Gaming with Steam and/or WINE

Support & Help Requests
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I finally decided to buy a gaming laptop, which I will often plug to a nice 28 inch Acer monitor that is QHD and IPS (I saved by not buying an extravagant screen for it knowing I'd use that monitor often, or even the livingroom TV with HDMI output. I'll install 20.04.6 (I paid to get the updates until 2030 or so, so I'm good, 22.04 support doesn't last as long it seems. Sure I could install the latest, but I find 20.04.6 to be extremely stable (under Ubuntu MATE) on my aging but still very functional AMD FX 8350 32gb DDR3 @ 1866mhz with 2 nvme drives on a x16 pci-e port and 2 regular WD Blue SSD's and one old but benchmark says it is just as new WD Red 2TB HDD in it, it's still in shape and is the largest, space-wise drive I have, so I keep it in. I manage to boot with the little trick with the partitions fine with it, the only problem is that my video card is getting old (Radeon HD 7870), it was the best Radeon for its time, and I love how I have 2 DVI and 2 HDMI screens hooked up on it without a hiccup, but it has issues playing games that aren't that recent, such as Resident Evil 2 Remake, it crashed back then with WINE 6.x, before WINE 7 came out and didn't necessitate all of those dang i386 twin packages when installing it. I haven't tried it again, because I got annoyed, there's many much smaller in graphics demands that I want to play that come in Linux versions (love Harebrained Studios) or some games on Steam, which I have seen operate just fine about 6 years ago on my cousin's desktop while he was using, I think Linux Mint 17.2.

Since Ubuntu MATE is so light on the hardware, I'm thinking of installing it on that laptop I have coming in the mail, I know it would play practically anything with very good benchmarks (it has a Radeon 6750 XT in there). I'm asking because I never really gamed on linux except with emulators and old console roms from the huge collection I amassed back in the late in the late 90's to the late '10s. But Steam on Linux is supposed to work fine, the official packages wouldn't exist otherwise and I do have a dozen of isos of computer games I was keeping for when I'd get something with better hardware, especially graphics wise, my desktop is maxed out except when it comes to the graphics card but even then, pci-e 2.0 is getting old, it's still quite the jump in performance when it comes to nvme ssd's (the Corsair one I have goes up to 1800 mbps when the regular ssd's are stuck to 850mbps in the best of cases, but it would very much impede any newer graphics card I get for it, which would be pci-e 4.0 for sure.

I'm posting this because I'd like some feedback about using the type of graphics card I'll have in this laptop I bought online because it was on a 24 hour major discount and I'm getting bored in my paid weeks off right now, might as well play that bunch of games I bought or found and subscribe to Steam, on a computer that can handle it, and my current desktop is not it, at least, not when it comes to high quality AAA games, I'm sure the desktop could handle Steam, but I want to know what people here have experienced with installing Steam on their U Mate computers, desktop or laptop doesn't really matter. Or with WINE for windows games that demand buying the blu-ray/dvd's still and aren't available on Steam. I have a portable blu-ray player that is usb 3.1 so at least I can use that on the laptop, it wasn't possible to get what I had ordered with an optical drive. My main desktop has BD-R/DVD-RW but I'm one of those music freaks so, it's not surprising I spent 140 for a Pioneer brand BD-R.

I'm mostly worried about not being able to play some games without having to dual boot and having to install win10 pro, the only windows I possess, well, my gf possesses, I don't feel like having to dual boot on my new laptop. So give me your feedback please, so I can send it back in case I could run into a brickwall for some games despite how highly powerful that gamer laptop I got is, I have no experience with gaming on linux outside emulators and roms as I said :slight_smile:

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Don't forget that whilst Ubuntu 20.04 LTS has five years of community support; Ubuntu-MATE had only three years, and is already End of Life.

Thus your Ubuntu-MATE support has already ended.

Your Ubuntu community support will end (ie. sites like askubuntu.com etc) after 5 years, or 2025-April for 20.04 LTS.

The ESM or extended support comes from Canonical, not the Ubuntu community.

What support you obtain from Canonical will depend on your contract, ie. email, phone etc, as the basic options include only security fixes but no actual support.

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Okay, so, because 22.04 is EOL next year, what should I go with? All I know is that the updates that were greyed out, I paid to get, but I didn't think they would have possibilities of being unstable due to being only for regular Ubuntu. I'll install 24.04 on the laptop I bought then.

As for my main questions regarding gaming?

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Slightly off topic, but of possible interest to gamers:

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Apologies I seem to be one of the few gamers active here.

I never quite understood your question; maybe be more specific rather than less?

I cant speak exactly to what you will experience because my gaming laptop has an NVIDIA rather than AMD GPU.

As far as compatibility goes, it has never been better. I havent met a game I havent been able to run in many years (except, of course, the games for which developers have banned Linux players).

You've probably already discovered by now that while gaming laptops have a fair bit of grunt; they will run hot when playing modern games at high settings. It doesnt really matter what desktop (or distribution) you use. If you play at high temps, they won't last long. It also depends on design, the more compact and lightweight - the higher the temps (probably).

I use MangoHud to both limit the FPS (in games that dont have the option) and monitor temps while I play. I aim for anything under 80C on the GPU (an NVIDIA RTX 2060). Many games I play sit the high 60's. The shutdown temp on my card is 90C. The really GPU intensive games from the modern era (e.g. Horizon) will maybe run 1080p at 40FPS with medium detail and effects settings at those temps. So ... to be honest, laptop gaming is still pretty poor in terms of performance.

I've found that temperatures are marginally lower by about 2-4C using one of these: https://klimtechs.com/products/klim-cool-vacuum-laptop-cooler

I've also used CoolerMaster pad - it helps a couple of degrees too, but it was noisy and the electronics are low quality, e.g. the dial for speed variation wore out in under 6 months.

All that put together my 2021 Zephyrus laptop is still running almost 5 years later. I dont play games all the time, so if you are gaming every day at higher temps - I can't say for sure that you'll get the same longevity. I probably pick up a game once a week on average, maybe 4-6 hours.

FWIW - I probably won't buy another Zephyrus simply because the price has more than doubled since I got mine.

Happy Linux gaming!

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I’ve gamed on Linux for a few years now, and honestly Steam with Proton has handled most of my library without much tweaking. The only times I still use plain WINE are for older titles or stuff with weird launchers. Performance is usually close to Windows if you stick to Proton versions that other users recommend, and keeping your drivers up to date makes a bigger difference than people expect.

If you’re trying to rebuild a library or test compatibility, checking prices and game versions helps a lot on https://cdkeyprices.uk. I mainly use it to compare keys before buying and to see which releases work best for Proton.

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I’ve been gaming on Linux for many years, mostly on Steam, as I’m on an old computer, it’s mostly old games.

My current computer is an Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-2100 CPU @ 3.10GHz, 8 Gb RAM, with an old graphics card that shows up as AMD Cedar [Radeon HD 5000/6000/7350/8350 Series].

Steam and Proton handle most of my games just fine, and I’m talking about games like Quake 3 Arena, Doom 3, Goat Simulator, Half Life 2, Portal 1 & 2 and a few others. Only ones that stopped working are Age of Empires 2 and The Witcher (Enhanced Edition). I will look for fixes for those two but not right now, as I’m focused on other stuff.

What I did find out in the last few months while I was distro-hopping between Xubuntu and Ubuntu MATE (full installations, no VMs) is that on Ubuntu MATE I get more FPS (around 20% more) than on Xubuntu, same machine, both flavors on 24.04.3. Steam was installed in both cases through Synaptic. Why is that? Just curious, no big deal.

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Hi. I use Steam to play MSFS 2020 and Osirus: New Dawn, besides other games (Mafia: Definitive Edition, etc.). I have UM 22.04 and an going to avoid upgrading, because with Ubuntu Pro, I'm still going to get security updates until 2032. If I leave 22.04 for 24.04, I lose the Software Boutique and besides, I have my computer just like I want it. I have a Dell quad core that I bought from Ebay--I added memory and a GPU, 26GB of ram and a 2GB Geforce GTX 1650.

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Were you using the same kernel stack for both; Xubuntu & Ubuntu MATE have both released GA & HWE kernel stack media, and your issue maybe only that you're comparing different kernel stacks due to you using different media for the same release...

Don't forget RELEASE isn't the only factor, the point release detail matters too, esp. for Ubuntu flavors; or did you use 24.04.3 install media for both?

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Thanks for replying. I did use 24.04.3 install media for both. If I uderstand well, by ‘install media’ you mean the ISO images? In both cases they were 24.04.3.

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Ubuntu MATE versus Xubuntu being 20% different is interesting because the desktop itself seems like the dominant difference, both use the same display manager and X11. Maybe it's related to the compositor?

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Yep, and kernel stack isn't the issue, as only 24.04 & 24.04.1 media for all flavors used the GA kernel stack, where as the .2 point release & later media use the HWE just as Ubuntu Desktop 18.04 LTS and earlier did...

(All flavors still use the standard of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and earlier as per Kernel/LTSEnablementStack - Ubuntu Wiki)

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Didn’t think of it as a possibility, but I’ll be checking in the next few days. Thanks for the suggestion.

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Just got back from work and checked it out… turns out it was because of the compositor. Disabled the compositor and the FPS kind of skyrocketed, LOL :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

I got so used to it that I forget it’s there and barely notice the shadow underneath a window which is the only effect I’ve got enabled.

As a test, I performed a benchmark on Quake 3 Arena (/timedemo 1, for those who know, on a 1600x900 resolution) and with compositor enabled, I got no more than 72 FPS.

With compositor disabled, 119 FPS on the same demo benchmark :flushed_face: All of this on Steam, didn’t try ioquake3 yet.

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Nice! I'm using Marco on Ubuntu MATE and I hadn't noticed FPS difference in the past but I should test it again :thinking:

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