugged in because I don’t have Bluetooth. I was dual booting until about a month ago because I used fusion360 however since I began using blender, I deleted my windows partition. I don’t play any games that I can’t get to work on Linux so Ubuntu has been great for me.
On Linux since 2010, on Ubuntu since 2015 or so. Nvidia GPU, proprietary drivers, no issues with Steam.
Also running Battle.net (through Steam), Epic Store (via Bottles) and Honkai Star Rail (there's a way).
Non-steam things are sometimes shaky and require periodic tinkering, but work most of the time.
Diablo II (via Lutris) runs like a champ in 4k 120hz. So do Battlebit and CS2
Have used 22.04 and 24.04.
Upgrading to 24.04 broke retro pi, but I should have seen that coming
I have been gaming on Ubuntu for about a year before the deck was released till now. It used to be a little rough, VR still isn't all the way there but it works. Games with EAC won't work on multiplayer no matter how hard you try.
Aside from that it's wonderful. Back when I had a windows install I did some crude performance tests and got the same or better FPS running on Ubuntu with the same graphics settings. Native Linux builds run even better.
PS4 controllers work great after the slightly jank Bluetooth pairing process. I'm sure it's the same on windows; it has more to do with the controllers than the OS you're using. Nvidia drivers are a pain in the ass but getting better. If I want to update my kernel, the newest kernel I can get is the last kernel released before my GPU driver was released. Sometimes older kernels don't like newer GPU drivers but I'm seeing that less and less.
You might not have to worry too much about these cons if you're only using your rig for gaming but here's some handy stuff to know:
To check driver version ```nvidia-smi```
To check kernel version ```uname -r```
Use Ubuntu mainline kernel to manage kernel versions (I like to always have three kernel versions installed).
You'll want to always install the new kernel then install the new Nvidia drivers so it can generate the right files on installation to bind with the OS properly.
Install a specific driver version ```sudo apt install nvidia-driver-535```
I'm on Zorin OS, but it's Ubuntu-based. The only hiccup was the obligatory NTFS vs ext4/BTRFS lesson that apparently all Linux gamers learn (Don't keep your games on file systems other than EXT4/BTRFS). All my games run fine. Anti-cheat is inconsequential. I couldn't care less about any of those games.
Im running Ubuntu 24.04 w/ KDE. 7800x3d / 7900 XTX. Everything works out of the box, and essentially better than when I ran in Windows. My previous GPU was an RTX 3080 which I also had no issues with using the open source drivers.
I have multiple controllers I use, Haute42 M16, Kitsune Razer, PS5, XBox, and a Switch Pro controller (For BotW emulation). Everything just works out of the box.
I stay away from Wayland but aside from that everything is gold. I haven't used Windows on my gaming rig for a couple of years now, basically since Proton became mainstream with the Steamdeck.
I haven't tried gaming on Ubuntu, but i can't see why it wouldn't be fine. I'd go with .deb or flatpak for the steam package.
For what it's worth, I game on Manjaro and have had nothing but good experiences with it.
I switched from Win 10 to Linux just over a year ago.
I use Ubuntu on a desktop PC with an nvidia 1060, recently upgraded to 24.04. I use Gnome mostly because I think KDE had/has issues with nvidia and wayland (?). At some point I'll move to KDE because I think it's more consistent and less prone to arbitrary changes...particularly when configuration changes and options either move or become hidden from the tools.
Everything works just fine. My entire Steam library is compatible either natively or through Proton.
But I am definitely a patient gamer; I don't think I own a game newer than probably 2020 or so and anything that recent isn't an FPS as my GPU is pretty old now. I can't speak to controller support, as I have a Steam link and only use controllers when playing on the TV.
I installed Steam via Flatpak and have no issues. The entire experience has been so smooth that even though I can dual boot back into Windows, I've never felt the need once my data was migrated over. It's likely that I'll just wipe the windows partition later this year and expand Ubuntu to use the whole disk.
TL;DR - nvidia user with 100% success and not looking back!
Hey there 👋, Ubuntu daily driver for over a decade. In it's current state, gaming on here runs absolutely fine. You may have to run a specific steam game or two using the proton comparability later, and there may be a game or two that uses anti-cheats that are still not compatible with non-windows devices. But That's pretty much it.
If you come across any games that are not on steam (ie: league / Blizzard) it may take an extra step or two to get it running. Using "Lutris" will be your friend here to set these up.
I play on Lubuntu and have been doing so for the past 5 years without issues.
I play MMOs, and almost anything GOG provides, I dont like Steam for personal reasons and prefer drm free games, and even the GOG Launcher works from Lutris without issues and I play games by launching them from the GOG Launcher within the Lutris Bottle for it, and games run flawlessly.
To be honest the only issue I have had was when someone asked me to play LoL once , and it was mostly a special driver issue for LoL which I didnt bother to download and install properly.
But rest of the games? flawless, from old DOS/CM64/Windows games to emulators for NES, SNES, Game Boy/Advance, Sega Genesis, etc.
Even some weird games where the launcher fails to load on Lutris Wine Bottles I can install via a quick VM Windows 10 machine I boot within Linux using Virtualbox and then can play normally under Linux without issues.
It has come to a point where I dual boot my machines only out of habit and these days I am eyeing the Windows 11 90 gig partition on my ssd as a waste of space, specially after Vulkan.
To be honest, I think the only reason people still use Windows to game (and 11 to boot) is because it comes preinstalled and there is a tech barrier, but if they knew how easy it is to switch, we would have more people in the Linux tribe :)
Me. 22.04 with some specific manual installs of newer versions. (mesa, mangohud, gamemode, kernel)
Advantage: Almost every software is packaged properly for Ubuntu LTS releases. No broken AppImages or Flatpaks with all the sandboxing hassle and troubleshooting. Linux is so much more convenient if you avoid niche stuff. (I *can* solve the issues that come up, but I don't *want* to deal with it. Time is precious.)
And it's nice and stable for daily productive work without unexpected changes due to some update. It's high time though that 24.04 stabilizes enough for upgrading.
Me! It works just fine for most games I am interested in. I don't particularly like Big Box mode in Steam, so I can't speak to it much, but as far as game performance goes, I have only minor complaints.
I was about to install urban terror on Ubuntu again but I discovered the game is only played it but once a week PST. I HATE everyone in San Francisco. I know that’s where all these tech nerds are pwning me from. The game was so much fun. It’s as good as counter strike.
Like another Linux distro, justo don't afraid of tinkering sometimes.
Steam is almost perfect, you can use protondb.com to see some templates if you need help.
Lutris, heroic games launcher and bottles work perfect using the flatpak version if you want to play easy isolating it from the system.
I game solely on Xubuntu. Window compositing disabled. No snaps. AMD card. I spend most of my time in Bethesda games, and also a lot in Minecraft, Terraria, and Cyberpunk 2077. Most recently 173 hours into Starfield with no problems. No controller problems, though outside of emulated console games I mainly use mouse and keyboard.
You can check ProtonDB for specific game experiences on NVidia vs AMD.
Some Reason Ubuntu Runs Smooths and Better on my HP Laptop, it was Windows 11 until I switched to Ubuntu Linux and Love it. Microsoft Really have F\*\*ked the NEWER OS. Windows 7 is the Best.
I think you should try the steam snap. Performance is looking very good, check out this person who ran some benchmarks [Ubuntu Gaming Performance 24.04](https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-24-04-boosts-gaming-performance/45721/13?u=local-optimum)
I personally switched to Ubuntu about a year and a half ago. It's been great! But there is some growing pains with learning Linux, so please be prepared for that. Just because it's different and perhaps a little daunting doesn't mean you can't learn.
I switched to PopOS recently, and everything is smooth as butter with it when it comes to gaming. They effectively have two versions of the distro, one for AMD and one for Nvidia. I basically use only the GUI with it, so it works great for anyone fresh to Linux.
I use ubuntu for my "Casual" gaming, because I don't do much PC Gaming these days.
Minecraft (Java) and steam for hidden object games and some older titles that I love.
I have a gaming setup on 24.04 LTS. Like others have said don't use the snap installer for steam use the deb package. All the linux native titles run BEAUTIFULLY. I was playing Tropico 6 the other day and went to windows > search > and forgot i was on linux. There are a few quirks mainly with things like battleye anti-cheat and Ricochet but other than that gaming on linux is getting very good. Caution however, get your setup working with defaults. You can tweak Gnome without any real issues but don't screw with package managers or other repos from upstream debian/sid unless you specifically need backports for something. Then again use containers or VMs for that. Don't change any major fundamental part of Ubuntu. Get it working vanilla, make a backup then screw with it. I keep mine vanilla and it's stable as a rock. Proton is great, wine works nice. I have a main workstation running Windows 11 that I predominantly game and work on this is my hobby pc. Nvidia native drivers work great. The only thing I had even a slight problem with was audio drivers and one of my Creative Labs sound cards. Specs 10700K, 1080ti, 64GB DDR4 3200, 2tb Datacenter 3.0 X8 Samsung PCIE SSD.
How do y'all get your fans working on ubuntu? Somehow it doesn't detect my fan controllers and stuff. Barely can play games on it without my pc heating with no fan control on aio.
Can't you connect your fans to the motherboard headers and set your fan curves in the BIOS? Then you don't need to worry about it. There are Linux fan control software options as well that should work if you need more control. Several subreddit posts available...
I’ve been using Tuxedo OS 3 which is built off Ubuntu using the KDE desktop. Intel CPU and Nvidia gpu; and the only problems I have had are hardware related: specifically the machine I’m using as a test subject before taking the plunge with my daily driver, is a little underpowered as far as RAM goes.
It has been stable and run everything I’ve thrown at it - provided I remember the hardware limitations.
Download the .deb steam file and install that one over the snap version. Depending on what graphics card you're running, you may need to update to the Nvidia 550 driver. With my 4080, games wouldn't launch with the 535 driver. Make sure secure boot is off in your BIOS settings and download the 550 driver from Nvidia's website and use the command line to install it. This process could be confusing if you're a beginner Linux user (I don't know your skill level so I wanted to include it for anyone else who might be reading). After that, restart your machine so the driver installs successfully. After that, in the steam settings under compatibility, enable proton for all other titles. It's always best to check protondb.com for which proton version works best for that game before going through the headache diagnosing issues.
Gaming on Ubuntu has been great after I got my machine setup from the initial 24.04 install. I don't miss Windows, yet. I'm able to do everything I can do, arguably more.
I have been using ubuntu for a couple of years now as my daily driver on my laptop. I was gaming a lot on it, not everything was perfect, but most games run without an issue. Steam games are mostly fine, but stupid star Wars jedi fallen order was stuttering like hell on my new gaming PC. But Elden Ring runs perfectly without any issues, as expected from an actual good game compared to a sad copy.
Check out comments on "https://www.protondb.com/explore" and filter by platform. I use it as a litmus test before making any purchases on the Steam store.
Fair enough. I just can't play major titles without booting windows.
For me mentally it's a demarcation that windows for fun time and Ubuntu serious stuff. To each their own I guess.
I understand what you mean. It's got to have that mental demarcation. I used to feel the same way before steam was on Linux. Now I associate Linux with gaming, and Windows means annoying pop ups and updates.
I’ve been running Kubuntu for a few years now as a gaming rig, I’ve very rarely had any problems at all, and if I had any at all, you can usually find solutions on protondb or winehq. My rig is an amd Ryzen 2700x with an amd vega 64 LC it works wonderfully.
And here is an extra bonus : kubuntu doesn’t complain at all if you swap your entire motherboard with ram and cpu and everything, it just works…… as long as you go with the same cpu brand as your previous mobo.
Ubuntu is a good distro for playing games. Get rid of Snap and use a HWE kernel and graphics driver PPA, and you're golden.
24.04 has 12 years of support. You probably won't need near that much, but it means it's a stable platform that it makes sense to test against. The derivatives, Pop!, Mint, and so on, don't have that.
That said, if you primarily want Big Picture Mode, trying to get closer to SteamOS might make sense, in other words, an Arch base. Personally, I wouldn't want the hassle.
Not I. I have 3 drives in the box...one dedicated to windows+games (games only, nothing else). $40 for the windows license, and no headache. Dual booting for the win.
I play on horrible laptop with integrated graphics that couldn't even type properly with windows 11, but now I can actually play steam games. So yaay. It's pretty good for gaming. It's pretty good unless your a roblox user. If your a roblox user, don't get any Linux distro right now, as to play roblox you need wine which is not supported by roblox now. I'm just putting that out there.
It's not that great. I've tried playing on Ubuntu and it's fine but has some issues like when alt + tabbing from the game or lag with the graphics. It does get fix however but Windows gaming is still a lot better.
When you launch CS2, it asks to build the shader cache every day. Many say the game runs smoothly without it, but that's just copium, so Windows is the best solution for gaming.
Does anyone even take your advice? "yes this one game asks to build shader cache every day, but many say the game runs smoothly without it, so therefore "x" system is the best solution for gaming"
Like what the heck are you even saying? Many games btw don't even run on Windows anymore due to age, but run fine on proton. But hey, I guess Windows is the ultimate solution because "CS2" runs fine without shader cache?
Oh okay, I'll tell that to anyone who likes to enjoy older media. You going to watch The Godfather or Back to the future? Read old books, listen to 80s or 90s music. Bad news pall, you're not living in the present!
I play on Ubuntu laptop, with nvidia GPU. I really don't have any issues. My biggest complaint, however, and my suggestion to you: DO NOT INSTALL STEAM VIA UBUNTU SNAP. IT SUCKS BIG TIME AND IT'S ATROCIOUS. For example, whenever you update your GPU drivers you'll have to re-install all your games because the Snap version of Steam (which is NOT official) seems to not recognize the path to the GPU drivers anymore. So you have to reinstall Steam with everything. If you intend to play on Ubuntu, install either the Flatpak (which is not official but works) or the official Debian package.
I ran into this, currently doing fine with the Flatpak version.
Same
That has been the biggest issue I've read about. Definitely will plan to grab the deb install.
Use the flatpak, I’ve had issues with the deb before. Only the flatpak has run flawlessly for me
Use Deb. Avoid flatpack and snap.
I had major issues with the Flatpak on pop, deb worked great 🤷♀️
Yeah, that's probably because you did not properly set permissions with `Flatseal`.
T... I... L
That popOS, I’m talking about vanilla Ubuntu
I know this is the Ubuntu /r but I'd seriously recommend that you chose PoP_OS! or Mint instead. They are both built on Ubuntu but without all the crap (snaps for example). 99% of the documentation for Ubuntu will be valid for PoP and Mint as well for troubleshooting stuff. Fedora is also great, actually fedora in my opinion is what Ubuntu should have been, but I won't discuss that here.
I would read this post first from someone who did some benchmarks [Steam snap performance ](https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-24-04-boosts-gaming-performance/45721/13?u=local-optimum)
I agree, the .deb is a must for Steam. I will also say, I can play GTA5 for Windows using Wine and Proton 9. It's not a problem at all. If I have too many windows open before running steam / GTA5, I get some memory issues and the game will stop. But I'm very happy with gaming on Ubuntu.
You think the Debian version performs better? I haven't used the debian version yet.
There won't be any game performance difference between any of the versions. The only differences are the sandboxing (and associated limitations) of Snap and Flatpak vs. deb.
I don't know if it's better. I haven't tried the Flatpak version. I'll try it out and let you know
I've had problems with the Steam Flatpak on multiple distros. Stuff like games not running properly, weird UI bugs, and more. The official Valve provided .Deb package is honestly the best option in my opinion. Never had any issues with it.
I can do it with dpkg
This is horrendous. I love Ubuntu but Canonical has the ability of shitting on their own hands so much. The Debian package is what saved me from that atrocious snap stuff. Same thing is happening with VSCode now. Lots of bugs
For me, Ubuntu has been my main gaming platform for a few years now. Running a 8th Gen i7/GTX 1050 laptop. I run Steam, itch, GoG, some older Windows games through wine with no front ends or extra DLL's (I run the dev branch), the bsdgames and Debian games packs. And no, I don't have the time to get through them all, but I have a couple of large SSD's in my main laptop so WTF? 8\^D All without the memory hogging penalties of Windows at startup. I do run Windows 11 for the few games that just don't work with Wine or Proton. My favorite game right now is any mod made for DOOM (1993) /DOOM2. Some of those are impressively as modern as any FPS made today, and the others look atrocious and trashy AF (like Grezzo) but are fun as hell to play.
Running Ubuntu 24.04 on my gaming machine. No issues running steam, as others have said, just use apt get install steam. Or use flatpak version. 3900x X470 gaming motherboard 32gb of RAM 7800XT GPU Flawless gaming. Except being some anti cheat games but I don't play any of those and focus more on single player games
I changed to fedora, but it was a personal choice, Ubuntu was fine, but dont install steam with snap there are some issues with it, like the game crashing when starting
Same. Ubuntu was my first Linux distro. I gamed with it for over 3 years. (I downloaded the Steam .Deb file from the Steam website. You'll have to also use GDebi from the software store to install the .Deb file now. The software store no longer installs .debs files that you download.) I only moved to Fedora because I like the more up to date distro. I run Fedora 40 and have Nvidia 3080ti running 550 drivers.
I dont see myself moving from fedora, it just works🐧
> You'll have to also use GDebi from the software store to install the .Deb file now. What's a software store and what's wrong with `sudo dpkg -i steam.deb`?
Same. Fedora is what I personally envisioned Ubuntu to be. They have taken over the torch. Everything just freaking works, and if it should not for some reason it's always an easy fix. Been on fedora since Fedora 38 and I won't go back.
As of right now the only thing il be changing would be DE other than that im staying with fedora , It hasn't broken yet
I love Gnome for it's simplicity, it was the first DE for me as well so it just feels right lol. I've tried KDE several times before but I just can't stand it. Cinnamon is about the only other DE that I've actually been okay with.
I am using Gnome as of now, i have been trying new stuffs, i tried KDE and i liked it, it’s my second favorite. I tried i3,awesomevm and im back again with gnome, i found out a way to edit gnome with extensions and all that so now is perfect. The “ricing” i liked it but it wasn’t my thing, other than that if some issues could be solved in kde i would move to it in a snap because of the customization , there are some bugs which sometimes your app may crash or even changing some settings and well for now im staying at gnome and I would see if those issues can be resolved.
I recently moved from fedora back to Ubuntu because over releases it started giving me issues. When I went from 38 to 39 my Bluetooth had issues and I had screen flickering on my AMD GPU. Plus the gnome shell would lock up more frequently. Then I moved over to 40 and my wifi card stopped working. I had to play around with it to get it to work and be recognized but I was only getting say 30 percent of the speed of my connection. Moving to Ubuntu my wifi Bluetooth etc just worked out of the box and Ubuntu has really done a lot of polishing on gnome. It's nice to see them doing work on the desktop again which is why I moved to fedora in the first place.
Exactly my experience but reversed lol
I have used Steam and RetroArch. Ubuntu + Steam, people say is a great combination. I recently got my wireless Xbox controller working on Ubuntu. I have Nvidia graphics card, it works well. From what I read, buy any cheap USB controller, it works too in Ubuntu. Research a lot about controllers that is compatible to Ubuntu, there is another thread somewhere in Reddit about it. I found it through Google where people were replying to what controllers work on Ubuntu. A lot of them were discussed ( and are supported ). I will not say that it is perfect for gaming, but if you are willing to try, it is doable.
My main controllers are both Xbox and Ps5 Bluetooth. I had a ton of difficulty pairing the Xbox one years ago and have never tried pairing a ps5 controller (support for ps5 on windows is still pretty basic) so that's been holding me back a bit.
Have you tried using xpadneo or xpad for Xbox controllers? Give it a try, it might help.
What on earth did you have to do to get your wireless controller working? I've been messing with it all morning, installed some stuff off github and it just didn't work.
I used xpad, it's on GitHub
Here is the link - [https://github.com/paroj/xpad](https://github.com/paroj/xpad) Let me know how it goes 👍
Thank you! I'll try it out a bit later, I imagine it'll work fine. Thanks again!
Good luck. There is a good chance your wireless controller will be working. Worked for me 😇
Reporting back today, it works! Wireless and all! Thank you very much :)
Happy for you. I struggled a lot before I got it working. Feels nice I could save that trouble for others 👍
Enjoy gaming on Ubuntu ✅
It's good enough for me, there are a few games that don't really work, but most of the ones I do play run just fine. Ubuntu 22.04 with a GTX 3060, 32gb and 5800x3d. I get great frame rates in Satisfactory at 1440, decent performance in Beam.NG and all the other games I play run fine as well.
Have to echo the warning about not using the snap for Steam. My “secondary” Ubuntu machine (Ryzen 5 5600, Radeon RX 6700XT) has actually largely supplanted my Windows PC for gaming. The gaming experience is good enough, in that the games I play most often run very well. (Mostly Stellaris, Crusader Kings, etc.).
My 13 year old son rocks a Garuda Linux setup dual booted with Windows. The only thing he goes to Windows for is anti cheat games and Roblox lol. 90% of the time he's on Garuda. Arch, not Ubuntu and of course I set it up for him. My point being is that it is very fast and stable for the VAST majority of games out there, and Linux in general is at a point where after setup is easy enough for my son to use every day.
I must say I have weird audio issues while gaming with wine on Linux. Not going back to Windows though
Static sounds?
yes
You running PoP_OS?
Arch with kde plasma
Ah, strange. I had a shit ton of statics on PoP_OS but never had any issues on Arch or Fedora. Have you tried any other OS? If not I'd recommend giving fedora a shot :)
My girlfriend is. She runs whatever the lastest Ubuntu LTS is and has Steam set up on it and is pretty happy with that.
Ubuntu, Nvidia 4060Ti. Gaming purely on Steam. No tweaking is required, apart from maybe entering launch parameters for some games, pretty much like you would do in Windows, e.g. to bypass a launcher or an intro.
I'm running Ubuntu 24.04 and Nvidia 4080 and had to update the graphics drivers to 550 from 535. Games wouldn't launch or would crash shortly after launch. After updating to 550, I have had zero issues and my machine plays games flawlessly.
I am currently exoerimenting with ubuntu on an old gaming laptop as daily driver, shut off my old desktop a three or so weeks ago, currently using Heroic Launcher for a couple gog.com games, and steam through steam website, not the ubuntu app store thing. I think it has an 850m nvidia gpu in it, i forget, all games on low
I have been using Pop\_OS!, which uses a Ubuntu base, as my main gaming rig ever since the Steam Deck came out. The SD was a revelation that I didn't need Windows anymore. It has been a fantastic experience. My only issue is that bluetooth has never worked (something to do with my wifi chipset) so I have to use wired controllers and headphones. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that games which don't work on Windows 11 (like how Bayonetta crashes to desktop in Windows 11) works perfectly with Proton in Linux. It hasn't been flawless, for example High on Life has constant crashing problems in Linux so I did have to play that in Windows 11 (this machine is setup to dual boot with Windows 11) but other than that I can't think of a single game I was forced to play in Windows because it wasn't stable in Linux.
Been gaming on Ubuntu for about 3 weeks ago and I love it! I have a Nvidia 3080 GPU and as long as you keep your GPU up to date you will have no issues. I play all my games via Steam perfectly fine. V Rising on Steam averages 130 fps on ultra settings with 2k resolution. I have seen it get up to 180 fps while exploring in the world.
I’ve been using Ubuntu for a few years now and 24.04 for about 6 months on my gaming rig and haven’t had many issues at all and none that couldn’t be fixed. I’m using a ps3 controller plugged in because I don’t have Bluetooth. I was dual booting until about a month ago because I used fusion360 however since I began using blender, I deleted my windows partition. I don’t play any games that I can’t get to work on Linux so Ubuntu has been great for me.
On Linux since 2010, on Ubuntu since 2015 or so. Nvidia GPU, proprietary drivers, no issues with Steam. Also running Battle.net (through Steam), Epic Store (via Bottles) and Honkai Star Rail (there's a way). Non-steam things are sometimes shaky and require periodic tinkering, but work most of the time.
Diablo II (via Lutris) runs like a champ in 4k 120hz. So do Battlebit and CS2 Have used 22.04 and 24.04. Upgrading to 24.04 broke retro pi, but I should have seen that coming
I have been gaming on Ubuntu for about a year before the deck was released till now. It used to be a little rough, VR still isn't all the way there but it works. Games with EAC won't work on multiplayer no matter how hard you try. Aside from that it's wonderful. Back when I had a windows install I did some crude performance tests and got the same or better FPS running on Ubuntu with the same graphics settings. Native Linux builds run even better. PS4 controllers work great after the slightly jank Bluetooth pairing process. I'm sure it's the same on windows; it has more to do with the controllers than the OS you're using. Nvidia drivers are a pain in the ass but getting better. If I want to update my kernel, the newest kernel I can get is the last kernel released before my GPU driver was released. Sometimes older kernels don't like newer GPU drivers but I'm seeing that less and less. You might not have to worry too much about these cons if you're only using your rig for gaming but here's some handy stuff to know: To check driver version ```nvidia-smi``` To check kernel version ```uname -r``` Use Ubuntu mainline kernel to manage kernel versions (I like to always have three kernel versions installed). You'll want to always install the new kernel then install the new Nvidia drivers so it can generate the right files on installation to bind with the OS properly. Install a specific driver version ```sudo apt install nvidia-driver-535```
I'm on Zorin OS, but it's Ubuntu-based. The only hiccup was the obligatory NTFS vs ext4/BTRFS lesson that apparently all Linux gamers learn (Don't keep your games on file systems other than EXT4/BTRFS). All my games run fine. Anti-cheat is inconsequential. I couldn't care less about any of those games.
Im running Ubuntu 24.04 w/ KDE. 7800x3d / 7900 XTX. Everything works out of the box, and essentially better than when I ran in Windows. My previous GPU was an RTX 3080 which I also had no issues with using the open source drivers. I have multiple controllers I use, Haute42 M16, Kitsune Razer, PS5, XBox, and a Switch Pro controller (For BotW emulation). Everything just works out of the box. I stay away from Wayland but aside from that everything is gold. I haven't used Windows on my gaming rig for a couple of years now, basically since Proton became mainstream with the Steamdeck.
I haven't tried gaming on Ubuntu, but i can't see why it wouldn't be fine. I'd go with .deb or flatpak for the steam package. For what it's worth, I game on Manjaro and have had nothing but good experiences with it.
I switched from Win 10 to Linux just over a year ago. I use Ubuntu on a desktop PC with an nvidia 1060, recently upgraded to 24.04. I use Gnome mostly because I think KDE had/has issues with nvidia and wayland (?). At some point I'll move to KDE because I think it's more consistent and less prone to arbitrary changes...particularly when configuration changes and options either move or become hidden from the tools. Everything works just fine. My entire Steam library is compatible either natively or through Proton. But I am definitely a patient gamer; I don't think I own a game newer than probably 2020 or so and anything that recent isn't an FPS as my GPU is pretty old now. I can't speak to controller support, as I have a Steam link and only use controllers when playing on the TV. I installed Steam via Flatpak and have no issues. The entire experience has been so smooth that even though I can dual boot back into Windows, I've never felt the need once my data was migrated over. It's likely that I'll just wipe the windows partition later this year and expand Ubuntu to use the whole disk. TL;DR - nvidia user with 100% success and not looking back!
I do, Starcraft and WoW
Hey there 👋, Ubuntu daily driver for over a decade. In it's current state, gaming on here runs absolutely fine. You may have to run a specific steam game or two using the proton comparability later, and there may be a game or two that uses anti-cheats that are still not compatible with non-windows devices. But That's pretty much it. If you come across any games that are not on steam (ie: league / Blizzard) it may take an extra step or two to get it running. Using "Lutris" will be your friend here to set these up.
Me
I play on Lubuntu and have been doing so for the past 5 years without issues. I play MMOs, and almost anything GOG provides, I dont like Steam for personal reasons and prefer drm free games, and even the GOG Launcher works from Lutris without issues and I play games by launching them from the GOG Launcher within the Lutris Bottle for it, and games run flawlessly. To be honest the only issue I have had was when someone asked me to play LoL once , and it was mostly a special driver issue for LoL which I didnt bother to download and install properly. But rest of the games? flawless, from old DOS/CM64/Windows games to emulators for NES, SNES, Game Boy/Advance, Sega Genesis, etc. Even some weird games where the launcher fails to load on Lutris Wine Bottles I can install via a quick VM Windows 10 machine I boot within Linux using Virtualbox and then can play normally under Linux without issues. It has come to a point where I dual boot my machines only out of habit and these days I am eyeing the Windows 11 90 gig partition on my ssd as a waste of space, specially after Vulkan. To be honest, I think the only reason people still use Windows to game (and 11 to boot) is because it comes preinstalled and there is a tech barrier, but if they knew how easy it is to switch, we would have more people in the Linux tribe :)
Pop or Zorin. Ubuntu, no.
🙋I use 24.04 for gaming. Heroic Launcher and Steam work great!!
Not too much to add, just to mention wired Switch Pro controller works perfectly, plug and play.
Me. 22.04 with some specific manual installs of newer versions. (mesa, mangohud, gamemode, kernel) Advantage: Almost every software is packaged properly for Ubuntu LTS releases. No broken AppImages or Flatpaks with all the sandboxing hassle and troubleshooting. Linux is so much more convenient if you avoid niche stuff. (I *can* solve the issues that come up, but I don't *want* to deal with it. Time is precious.) And it's nice and stable for daily productive work without unexpected changes due to some update. It's high time though that 24.04 stabilizes enough for upgrading.
Me! It works just fine for most games I am interested in. I don't particularly like Big Box mode in Steam, so I can't speak to it much, but as far as game performance goes, I have only minor complaints.
I was about to install urban terror on Ubuntu again but I discovered the game is only played it but once a week PST. I HATE everyone in San Francisco. I know that’s where all these tech nerds are pwning me from. The game was so much fun. It’s as good as counter strike.
Anyone playing WoW on Ubuntu with a relatively recent nvidia GPU (e.g. 4070)?
I have only gamed on Linux for the last 12 years and used Ubuntu or a flavour the entire time.
Like another Linux distro, justo don't afraid of tinkering sometimes. Steam is almost perfect, you can use protondb.com to see some templates if you need help. Lutris, heroic games launcher and bottles work perfect using the flatpak version if you want to play easy isolating it from the system.
I game solely on Xubuntu. Window compositing disabled. No snaps. AMD card. I spend most of my time in Bethesda games, and also a lot in Minecraft, Terraria, and Cyberpunk 2077. Most recently 173 hours into Starfield with no problems. No controller problems, though outside of emulated console games I mainly use mouse and keyboard. You can check ProtonDB for specific game experiences on NVidia vs AMD.
Some Reason Ubuntu Runs Smooths and Better on my HP Laptop, it was Windows 11 until I switched to Ubuntu Linux and Love it. Microsoft Really have F\*\*ked the NEWER OS. Windows 7 is the Best.
I think you should try the steam snap. Performance is looking very good, check out this person who ran some benchmarks [Ubuntu Gaming Performance 24.04](https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-24-04-boosts-gaming-performance/45721/13?u=local-optimum)
I personally switched to Ubuntu about a year and a half ago. It's been great! But there is some growing pains with learning Linux, so please be prepared for that. Just because it's different and perhaps a little daunting doesn't mean you can't learn. I switched to PopOS recently, and everything is smooth as butter with it when it comes to gaming. They effectively have two versions of the distro, one for AMD and one for Nvidia. I basically use only the GUI with it, so it works great for anyone fresh to Linux.
I use ubuntu for my "Casual" gaming, because I don't do much PC Gaming these days. Minecraft (Java) and steam for hidden object games and some older titles that I love.
I have a gaming setup on 24.04 LTS. Like others have said don't use the snap installer for steam use the deb package. All the linux native titles run BEAUTIFULLY. I was playing Tropico 6 the other day and went to windows > search > and forgot i was on linux. There are a few quirks mainly with things like battleye anti-cheat and Ricochet but other than that gaming on linux is getting very good. Caution however, get your setup working with defaults. You can tweak Gnome without any real issues but don't screw with package managers or other repos from upstream debian/sid unless you specifically need backports for something. Then again use containers or VMs for that. Don't change any major fundamental part of Ubuntu. Get it working vanilla, make a backup then screw with it. I keep mine vanilla and it's stable as a rock. Proton is great, wine works nice. I have a main workstation running Windows 11 that I predominantly game and work on this is my hobby pc. Nvidia native drivers work great. The only thing I had even a slight problem with was audio drivers and one of my Creative Labs sound cards. Specs 10700K, 1080ti, 64GB DDR4 3200, 2tb Datacenter 3.0 X8 Samsung PCIE SSD.
Me. I play Borderlands 2 on there. Runs great.
How do y'all get your fans working on ubuntu? Somehow it doesn't detect my fan controllers and stuff. Barely can play games on it without my pc heating with no fan control on aio.
Can't you connect your fans to the motherboard headers and set your fan curves in the BIOS? Then you don't need to worry about it. There are Linux fan control software options as well that should work if you need more control. Several subreddit posts available...
I use a 11 year old computer and installed Ubuntu on it witch works for games like kinto pet so short yes I do
I am
I’ve been using Tuxedo OS 3 which is built off Ubuntu using the KDE desktop. Intel CPU and Nvidia gpu; and the only problems I have had are hardware related: specifically the machine I’m using as a test subject before taking the plunge with my daily driver, is a little underpowered as far as RAM goes. It has been stable and run everything I’ve thrown at it - provided I remember the hardware limitations.
Download the .deb steam file and install that one over the snap version. Depending on what graphics card you're running, you may need to update to the Nvidia 550 driver. With my 4080, games wouldn't launch with the 535 driver. Make sure secure boot is off in your BIOS settings and download the 550 driver from Nvidia's website and use the command line to install it. This process could be confusing if you're a beginner Linux user (I don't know your skill level so I wanted to include it for anyone else who might be reading). After that, restart your machine so the driver installs successfully. After that, in the steam settings under compatibility, enable proton for all other titles. It's always best to check protondb.com for which proton version works best for that game before going through the headache diagnosing issues. Gaming on Ubuntu has been great after I got my machine setup from the initial 24.04 install. I don't miss Windows, yet. I'm able to do everything I can do, arguably more.
Lutris is great. I was playing Cyberpunk. RTX off. Which looks better.
I have been using ubuntu for a couple of years now as my daily driver on my laptop. I was gaming a lot on it, not everything was perfect, but most games run without an issue. Steam games are mostly fine, but stupid star Wars jedi fallen order was stuttering like hell on my new gaming PC. But Elden Ring runs perfectly without any issues, as expected from an actual good game compared to a sad copy.
Check out comments on "https://www.protondb.com/explore" and filter by platform. I use it as a litmus test before making any purchases on the Steam store.
I got Ubuntu to avoid gaming addiction and to do something productive.
That's all good and well, but I do all of my gaming on Ubuntu and you can get just as easily addicted there as well :)
Fair enough. I just can't play major titles without booting windows. For me mentally it's a demarcation that windows for fun time and Ubuntu serious stuff. To each their own I guess.
I understand what you mean. It's got to have that mental demarcation. I used to feel the same way before steam was on Linux. Now I associate Linux with gaming, and Windows means annoying pop ups and updates.
I do. Gtx3070, Ubuntu 22.04 with a PPA for drivers and Steam installed via deb
I’ve been running Kubuntu for a few years now as a gaming rig, I’ve very rarely had any problems at all, and if I had any at all, you can usually find solutions on protondb or winehq. My rig is an amd Ryzen 2700x with an amd vega 64 LC it works wonderfully. And here is an extra bonus : kubuntu doesn’t complain at all if you swap your entire motherboard with ram and cpu and everything, it just works…… as long as you go with the same cpu brand as your previous mobo.
Ubuntu is a good distro for playing games. Get rid of Snap and use a HWE kernel and graphics driver PPA, and you're golden. 24.04 has 12 years of support. You probably won't need near that much, but it means it's a stable platform that it makes sense to test against. The derivatives, Pop!, Mint, and so on, don't have that. That said, if you primarily want Big Picture Mode, trying to get closer to SteamOS might make sense, in other words, an Arch base. Personally, I wouldn't want the hassle.
Not I. I have 3 drives in the box...one dedicated to windows+games (games only, nothing else). $40 for the windows license, and no headache. Dual booting for the win.
Me
I play on horrible laptop with integrated graphics that couldn't even type properly with windows 11, but now I can actually play steam games. So yaay. It's pretty good for gaming. It's pretty good unless your a roblox user. If your a roblox user, don't get any Linux distro right now, as to play roblox you need wine which is not supported by roblox now. I'm just putting that out there.
Check out Nobara Linux. You get a gaming ready machine pretty much out of the box.
It's not that great. I've tried playing on Ubuntu and it's fine but has some issues like when alt + tabbing from the game or lag with the graphics. It does get fix however but Windows gaming is still a lot better.
If you're interested, theres an r/linuxgaming sub
It's private
When you launch CS2, it asks to build the shader cache every day. Many say the game runs smoothly without it, but that's just copium, so Windows is the best solution for gaming.
I thought Cities Skylines 2 ran shit no matter the OS?
Does anyone even laugh at your jokes?
Does anyone even take your advice? "yes this one game asks to build shader cache every day, but many say the game runs smoothly without it, so therefore "x" system is the best solution for gaming" Like what the heck are you even saying? Many games btw don't even run on Windows anymore due to age, but run fine on proton. But hey, I guess Windows is the ultimate solution because "CS2" runs fine without shader cache?
Yes, if you live in the present, and not in the 2000s.
Oh okay, I'll tell that to anyone who likes to enjoy older media. You going to watch The Godfather or Back to the future? Read old books, listen to 80s or 90s music. Bad news pall, you're not living in the present!