After recently giving some first impressions of Stadia, mostly played on a desktop with Manjaro Linux I've done some additional testing with plain Ubuntu and the experience is just as good.
While in the previous article I did note about testing on Kubuntu as well, that was quite an older install. Today, the testing unit, a Dell Inspiron 5558, was wiped with Ubuntu 19.10 installed and all updates run. From there, plain Google Chrome was installed and it runs without issues.
However, if you're after Chromium on Ubuntu it's now using a Snap package (even when installed via apt—more on that here). This didn't have USB input hooked up for the Stadia Controller, so I personally spoke to Canonical today and after a little testing the Chromium Snap has been updated making it even easier to use. If you prefer Chromium over Google Chrome, once installed on Ubuntu you can just run this in terminal to hook it up too:
snap connect chromium:joystick
At some point the above will be done automatically, until then you need to do that simple command.
You should now be good to go and everything works as you would expect even on a very fresh install of Ubuntu 19.10. You can see a really rough video of it in action over Wi-Fi on our YouTube*.
We're certainly not alone (#1,#2,#3,#4,#5 and so on) in having a good experience on Linux with Stadia, but as always with something so new that also depends on a good internet connection the experience can heavily vary. There are people not having such a good experience too of course.
Something else you might want to try, is to disable extensions like ublock for Stadia. While it hasn't caused issues for us, it has for others dropping their performance with it working great when Stadia is whitelisted.
As a reminder, Stadia is currently limited to Founder and Premier packs, with the Stadia Base service going live for everyone in early 2020.
*We've ordered a capture card, to make doing external captures like this possible in higher quality. A decent camera is also now high up on the list.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Perkeleen_Vittupää Nov 25, 2019
I don't think that so much power is needed to decode and display a 1080p (even vp9) video stream, given you have not an intel atom or similar...
Think that my poor n270 is able to decode and display 720p@60fps and i'm actually using it to play remotely with an hacky home made script using ffmpeg and netevent.
But if even an [email protected] (core2 duo) struggles to keep up with Stadia, then something is seriously inefficient in how stadia works.
Which surprise me, given how much know how Google should have in transmitting videos :)
Isn't one of the selling point of stadia being able to use even an old laptop to play newer titles?
Last edited by kokoko3k on 25 November 2019 at 5:56 pm UTC
Last edited by Beamboom on 26 November 2019 at 1:08 pm UTC
Quoting: BeamboomI don't understand why it shouldn't work - it's just using standard streaming protocols. I mean, yeah sure things happen, but this is almost like celebrating that a website working on Linux too. If I am allowed to be a bit stingy here. :)Just because something is in a browser, does not mean it will work on Linux. We've seen it time and time again with various things locked down somehow. I believe it's important to let people know what works on Linux, that's the reason we are here after all isn't it.
guustflater Nov 26, 2019
Quoting: Liam DaweQuoting: BeamboomI don't understand why it shouldn't work - it's just using standard streaming protocols. I mean, yeah sure things happen, but this is almost like celebrating that a website working on Linux too. If I am allowed to be a bit stingy here. :)Just because something is in a browser, does not mean it will work on Linux. We've seen it time and time again with various things locked down somehow. I believe it's important to let people know what works on Linux, that's the reason we are here after all isn't it.
Article from omgubuntu about hardware acceleration issues: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/11/stadia-on-ubuntu-linux-mint
Great to read it works on Ubuntu anyway ^_^
Quoting: BeamboomI don't understand why it shouldn't work - it's just using standard streaming protocols. I mean, yeah sure things happen, but this is almost like celebrating that a website working on Linux too. If I am allowed to be a bit stingy here. :)Hah. Remember Flash?
fredrikfritte Nov 27, 2019
I got an xbox and have gamepass,,i have enough games to last for ages at a monthly fee
Quoting: Purple Library GuyRemember Flash?
Had we talked about an external plugin of some sort to install this would have been a totally different matter. Then I'd agree.
But we don't. It's just using standard technologies, no plugins needed.
Hence my comparison with a regular website 😊
I do not object on it being reported, by all means, but it'd be more of a surprise if it didn't work. And it will work on all distros where Chrome work, to put it simple.
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