Looks like Canonical, the creator of Ubuntu, want to get in on more Linux Gaming with their Desktop Product Manager starting a new series of blog posts and your feedback is needed.
The first blog post goes over using Steam and Proton, which won't be news to any of our readers, especially with our full guide existing for some time now. What's interesting though, that I had no idea, is that their Desktop Product Manager is Oliver Smith, who previously worked for Creative Assembly as a Producer on the likes of Alien Isolation - which got ported natively to Linux by Feral Interactive.
As for the actual guide, it's a pretty good intro for those who need to point newer users to get setup ready with Steam and try out Proton.
At the end of it, Smith mentions how "we don’t want to get complacent, we know there is still a lot more we can do to improve the gaming experience on Ubuntu Desktop" and that Canonical is "keen to hear from you on the issues or areas we should focus on in 2022". A post on their official Discourse Forum has been opened to gather feedback.
The first reply on it already jumps right into thing Ubuntu should look to sort, like making Mesa upgrades easier so people don't need to resort to PPAs for new graphics drivers on AMD/Intel, which is often needed to keep up with newer game releases and new Proton releases.
Hopefully this will be the start of Ubuntu making more progress to make gaming great on Ubuntu, and easier overall.
Quoting: GuestBut then what happens if you're all out of bubblegum?Quoting: ThePierrasseQuoting: GuestQuoting: elmapuli think this situation is... ironic to say the least...
canonical bet that linux could become mainstream, spend a lot of money on it, then they failed.
they even tried to do an partnership with valve and got ambitious with their own display server, an phone, tablet, conversible concept...
and ultimately failed, but at least they were the entry point to many in the world of linux and as result, many people build know how on ubuntu wich helped then grow in the server space (cheap laborhood)
the desktop seemed ... abandoned, a few bug fixes here and there but no major new features.
then valve strike again, an big youtuber that reache the masses start talking about linux , and they're like:
hey we're listening to yourfeedback!
i'm not saying they werent before, but they were silent at best...
its almost like they realize that things may finally get into motion now, and they may miss the boat...
anyway, i'm not mad at then, its just that... it may be to later, steamOS is arch based and pop seems to be get the public they were negleting, so lets see what happens =p
Ubuntu definitely was the first home user friendly distro out there, and they put a lot of effort into making it that way, but I think they lost their way at some point. They tried to turn into a Microsoft, and it didn't work - a little too commerical, not enough looking after their users. Trying to do their own thing rather than work with (and thereby lead) the community. Red Hat gets away with this by looking at a different market.
I wasn't a fan with the direction Ubuntu had started to take, but what kept me away the most was their insistence on Unity, and then trying to put Amazon affiliate links and data collection in by default. That's gone away now (I hope), but that it was tried at all speaks volumes of their priorities. Which is a shame, because they were well poised to become the standard distro that could have been the reference against gaming development.
Unity is still the best DE ever though. Change my mind.
The beauty of choice is that I don't need to change your mind.
I am, however, uncertain if it hasn't mind controlled you and that now I should wear special sunglasses and start chewing gum.
1. Offer the last Mesa. This won't matter for people that use Ubuntu on servers of course as they will not touch Mesa/Xorg/Wayland, but for those on the desktop, it is really beneficial. Avoids a PPA.
2. Offer the latest Wine/Wine Staging. Like Mesa, this is desktop gamer focused and would be nice to have the latest without a PPA.
3. Offer the latest Lutris. Pop!_OS kinda does this already in their Pop_Shop, but it would be nice to have this once again... without a PPA.
4. Should we have the latest kernel as an option to install as a package? Like linux-latest or something. I think System76 does this in Pop!_OS with their linux-system76 package.
Quoting: GuestI have come here to chew bubblegum, and GNU/Linux. And I'm all out of bubblegum.
So ... are you gonna chew GNU/Linux now, or GNU the Linux?
Quoting: GuestNah there really were quite a few REALLY friendly distributions out there, long before Ubuntu was a twinkle in Shuttleworth's eye. Corel/Xandros is one of many. Mandrake was also wonderful. Ubuntu was just the latest iteration that went hard for the desktop initially, and especially while Red Hat had given up.Quoting: elmapuli think this situation is... ironic to say the least...
canonical bet that linux could become mainstream, spend a lot of money on it, then they failed.
they even tried to do an partnership with valve and got ambitious with their own display server, an phone, tablet, conversible concept...
and ultimately failed, but at least they were the entry point to many in the world of linux and as result, many people build know how on ubuntu wich helped then grow in the server space (cheap laborhood)
the desktop seemed ... abandoned, a few bug fixes here and there but no major new features.
then valve strike again, an big youtuber that reache the masses start talking about linux , and they're like:
hey we're listening to yourfeedback!
i'm not saying they werent before, but they were silent at best...
its almost like they realize that things may finally get into motion now, and they may miss the boat...
anyway, i'm not mad at then, its just that... it may be to later, steamOS is arch based and pop seems to be get the public they were negleting, so lets see what happens =p
Ubuntu definitely was the first home user friendly distro out there, and they put a lot of effort into making it that way, but I think they lost their way at some point. They tried to turn into a Microsoft, and it didn't work - a little too commerical, not enough looking after their users. Trying to do their own thing rather than work with (and thereby lead) the community. Red Hat gets away with this by looking at a different market.
I wasn't a fan with the direction Ubuntu had started to take, but what kept me away the most was their insistence on Unity, and then trying to put Amazon affiliate links and data collection in by default. That's gone away now (I hope), but that it was tried at all speaks volumes of their priorities. Which is a shame, because they were well poised to become the standard distro that could have been the reference against gaming development.
The amusing thing to me, is that Unity also pushed me away from them... and then they finally announced unity was dead, they turned around and forced snaps... so I still stay away.
Quoting: TangoBakera combination I've come to refer to as "Baby's First Chainsaw".
LOL
Quoting: GuestQuoting: ThePierrasseUnity is still the best DE ever though. Change my mind.
Unity had a lot of nice ideas but they all lacked polish. The menu was laggy, I had constant crashes, the lenses could be useful but it was faster just to open a file manager, the theme in general was very ugly. What I actually miss is the HUD and the way that maximized windows' header bars would integrate with the top bar and become the menu so you could take better advantage of screen space.
If they did a modern implementation of it I would give it a try though.
As for feedback for gaming, that's going to be hard. I stopped using Ubuntu and its variants a while ago because of instability issues and migrated to Fedora which runs smoothly, It's kind of boring sometimes because things just work. I think if I were to try it again, I'd go with Xubuntu, it's the most stable one in my experience.
i agree with everything except not wanting to have something stable and thinking unity was ugly.
its semi transparent so it match everything behind.
as for stability, you can aways find new ways to break your system on purpose then try to fix
"hahahaha. Oh, wait. You're serious. Let me laugh even harder. HAHAHAHAHAHA"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n5E7feJHw0
Quoting: tonRCanonical? Listen to feedback?
"hahahaha. Oh, wait. You're serious. Let me laugh even harder. HAHAHAHAHAHA"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n5E7feJHw0
Let's just say that Canonical has very selective hearing. They'll ask for feedback and then ignore the parts they don't like.
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