Need an easy way to run a bunch of system enhancements? GameMode, originally made by developers at porting studio Feral Interactive has a new release out.
While all of the tweaks can be done by themselves, the point is to have an easy place for anyone and everyone to kick their Linux system into the highest performance possible. A great idea and it's getting quite featured-filled too.
The highlights of GameMode 1.6 include:
- Created a new manpages for gamemoderun and the example, now called gamemode-simulate-game
- Add ability to change lib directory of gamemoderun
- Add option to use elogind
- Copy default config file to the correct location
- Allow LD_PRELOAD to be overridden in $GAMEMODERUNEXEC
- Various minor bugfixes
- Improvements to dependency management
It's worth noting, that most of the work going into GameMode now appears to be from outside contributors, not Feral Interactive directly although they still maintain control over it and do the releases.
Games can actually integrate support for it directly, so that it all becomes automatic if you have GameMode installed. A bunch of Feral Interactive's own Linux ports have it like DiRT 4, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and multiple more recent Total War titles.
What can you actually do with GameMode? Some of the features currently include adjusting:
- CPU governor
- I/O priority
- Process niceness
- Kernel scheduler (SCHED_ISO)
- Screensaver inhibiting
- GPU performance mode (NVIDIA and AMD), GPU overclocking (NVIDIA)
- Custom scripts
See GameMode on GitHub.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
This is cool and all but the lack of a notification that it started keeps me away from this.
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Quoting: KohlyKohlThis is cool and all but the lack of a notification that it started keeps me away from this.
Could that be a Manjaro specific thing? On my Ubuntu there is a brief popup every time Gamemode is enabled and disabled.
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Quoting: KohlyKohlThis is cool and all but the lack of a notification that it started keeps me away from this.
In case that you are using Gnome Shell, I'm using this extension https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1852/gamemode/ for exactly that purpose.
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dziadulewicz Sep 12, 2020
There's no snap or a flatpak for it?
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Quoting: F.UltraQuoting: KohlyKohlThis is cool and all but the lack of a notification that it started keeps me away from this.
Could that be a Manjaro specific thing? On my Ubuntu there is a brief popup every time Gamemode is enabled and disabled.
It's configurable, with a setting in the config file. It might be that Manjaro's config doesn't have that enabled, or KohlyKohl's DE uses a different command for notifications than what's specified in the config.
It's just a command run at gamemode start and a different command run at gamemode stop. I use the function to stop and start my conky, since sometimes that can cause frametime spikes.
Last edited by CatKiller on 12 September 2020 at 5:50 pm UTC
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I hope the global enable for Steam library gets figured out and added.
Also one thing that bugs me that I never worked out how to work around are game launchers. I would prefer for game launchers such as Battle.net that gamemode isn't turned on, because I might want to leave it running in the background... And then when I go to launch a game it should activate. I've tried blacklisting Battle.net but that did nothing, of course I might be doing something wrong. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Also one thing that bugs me that I never worked out how to work around are game launchers. I would prefer for game launchers such as Battle.net that gamemode isn't turned on, because I might want to leave it running in the background... And then when I go to launch a game it should activate. I've tried blacklisting Battle.net but that did nothing, of course I might be doing something wrong. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
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I think I had to disable it for Shadow of the Tomb Raider or the game wouldn’t run, so it hasn’t seemed very helpful so far 
Ultimately I have no idea what it does or why I would need it.
Ultimately I have no idea what it does or why I would need it.
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good to see they didnt gave up on us...
now i just want to hear an new game announcement, pretty please? =\
now i just want to hear an new game announcement, pretty please? =\
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Quoting: SalvatosI think I had to disable it for Shadow of the Tomb Raider or the game wouldn’t run, so it hasn’t seemed very helpful so far
Ultimately I have no idea what it does or why I would need it.
From the article:
Quotethe point is to have an easy place for anyone and everyone to kick their Linux system into the highest performance possible
Basically, it sets your processors into "performance" mode, and configures a few other settings to maximise the game's performance. Especially useful on laptops, since they might the use the "powersave" mode of the CPU (although most use "ondemand" these days).
This is actually pre-installed on Mint, although I don't get the notifications. I might look into enabling those, as sometimes I forget to add "gamemoderun %command%" in my Steam game's launch options.
Last edited by scaine on 13 September 2020 at 10:42 am UTC
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Quoting: elmapulgood to see they didnt gave up on us...Check the article:
now i just want to hear an new game announcement, pretty please? =\
QuoteIt's worth noting, that most of the work going into GameMode now appears to be from outside contributors, not Feral Interactive directly although they still maintain control over it and do the releases.
2 Likes, Who?
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