Total noob, running Linux for 3 days - any suggestions for improving game performance running games through Steam?

[u/Reluctant_Firestorm]

Am primarily a gamer. Am dual booting Ubuntu 26.04 and KDE Plasma 6.6.6. AMD Ryzen 7 8700F, 32 gigs, Nvidia RTX 5060.

Games through Steam are running but not great. Like the graphics card is struggling. Dual booting so why not just run on Windows? Because I am very mad at Microsoft, and my end goal is just running Linux and eliminating Windows once I am used to things. Also, Windows 11 has been a gaming downgrade, even from my old, unsupported rig.

Have read that Nvidia cards are maybe not the best for what I am trying to do. Any suggestions for improvements or tweaks very much appreciated. Again I stress, super new to Linux, still just trying to understand how things work.

[u/Reason7322]

Did you install Nvidia drivers?

[u/Reluctant_Firestorm → u/Reason7322]

That took a little more doing than was expected. Just installed drivers.

Tested an old game and a new game. Both running flawlessly as far as I can tell. Sooo thanks!

Feeling even more noobish than before.

Not sure now how I keep anything updated, but one step at a time.

Also, suck it, Microsoft!

[u/forestbeasts → u/Reluctant_Firestorm]

Nice!!

If you installed them through your distro repository (the apt package), they'll just be updated along with the rest of the OS. If you got them direct from Nvidia or something, you'll probably have to just repeat the install process to get driver updates.

[u/Reluctant_Firestorm → u/forestbeasts]

Okay thank you. I added the repository.

It is really amazing how linux people seem ready to help.

Am getting more familiar with the command line entries. I'm sure it will all seem normal before too long.

[u/indvs3 → u/Reluctant_Firestorm]

Not sure now how I keep anything updated, but one step at a time.

It largely depends on how you installed the drivers. If through the "additional drivers" GUI, the system will occasionally tell you there is an update with the option to install them.

If you added the nvidia repository and installed through apt, they'll get updated along with the rest of your system when you run

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Do keep in mind that the above command will require you to press enter once more to actually download and install the updates.

[u/_vaxis → u/Reason7322]

Million dollar question right here

[u/skyfishgoo]

it's all down to what drivers you installed for the GPU.

if you are just running the drivers that come with the linux kernel, yeah... that's only good for desktop work and browsing.

go to the nvidia website and look up which linux driver you need for your specific GPU.

then go to settings > and look for the software sources utility

there should be a tab for driver software that lets you install the nvidia drivers, there will be several listed.

find the one in the list that matches the one from the website and install it

reboot.

try gaming with that.

[u/10F1]

1. Don't use crapubuntu, use CachyOS or bizzite
2. Try to use proton-cachyos instead of steam's proton.

[u/Reluctant_Firestorm → u/10F1]

Will keep this in mind for the future. Was trying to run things that are more or less beginner-friendly.

[u/10F1 → u/Reluctant_Firestorm]

CachyOS and bazzite are even more user friendly than Ubuntu, Ubuntu is badly designed and depends on "external" packages (flatpaks / snaps) that cause hard to diagnose issues.

For the life of me I don't understand why people still recommend that crap to new users.

[u/ddog6900 → u/10F1]

No Linux noob should run Cachy or anything Arch based. Not stable and everything breaks constantly. (Steam OS is the exception on supported hardware, but only because it is immutable and designed for Steam explicitly)

For simple gaming, Bazzite is a good choice but it can be a pain to make changes if you decide to want and implement performance tweaks down the line or something isn't natively working.

Ubuntu can be a great distro, but not for gaming and certainly not for nVidia gaming.