So you, obviously , do not mind installing a heap of stuff to set it up for games.
I can see that some gamers, who might not have your experience, would prefer to have everything pre-installed.
Maybe Ubuntu should think about a preconfigured gaming version?
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I find Ubuntu just as easy as Pop!_OSā¦
Because my GPU is AMD - it installs the OSS AMD GPU drivers - by defaultā¦
Once Iām happy with my setup of Ubuntu - tweaked it a bit (I NEVER use āout of boxā experience) installed a few things I need, some default Ubuntu repos, some from DEB files (ALL in the CLI - I NEVER use the GUI to install software)ā¦ Once happy :
āsudo apt install steamā (hint: itās in the Ubuntu repo!)
And I delegate the actual installation of each game, to the Steam client itselfā¦ i.e. when I want it install, in the Steam client āInstallā
Thereās a few exceptions here and thereā¦
e.g. I install Lutris - because itās better at installing some stuff - e.g. like the Linux Native āAlderon Game Launcherā than provided by the vendor as an appimage or flatpakā¦
BTW - I LOATHED snap and snapd when I first encountered them - and noticed a slowdown when starting an app that was a snap (the first one I noticed was Chromium)ā¦ But Iām running much better hardware now than I was back then - and I donāt know (nor care) whether somethingās installed as an apt/deb - or itās a snapā¦ So long as it worksā¦
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I have been using Gentoo for going on maybe six years and for myself, it works for just about everything I throw at it!! Yes, it can be a pain to keep updated, doesnāt like being neglected!! I have one Gentoo setup with Wine and do some light gaming, and one Acer Mini, that was a hand-me-down running Gentoo, that serves as my search and discover PC!!! My latest project was taking Gentoo and using it as a host to build LinuxFromScratch, which you can build to about any specs you might desire, if you have the time and the machine. This by no means makes me a complete Linux user, I still have two laptops running W11 and the machine I built a couple of years ago, is happily running W11, which I use, quite often. From your comments you sound like a very interesting person!!!
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My son has Bazzite running on his desktop. It was easy to get him playing. I did try to update it from terminal but it doesnāt seem to use the same package manager than Fedora. Then decided to try the GUI update and it seems to automatically update system if computer is idle. Very nice thing for people who are more used to win. For me, notš
I also used Arch at some point and it teached me to always back up system before any updates. Very scary! Then went to Void and it never broke. I did have a spare laptop Void installed without powering on for appr one year and then I did update and all worked. Void is really stable for a rolling release. I now use Gentoo on all my machines and it never breaks. I donāt have too many ~amd64 (means unstable) packages. It needs a bit more care taking than Debian/Ubuntu based but you donāt need to upgrade to a new version every few years.
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You are a bit brief.
Would you consider writing out all the steps in setting up Ubuntu for games ā¦ eg you dont mention wine?
and why are GPU setups involved? ā¦ is nvidia a big problem?
It seems from comment by @jldevezas that potential games users of linux could do with some simple instructions?
Maybe it already exists?
It you decide to do something, it should probably be a new topic.
This might be a starting point
It does not say anything about Wineā¦ is wine out of date? ā¦ has something replaced it? ā¦ I just dont understand all this games jargon
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Steam does about 95% of the heavy liftingā¦
i.e. Steam does ALL the wine stuff for compatibility of Windows games on the Steam on Linux platformā¦
You donāt even have to think about wine half the time - Steam does it for youā¦
Iām lazyā¦ Seriously - thereās not a whole lot of stuff you need to do in Ubuntu, or Pop!_OS - those are the only two distros Iāve tried gaming on in the last 3-4 yearsā¦ I did try Fedora - but wasnāt happy and donāt remember if I had to do anything special for gamingā¦
90% of the games I play on Linux I use the Steam client to launch themā¦
So - of course Iām brief - as mentioned above on Ubuntu and Pop!_OS (and probably others like Mint or elementary or Zorin) :
sudo apt install steam
Simple as that - it will get you Steamā¦ You run Steam - you login to Steam - it loads your game libraryā¦ From there its as simple as running Steam on MS Windowsā¦ couldnāt be simplerā¦ Of course there are going to be āedge casesāā¦
Iām not about to write War and Peace to describe something thatās pretty straightforward - sorryā¦
Edge cases are using Lutris to install Alderon Game Launcher - which - I have not done yet on this build of Ubuntu 24.04ā¦ Iām almost 100% certain I did post some tech info some while ago, two or three years ago about getting Alderon Game Launcher running on here (so I could play Path of Titans - a mostly dinosaur āsimulatorā where you get be a dinosaur - but they also have other paleo megafauna)ā¦ I have no interest in digging up the past for the post - Iām more interested in the ancient past 
ā¦
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Congrats! You got your first 
points from me.
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OK, I understand now, you dont need Wine on its own at allā¦ Steam has it built in.
You put it nicely. Writing Linux for Dummies is not your thing.
Problem is I understand less of this than the average gamer.
There is some setup,and some knowledge needed, and I understand why some users would want it all out of the box.
What I was probing for is something like this
It seems to say there are multiple ways of getting games going on Linux, including the path you have taken.
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I must add, from what I have learned from setting up Wine in Gentoo!!! It is not easy but it is doable, several packages have to be compiled, and if I had had a Nvidia graphics, it would have been a lot easier, seems as if Nvidia, is more, Wine friendlier, than AMD!!! Now I am not a heavy gamer, mostly just run my XP era games, and this is where Winetricks, comes in handy, I now use Gentoo to play my old Groove Sharpshooter games!!!
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Is it possible to do as @daniel.m.tripp suggests and use Steam instead of Wine?
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Not for myself, do not want to go down that rabbit hole!!!
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Maybe ZenaOS : Zena OS - anyone heard about it / tried it?
(obviously not for @Daniel_Phillips - perhaps more for the OP [orginal poster])
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