Taking into account that Windows 10 has ended support. I was pointing out something I have seen for several years now that could be focursed more now because of the Windows shift:
Slow roll release for Video drivers. For example when new drivers for Nvidia come out, for example the PPA at Proprietary GPU Drivers : “Graphics Drivers” team just published the latest ones 5 days ago, but took almost 3 weeks to do so. Sometimes even longer.
The Steam snap still has no proper way of helping mangohud (compiled or from source code to be compiled manually on the PC) to work seamless with Snap like seen here (Which I tested and still failed): Expose Vulkan to Steam · Issue #438 · canonical/steam-snap · GitHub The steam snap DOES run faster than the official steam or even the flatpak one, but benchmarking tools like MangoHUD, are not an optional app, but something required to in an indirect way, promotes Ubuntu by showcasing it in video channels for example, social media and more.
The Mesa updates takes basically the 6 months to be pushed since we would need to wait till the next release for this. This bring ton of huge improvements to AMD and Intel GPUs.
The Ubuntu installation having a section for gaming that pre-installs or pre-configures certain things or optimizations to focus better on gaming.
There are more points that the community could highlight or even vote on to the help the Ubuntu developers, but just pointing out there is a need for this, and with the windows shift, this can help a lot to the ecosystem of ubuntu for new users.
I just gave Ubuntu weeks of in-depth testing for gaming, starting on 25.04 and finishing on 25.10 and my conclusion is that Ubuntu is simply not good enough for gaming with modern hardware. Canonical’s insistence on shipping snaps with outdated mesa libraries, cause critical instabilities which end in full system freezing and crashing. Even with kernel 6.17 and mesa 25.2.3 - snaps are using mesa that is so old the Steam snap is literally unusable but the normal system snaps cause bad calls that result in crashes. Using the .deb Steam solves this issue but ANY system snaps that are open cause freezing. The Firefox snap uses old mesa that causes crashes, has no webgl or vulkan support. Using custom kernels and mesa ppa’s has the same result as default - critical system instability. Now, this is all with AMD hardware and a modern Radeon GPU but I’m personally doubtful the Nvidia experience is perfect. In my personal opinion Ubuntu should not be recommended for gaming - ESPECIALLY to new users who do not have the experience to troubleshoot complex issues and nor should they. Switching to any modern distro that ships a recent kernel and mesa like fedora or an arch based distribution solves every single issue that I just listed. I actually really like Ubuntu and I don’t mind the idea of snaps but as it stands Ubuntu is one of the worst possible Linux distributions today for gaming or anything that depends on a modern and stable graphics stack. This is my personal opinion and polite, constructive criticism about a serious issue.
Thank you for your valuable feedback. I cant test AMD since I am saving for a new PC that is 100% all AMD (The 2 PCs I use on https://www.youtube.com/@xtremelinux are Intel + Nvidia) but this is good feedback to see what can be tackled in the gaming area so nobody needs to be adding PPA or configuring extra things to make it work.
Snaps having an older mesa library is literally my only issue with Ubuntu too really. I had no choice but to move to fedora and it’s been rock solid for over 48hrs. I think Flatpaks integrate better with the system wide mesa drivers, but this is kind of getting beyond my knowledge tbh. All in all - I loved Ubuntu 25.10 even though it’s unusable for me. I see that there is a “call to testing” - something about updating the mesa in snaps to 2404.
Thank you for your feedback. I also tested Arch and had no issues either (For me both had the same performance on Nvidia + Intel).
Although if you have any ideas or feedback about making the “gaming” concept of Ubuntu as an inviting option from your experience, that would be help a lot.
I think it should be advertised more and especially the fact that it’s not hard thing to do in general. Maybe include it’s own page in the official site?
I also have no issues gaming on Ubuntu 25.10 or Kubuntu 25.10 or the 25.04 base and when i benched my system i get the same performance then arch or cachy os or fedora etc…
here is my Hardware:
Cpu: AMD 9800X3D
MB: MSI MAG TOMAHAWK WIFI
Gpu: Asrock Phantom Gaming 7900XTX
RAM: T-Group T-Create 2x 32gb DDR5 6000mhz
Gaming packages i use:
-Steam as .deb package not snap or flatpak
-Wine from repo
-Lutris from repo
-Bottles: flatpak
-Heroic Game Launcher flatpak
-Protonplus flatpak
-Protontricks as flatpak (because the repo version is always out of date and don’t work properly)
-Mangohud from github (because the repo version is always out of date and don’t work properly)
as you can see i don’t use snaps for gaming not just because of performance issues but also ability to use mangohud and other tweaks make it harder or impossible using snaps.
But i have to say since release 24.10 Ubuntu really step up there game when it comes to gaming with newer kernels,drivers etc…i’m really happy Thank you Ubuntu team.
P.S I just wish they could ship in the repo protonplus and newest version of mangohud and protontricks so then it would make it easier for new user’s and selfishly me lol.
I really agree with the points your making specially number 4 but until snaps becomes easier to manage with permission and mangohud i think maybe they could push deb packages for now until snaps are fully ready it’s close but not there yet fully.
But yeah there should be toggle or something during install that installs everything for gaming that would be awesome.
No matter what package format tools are in, some need packaging first and some need more frequent updates.
I am not sure if we want snaps when the supply is better with flatpaks, but we certainly need to help the user with the discovery process.
“hey, seems you have device X, how about openrazer, openrgb, polychrome, coolercontrol, etc?”
You want to play? Here we have, Steam, Heroic, Lutris, NonSteamLaunchers…
Wanna stream? Drivers+OBs are here.
People might not know about all these extra things that you may or have to use to really make use of the various expensive hardware you bought.
I know when I recommend Ubuntu to my PC gaming friends I typically have a checklist of tasks I go through. Drivers, Steam install, adjusting some peripheral settings, Proton selection, troubleshooting tips, etc. I think just having a very easy to follow and accessible guide could go a long way for the community.
As an aside, as a VR fan, I was so excited to see the latest SteamVR beta branch works with Questing. Still the occasional SteamVR crash and hiccup, but when it runs, I have had nearly identical performance to my old Windows partition. In some cases it genuinely feels smoother.
I am more for a more “in your face” approach in addition to just written text.
People have to actively search for a guide. If the OS offers the right packages at install-time it would be faster and more accessible.
I know some distros opt for a “Game Center” like utility where you can one click install most game launchers and toggle some of those gaming tweaks mentioned in above comments. In theory it should be pretty easy to put together. Maybe I’ll try to brush up my Snapping skills and work something up.
Upon installing the system, CachyOS gives you an option to install all the gaming-related packages (Steam, Lutris, Heroic), and this certainly saves a lot of headaches for the user coming from Windows 10 & 11. Something similar could be done from the App Store.
Regarding the topic, I do consider Ubuntu a good place to game. That is, the Steam Snap doesn’t require any kind of prior configuration, and so far, I haven’t had any major differences compared to my previous experience on Windows. And the best part is the feeling that everything is getting better.
You might want to consider looking into the “Software Boutique” which was a component of UbuntuMATE until just recently. The full discussion for the following might inspire you to consider adapting that tool for more general audience, or specific to Games in the way you suggested.
I would just ask that if you do pursue that “Game Center”, could you consider “modularizing” that, via a mechanism that allows selection of “Scope-Specific Items List”, which could then ensure that the same “engine” could be focused, by user selection, to pre-configured curated lists for topics such as
Games - MPLS
Games - Board (networked)
Games - Single Player
Games - Standalone
Multimedia - Play
Multimedia - Editing
Multimedia - Publishing
Graphics - Photography
Graphics - Publishing
Graphics - 3D Modelling
Graphics - Engineering
Graphics - Construction
Business - Communications (internal)
Business - Communications (external)
Business - Accounting
Business - Data Management
Business - Broadcasting
etc.
I wanted to share those thoughts with you, hoping to inspire you to pursue that goal.
There are questions though, what do we do with drivers, kernelmodules, applications that aren’t available in the main repositories?
Do we update faster than Ubuntu itself does to make new hardware and games running better as soon as possible?
Gaming has always been the domain which pushes the limits of technology, sometimes faster than Business or Military applications, because the degree and intensity of imagination applied to that field has almost always exceeded that for those other “driver” fields.
I don’t know enough to say whether they are already doing it or not, but Canonical/Ubuntu should consider having a dedicated “Gamers Team”, people who are actual Gamers, passionate about the field, as both players and actual developers, and have that Team act as Alpha-testers and Beta-testers for commercial interests like Nvidia, etc, to ensure that they can both advise about integration and conceive/prototype/deploy workable interfaces to facilitate that integration.
After all, almost every technology that has “popped up” for gaming has found its way into practical business end-uses in one form or another. Such a team could lead to Canonical/Ubuntu being assigned “Preferred integrator” status by those high-tech hardware developers.
