It is,although you can always use synaptic as gui or aptitude as cli version too.
To use other formats then deb packages you need to use discover which is more enduser friendly but the poweruser uses something else 
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I havenāt read every single comment here so most of this has probably been brought up already, but my issue with gaming onā¦ well Linux in general, arenāt things a distro can really fix.
For example I want to play my GOG games, but the GOG Galaxy client doesnāt work on Linux.
And the third-party ones donāt support cloud saving.
That means Iād have to install Windows just to get my cloud save data.
And thatās just a lot of hassle.
Thereās also some weirdness with drivers, but itās slowly getting there I suppose.
Enabling DLSS in something like Death Stranding results in some odd pixelated graphics in the distance. So I feel like I can only partially use my RTX card.
The NVidia control panel for Linux is also seriously underdeveloped.
On Windows I can have specific graphics profiles for each game, but setting that up on Linux is a nightmare!
And finally, of course, the anti-cheat issue.
I know a lot of anti-cheat software now lets developers opt-in for Linux support, but it seems like very few choose to do it.
I know all of my favorite games, like DJMax and such, donāt work on Linux due to anti-cheat.
Lots of minor things as well like having to right click Steam and selecting āLibraryā instead of just double clicking the tray icon, but as I said; itās mostly things a distro canāt fix.
Well you can as Distro and as an enduser pay for development of a solution as well as advocate for it.
Protons Valve works with major anti-cheat solutions already. Every time wine&Proton come closer to the windows quirks it is more likely that anti-cheat systems work out of the box on the emulated windows layer. Although usually it needs someone to figure out the specific needs for such a game.
It is a long road ahead of us and ubuntu.
One thing I just thought of: peripherals.
If Ubuntu can work with peripheral makers, like Logitech, Cooler Master, Elgato or SteelSeries, to have the ability to configure RGB, macro keys, etc (especially for wireless peripherals).
3 Likes
sergio-tarsiero said:
2. a rolling release is a better solution. The kernel get frequent game patches, drivers evolve quickly, pipewire and wayland evolve quickly. Donāt stick with a 6 month release plan. Itās not enough stable and not enough quick.
^THIS^ @ local-optimum Go big, or go home.
Donāt pussyfoot about. sometimes the grand sweeping changes are necessary. I would strongly advocate that pressure be put on the Debian Developers to fork Debian Testing into a new tree - Debian Gaming.
Itās not the bleeding edge of kernels but at least itās not 5.4 Maybe the best compromise between supporting the newest hardware and packages and stability? Iām just a carpenter, gamer, and end user. I donāt code (yet) and Iām closer to the grave than the crib. In the course of my job, I have had to create and fabricate specialized tools and jigs to complete a task. It seems to me that what you all want (a gaming experience on Linux equal or better to that of Windoze) doesnāt exist yet. Itās time to build the tool from scratch. Please roll up your sleeves and get on with it.
As someone who streams and struggles with the Linux solutions for getting my Elgato streamdeck to work, and someone who really, really wants more choices for RGB controllers, I definitely agree with this idea, though even as a Canonicaler, I donāt know how plausible/doable this is for the small subset of the market that are Linux gamers. I am so grateful to people like Luke H who make things like polychromatic to improve the current peripheral experience.
2 Likes
How well does
https://timothycrosley.github.io/streamdeck-ui/ & https://github.com/abcminiuser/python-elgato-streamdeck work? Just found it on GoL.
I think this might be worthy of its own topic, but I know other more experienced Linux users in my circle have had luck with those, especially the former.
FYI, Pop!_OS is now releasing mainline kernel to their repo. I found out just last night when I updated my KDE Neon desktop (which has Pop!_OS repo).
Has the Ubuntu team considered doing that, or releasing the mainline kernel in a separate metapackage?
Who knows?
https://openforeveryone.net/articles/fedora-partnerships-to-make-streaming-better-for-linux/
They gotta start somewhere, right? Maybe better Discord integration with the Snap store (for seamless updates).
2 Likes
Ubuntu is a distribution, it is like a gearbox where every gear has a meaning and a certain task ā¦
Distro features often span across multiple packages ā¦ some of these features require a particular kernel configuration or patches backported from newer kernel versions (rarely even out of tree patches) ā¦
When a feature is developed, a spec is written that also includes test procedures to avoid regressions and breakage ā¦
To be able to support certain features using the distro kernel packages is a hard requirement, just replacing them with a mainline build without the above mentioned config and patches will mean you go into unsupportable territory.
Things in userspace will/may behave in unpredictable/unexpected ways, miss security defaults and probably end-points that userspace apps/daemons expect ā¦
The Ubuntu Kernel Team produces daily builds of mainline kernels to be able to verify issues and to be able to ask users in bug triage to temporary install them for a test, but these kernels are not updating at all and are also not supportable without adding a lot of (expensive) manpower to the teamā¦
If popos decided to provide their own mainline builds this is up to them, some apps from the repos will mis-behave though, things like apparmor will only work partially, leaving you with degraded security of your system ā¦
This is up to them if they can handle the fallout from the breakage they introduce in their support forums and this is also one of the reasons the official Ubuntu support channels have to turn down all requests from such distrosā¦
4 Likes
To me, itās very easy. I have many ideas maybe because Iām new to Ubuntu (A year or two).
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We need to stop that the system breaks when you upgrade a package or something like that. The new users in Linux donāt read, donāt know the topic of the package manager and how to resolve conflicts or fix broken packages.
The video of Linus Tech Tips is great feedback, he doesnāt read the terminal, he is a user of UI and he broke his system. We need a Ubuntu but with some packages immutables. Like Fedora Silverblue. -
On the other hand, maybe we need to give a good UI, many options of Ubuntu need a command in the terminal to configure some settings. These settings are not mapped in the UI.
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Besides in the case of Ubuntu Budgie, the message of welcome is great. Had everything that a new user needs.
A quick guide with a button to install anything. -
Better support for Nvidia I mean Iām an Nvidia User, when I started I didnāt know the conflicts with Linux, and when I knew was too late.
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Canonical could help to port some games to Linux, like a consultant or a service. Many games donāt work at this moment in Linux, they said that itās complicated to do a port or activate the option to work in Proton, maybe Canonical could help them with these things?
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More Mouse and keyboard options, we new things with LEDs and something like that. Is a great idea to add options to customize the colors and the shortcuts.
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Maybe an interactive guide? I mean when I start in Linux I didnāt know what was a Desktop Environment, or a Flavour or a workspace. In Windows we didnāt have these things, It was a great experience when I understood how to work Linux and I could be more productive.
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Alt + Tab by default need to switch the windows not the application, I think that it was a mistake and is horrible how works the alt + tab by default in my experience. The majority of the gamers are Windows users and thereby default alt + tab switch the window, not the application.
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Better UI to Hardware, I use a sound card extern, and a friend a capture card, We donāt have options since Ubuntu, we couldnāt configure the hardware by software.
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Discord community? For quick questions and answers, the new generations donāt use the webs like yahoo answers, and the new generation doesnāt know what is a forum, the forum is a thing geek today. Trust me, I make forums and the reality is that these platforms are dead, Facebook, Twitter, and in this case Discord, killed the forums. The most nearly to a forum in 2021 is Discord.
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A better store, the new store of Gnome is fine but could be better, Itās not too much complicated, they need more designers I guess. More selective software and less random software in the main site, like did PopOS.
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Canonical could help more to projects like Waydroid or Anbox, or UEngine in the case of Deepin, because many people play games in Android and not in Steam. Itās not my case but I see many people playing Japanese games in Android emulators in Windows. If we could make work fine Anbox, Ubuntu could be a great option to these users, because we could be native.
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Migration to Gnome 40, they are doing a great job with the new changes, vertical workspaces? Horizontal workspaces! Itās more intuitive, like Mac or Windows.
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Donāt use KDE, to me is a mistake, the UI is more polished in Gnome, more options to customization are not all the time a great experience. Gnome is more simple and intuitive, not in the same way as KDE, I mean yes you could put a taskbar at the bottom of the screen but you need? I donāt think this.
Gnome works great by default doesnāt need imitate to Windows in all the things, if you want to use KDE you could use Kubuntu.
Donāt kill me please, these are my opinions about the status of Ubuntu currently to gaming.
3 Likes
I think with Wine,VKD3D and DXVK we have lower level things to push money&ressources to.
It solves compatibility on a broader range than just āspecificā applications and games, which might be a problem of getting the original publisher to agree on.
Also it is difficult to find something to port that a big enough userbase wants to have.
That is something for later when the foundation for gamers is runing and we got a large enough user base.
Same is true for Hardware enablement, NVIDIA ,Capture Cards or whatever else.
The foundation needs to be worked on before you go for specific applications and games.
Discord? I think we should check the open source world and focus on something else like letās say matrix and make it equal in terms of features.
Get people where they are, ok, but this vendor lockin with proprietary tools needs to be countered.
Matrix-Bridge at least and research what is missing elsewhere.
We shouldnāt get into the religious wars that the choice of a āproperā desktop environment usually is.
KDE, Gnome, XFCE everything should work as the underlying packages and software is more or less the same.
Hi All,
Last week Iāve ditched windows 10 on my gaming PC for Debian 11. The main reason being unable to upgrade to Windows 11 and end of support of windows 10 by 2024. I didnāt want to put a perfectly working PC in the bin just because it doesnāt support windows 11.
I was up and running without much effort. Using Steam and lutris with no issues so far. Had to get my head around enabling vsync to get rid of screen tearing though.
Using xfce as desktop environment with Nvidia 1070 with v460 drivers. Setup is fairly minimal. Used flatpak for discord and few other packages as I wanted the newer software.
On the whole happy with the performance in games. The backup plan was to use Xubuntu 20.04 if I couldnāt get Debian to work.
Cheers,
Mal
Thanks for letting us know about your experiences @Mal_Man! There have been a few people whoāve mentioned needing some minor tweaks to their Nvidia setup, it would be great to hear what those are specifically, we could collect a few of these kinds of tips to make a great tutorial around tweaking your setup for gaming.
As someone who doesnāt know much about linuxā¦ My main issue is:
- Games just donāt openā¦ No erros. Steam says itās running but thereās nothing.
On protonDB such games are gold/platinum ranks. Also, they are not too heavy, my hardware can handle them pretty well. But I just canāt make them run.
Some of them:
Tomb Raider: Legend(platinum) / TR2(gold)
GTA: vice city (gold)
DmC: Devil May Cry (gold)
etcā¦
It would be nice to have a tool to check whatās not working and show how to fix it.
(All games I have on steam, runs perfectly with my hardware on windows. On ubuntu, none of them opens. If I could run them on ubuntu, Iād totally abandon windows for good. Games are the only thing holdig me back on windows.)
Are you running a version newer than 20.04? Many games were not working for me on newer versions due to libraries being moved and the games not being updated for newer versions.
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I vote for saner defaults for people that dualboot windows for their other games.
The time changes when changing the os so you have to fix the 1h offset each time you start windows again. In some cases even two.
Somewhere there is mistrust between mainboard clock, Ubuntu and Windows.Automatic syncing with a timeserver pool fixes it, but not always this is immediately done by the OS.
āSaner defaultsā is a bit too vague to work with. Please be more specific?
āThe time changesā and āfix the 1h offsetā and āmistrust between the mainboard clock, Ubuntu, and Windowsā seems like a support question or a bug more than an idea for improvement. Many folks dual boot without any clock problems. If a stock install of Ubuntu does introduce improper times, please file a bug report so that reproducible problem can be fixed.
Not a problem. In followed the Debian wiki to installed the Nvidia drivers on Debian 11. Once installed the vsync option was ticked in Nvidia control panel. Some guides suggested enabling āForce Full Composition Pipelineā but I found enabling this made things worse. I.e made everything laggy.
My understanding is that If screen tearing is an issue the best fix is to enable vsync (in nvidia) tearfree(for intel) at driver level and turn off vsync in the window manager/compositor.
Hope this helps.
Best,
Mal
1 Like