Intro
Hello I know there has been hundreds of guides regarding this topic but I didn’t find one that did like I do. The meaning of this is showing everyone how I set up my Ubuntu install for gaming, this doesn’t mean my guide will be the best one for you. I just want to show off how I do it and hopefully help someone else on the same journey as me.
Applications
gamemode
Download gamemode from the App center, simply search for gamemode and make sure you filter for debian packages since snap doesn’t have gamemode as a package. Gamemode makes your games run better/smoother because it has optimisations such as letting the game get your cpu priority.
Protonplus
Protonplus is gui application that makes it easier to download other versions of proton that you will later use for launching some steam games. First of all you’ll need flatpak support on ubuntu I would recommend to follow the official steps from https://flathub.org/en-GB/setup/Ubuntu. When you have protonplus installed you can just select your preferred version of proton mine is “Proton ge lastest” and hit the download button.
Steam
I use the snap version of steam and use these fixes to make sure it runs like I want it to; For everyone using the snap package of steam Guide.
Issue with steam not launching in gui
There’s also other fixes you may have to do to get it to run for an example, when I first installed it steam would open just fine. When I needed to restart steam later on It didn’t launch with the gui I could still see the app indicator in the top right corner but no gui. To fix this you have to first open steam through terminal by running “steam”. That will make steam launch in the gui after that head to settings in steam and go to “Interface” and turn off “Enable GPU accelerated rendering in web views”. Now steam will launch with the gui without having to open it through the terminal.
Setting the default proton
To set the default proton steam will use go to settings on steam and head to “Compatibility” and select your preferred proton version. (To get other proton versions than steam defaults use the app I mentioned earlier Protonplus)
Turning off shader pre-caching
Shader pre-caching is no longer needed since Proton-ge latest already contain all the necessary codecs to play videos inside games. You can turn it off by going into steam settings and heading to the “Downloads” tab then you just hit the off switch on “Enable Shader Pre-caching”
To set max cache size on nvidia GPU’s open terminal and type “sudo nano /etc/environment” and copy the command under.
__GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE_SIZE=12000000000
To set max cache size on amd GPU’s open terminal and type “sudo nano /etc/environment” and copy the commands under.
AMD_VULKAN_ICD=RADV
MESA_SHADER_CACHE_MAX_SIZE=12G
These steps I got from https://wiki.cachyos.org/configuration/gaming/#increase-maximum-shader-cache-size
Launch options
Now if you downloaded gamemode you can right click your game and click properties and add gamemoderun %command% as a launch option to make the game use the gamemode optimisations.
General OS tweaks
First thing you should do is click on the power button at the top right corner of your screen that should open a little quick settings. In there toggle “Power Mode” to Performance.
Hope this will help anyone trying have a great gaming experience! If I got something wrong or if you feel something should be added please let me know!