Worse - Distrowatch at least calls it “Page Hit Ranking”, and on their details page says in bold " They correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions". Knowingly using flawed statistics to make factually unsupported conclusions and then present them in the most drama-inducing manner possible is worse than doing nothing - it actively distracts time and attention from the overall FOSS mission.
@luisalvarado Correct me if I’m wrong, but I sense a desire for competition among distributions here - why do those stats matter other than general awareness of the largest userbases? Is where “Ubuntu” ranks on that page compared to “Arch” or “SteamOS”, or anything else, going to drive any action that changes how well Ubuntu works for gaming? If not, then that data is ultimately noise and IMO time spent worrying about it is time that could be spent either doing practical things to make the product better, or simply enjoying the product that we have and sharing that enjoyment with others.
Got nothing to correct. Everything that you just said is spot on. I am actually doing a video about this. The initial links that I started this conversation with came from 2 students that I have (Linux users, one arch, one ubuntu).
But today it got to a point about how information is shown, misused, altered or what the term so crazy people say about “alternative truth” that I had to do a video. At least to more or less clarify how to read certain things.
Those sites might not do that on purpose (or they might), and they could put a note saying what the data represents or how it is collected, but even then, other sites will grab the data and use it in a completely different way.
For example seaching for the most popular linux distribution will most of the time use the distrowatch list. Basically MX Linux is the best of all distros and the most popular one.
This also came to be with a conversation I had with my students and how easily they got to MX Linux because distrowatch said so. The same way other sites falsely declare or not even do a minimum of investigated journalism to determine if someone is currently true and holds its ground or not.
So everything you said is to the point and correct. It is the way it is used, or manipulates the linux community or even newcomers to it that is creating a big issue about confusion.
I think there are some big differences though. For example if you look at the graph on your site from protonDB, you will see it does not match the ones in Steam exactly:
Steam also has several issues as mentioned here. Including one I learned today about the “Other” seciton which includes, not only snap users from ubuntu, but also the rest of the versioning of Ubuntu.
For example it added on other the 22.04.2 users, the 22.04.1 users, the 22.04 users, the 23.04, the 23.10 (which I am one), this is because Arch, Majaro and any other rolling release model, simply shows to Steam as a unique name, whereas, Ubuntu supports a 6 month version model, but steam does not group all Ubuntu versions into a single Ubuntu, meaning it lost a big chunk of ubuntu users right there by the way that it shows the data (Really lazy and bad programming at this point from their end of a so called survey).
Same problem applies for Linux Mint, Pop Os and any other that uses a versioning naming convention.
Also, looking at the graph from protonDB, that could be interpreted as multiple things, to give you one, it could mean that the distros that show less, have less issues than the ones that show more, for example.
The type of users that typically go to ProtonDB are users that normally want to post an issue, not a success story with the game. Hence why most reports are bugs. Which promotes the idea above even more, about that less percent means less bugs, not just less users.
While I understand that a lot of gamers want Windows games; however, personally, I don’t have this need… and there are many open source 3D games that work awesomely (especially browser based). However, I remember back in the 90s when so many people were complaining that you couldn’t run Windows apps on a Mac… then there was the PowerPC/PowerMac that allowed the apps to work, but not as good.
So, once again, we’re talking about what we can currently do with the native software – which is pretty darn significant.
Just fyi, i made with the french community Gaming Linux Fr a comparison between each Linux distribution with a focus on gaming, accessibility and video editing.
The objectives is to guide new linux comers on the best choice at this time.
Today, ubuntu & kubuntu, are clearly the best choice.
But ubuntu don’t tick all the boxes of our Spec.
Our objectives is to open requests like this one : Bug #2057792 “Some Games are crashing linked to a vm_max_map_cou...” : Bugs : Ubuntu
for improving ubuntu for a gaming aspects.
In this bugs, we treat about vm_max_map_count which is too low by default (65530) and we need an other value >200k to mainly reduce our bugs in some games like Hogwarts Legacy or StarCitizen.
We have a plan for other improvements, like the compatibility of xbox joypad or about the snap steam compatibility with a google form.
Below you can see the specs sharing with Gaming Linux Fr community (2.5 k subscribes on discord & 5k on youtube)
It would be necessary to fix the snap or at least keep the .deb version as default until the snap is up to par. Because if a beginner arrives on Ubuntu, they have the snap by default, and today it’s not at the level of the native steam package.
I think we should also speed up the Nvidia drivers a bit, we’re still on 535 on Ubuntu while the 550 are in the production branch and already in their second iteration, which means someone with a 4070 super, for example, won’t be detected. You can add the PPA, but for a beginner, there should be zero fuss.
I agree that the snap isn’t ready and shouldn’t have been pushed to stable.
There is work being done to fix that. The Steam Snap Github actually has some interesting discussions on why the snap doens’t work well compared to other formats.
I think from what i read on forums and listen to gaming linux user’s on youtube what they look for is the latest kernel,drivers and also software related to gaming natively not flatpak or snaps because it causes another layer of performance hit.Software like steam,heroic launcher,lutris,bottles,goverlay,mangohud (that would be nice that we dont have to hunt the latest version or compile it,wine,(protontricks ubuntu 24.04 launch with already out of date version),stuff like that those are the complains i hear the most.
Look at Fedora it’s growing in the gaming community because it offer’s all of the above up to date and in there main repo and they manage to stay pretty stable.
I agree with most points here, but here are some notes from the past 6 months alone for my hardware and tests:
Snap has the same performance as deb package for the steam ecosystem. At least the last 10 games I tested that include spiderman miles morales, cs2, kingdom come and more.
Flatpak still has the issue with performance for some games like cs2 along with mangohud integration.
I see better performance on Ubuntu 24.04 than the current or last versions of fedora. Including not suffering from crashes compared to the cases I had with fedora. Thai could not be the case for other hardware but oh boy with a 13900k, 4090 rtx and a nvme sn850x I have had some headaches on fedora that I did not even know about when using 24.04.
There are more but I do understand the fallacy for “latest is greatest” which could backfire rapidly if not balanced between proper testing and upstream changes.
I have i7-14700k and rtx 4080 super 64 gb ram and also nvme samsung 980 pro and samsung 970 i run both ubuntu 24.04 and fedora 40 kde.
I have to say I get a bit more performance on Ubuntu, but that wasn’t my point see what I hear the most from gamer’s is that they want to be gaming as fast as possible (set up time).
Fedora already has the latest kernel and driver’s and you have to do one command and you have pretty much everything you need because it’s all in the repo yes there some bugs sometimes but Ubuntu as bugs to.
On Ubuntu you have to install latest kernel and driver then install some of the game applications protontricks is outdated in the repo, so you have to install flatpaks because that’s the only other way. ok you get my point setup time is longer and also has the biggest risk of breaking something specially the kernel and driver because they were manually installed and not tested.
Don’t get me wrong I love Ubuntu I started on it 12.04 and I still use it, but I know many people that are trying to leave windows and they come to Ubuntu and it doesn’t work because the kernel was too old for their hardware or the driver was too old pc wouldn’t boot and they don’t know what to do.
Times are changing many gamer’s are coming to Linux this thing with stable means old packages like Debian as to change because in my experience so far with Linux I encounter bugs if the software is new or old because sometimes you get new bugs but often you get software that already had a bug but not the fix.I’m not saying to turn into arch but there is a middle ground.
Hey Steve, thanks for bringing your thoughts to the thread. Ubuntu 24.04 ships with Linux kernel 6.8 (the same as Fedora 40) and for Ubuntu 24.10 we’re targetting 6.11 for the absolute latest hw support I agree there’s more we can do to ensure the latest NVIDIA drivers are ready as soon as possible and this is something we’re actively discussing internally. I’ll take a look at the proton tricks version in the repo with our internal gaming team to see if there’s something we can do on that front as well. I’d be keen to hear what other initial configuration you need to do to get Ubuntu gaming ready and we can also consider these in future roadmaps!
Fedora 40 did ship 6.8 but now it’s at 6.10.3 with NVIDIA 555.58.02 with regular updates.
Oh, and I forgot on my son pc he as amd 7800xt gpu so for him I also add the mesa kisak ppa (ppa: kisak/kisak-mesa) to get the latest amd stuff.
My gaming setup for Ubuntu is I usually download steam from their website the deb package because it’s the latest package.
Wine I usually install the winehq from their website as it gives me wine-staging and better results than wine in repo.
I also download lutris from the github because the lutris available in repo is also outdated.
Mangohud I have to get from github because the repo version is old and it’s a hit or miss on if it works and goverlay is also an old version would be nice to have the latest version of both of those.
Now I would like to not have to use flatpaks or snaps for gaming because it adds another layer of complexity and possible performance hit plus compatibility issues but in the case of protontricks the package in repo is out of date so I have no choice and the other software are not in repo so I have to use flatpaks the software is Bottles, Prontonup-qt, protonplus.
Another thing I don’t personally use but I hear a lot about is the heroic game launcher and gamescope it would be nice to have that supported.
Gamemode is in the repo so that’s good.
Like I said there are many gamer’s trying to come over to Linux and they mostly choose Ubuntu so I’m just trying to help them and me and the Ubuntu community to have the best experience possible. I can see you guys are working hard on this, so thank you for all your hard work.
So as i understand it, the old (and potentially dangerous) PPA-resource adding is STILL going on? And the only way to get to this new stuff? Why is this stuff not included in the Steam snap or something?
It can also be noted that a normal user will not open a terminal. Nevermind typing peculiar commands (yes, most don’t think of copy pasting either) and one single error of a mark means that intended command won’t work.
Maybe it is included in a snap, but I don’t use snaps stuff for gaming as it still impacts gaming performance and also creates permission problem with other apps and yes with the 24.04 release I still use ppa because mesa is really behind so ppa fixes that.
I also agree that new user’s won’t know how to do this and will think that the performance there getting is not good so they will think linux doesn’t work for them and go back to windows or try another distro just look on YouTube people trying the switch they all choose Ubuntu and Ubuntu base distro and most complain they have would be fixed if gaming stuff and creation tools would be up to date and have easy access.
Unfortunately, lately ive been using Fedora as my main distro for me and my son because all the gaming stuff we need is in there repo and also ships new driver for NVIDIA and Amd no need for ppa and also comes with newer kernel 6.10.6 and the most important thing for me Plasma 6.1.4 and not 5.27 as plasma 6 fixes so many issue with wayland and it’s working great.
Ok that clears things much. And what a great post overall! Now here are some of those things why for increasing number of users Ubuntu is good but “not good enough”. Gaming is such an essential area to keep users in and of course to join Linux altogether. Alot can be achieved with snaps. For example some single install “gamer’s delight Snap” could be offered. I don’t know
I hope Ubuntu’s developers are aware. The stuff included for example in Fedora’s repositories could just be added to Ubuntu’s now that someone has pointed these things out right.
Myself i’ve not had great time with Fedora ever as it’s almost unusable out of the box (video playback don’t work without RPM Fusion tinkerin etc. - which to me is insane; videos should most definitely work OOTB or something is designed badly).
Ubuntu is the world’s #1 OOTB experience. It’s just these little details that keep Ubuntu off from being #1 gaming distro too nowadays.
I agree Ubuntu beats the crap out of Fedora for OOTB, but once setup you have the newest package of Steam, Drivers, Kernel, Wine,
Mangohud and overlay is the latest version also working unlike in Ubuntu
Protontricks is the latest unlike Ubuntu deb version which is outdated and not working
Also, have bottles in there repo Ubuntu you have to install flatpak
Lutris is the latest version in Ubuntu you have to install deb from github
To Ubuntu dev would it be possible to do like cachy os you just install cachyos-gamiing-meta and it installs:
Wine and required gaming wine dependencies
Steam, Lutris, Heroic Game Launcher, Mangohud and Goverlay, Winetricks pretty much everything you need to game except protontricks and protonplus but that could be added. It would make the experience so much easier and enjoyable could even be part of the installer.
I am sure regular and new user’s would benefit and appreciate this.
This is actually very bad. You have to install things “here, there and everywhere”. On gaming aspect, looks like things are not good on Ubuntu at all now that it can be seen what seasoned gamer needs.
All this stuff should be easily installable from Ubuntu’s App Center. How many users even know what GitHub is and that place is a mess in itself; releases section don’t often include debs if there even are releases to begin with (often that section is empty).
Flatpak (plus Flathub) support installed to Ubuntu is still not possible without command line (as far as i know, please tell me this is not the case anymore if it’s possible by mouse clicks).
I suppose these things are not impossible to implement even in short time. If the gaming aspect is this off on Ubuntu (requiring enormous amount of tinkering, research and whatnot, then we can only expect more users going away.
Then where ever they end up, they are faced with other problems such as that OOTB experience which Ubuntu does provide in flying colors. So, for all of Linux ecosystem and adoptation Ubuntu getting these cases right is important.
and the most popular one.
