How to Improve Gaming Performance with Steam on Linux

As a Linux computer user who is more into games, you will want to know how you can improve its performance once Steam is available for interested gamers. It is important to understand that the gaming experience can be enriched or failed in dependence on many factors starting from the desktop environment and ending with the version of graphic drivers you have chosen to install. It matters as well the way you have Ubuntu distribution installed on your machine.

Let’s consider some of the most influential factors that affect the performance of your Linux gaming experience:

* Graphic drivers are not very responsive in case you use an older Ubuntu system but once Steam has been released for Linux, this fact has determined NVIDIA to improve their drivers and thus come with reduced loading time of the games.

At this point, for better performance ensure that you use Ubuntu, and upon installation check for the NVIDIA driver. If this one is not shown then you are more likely on Intel graphics and for these ones, there is no need to come with additional drivers. One thing you have to pay attention to: your OS is updated through the Update Manager app.

* It is interesting to note that Steam has been released for desktop computers and for this reason, you may not use the program on your laptop, especially on the Optimus type. In the case of switchable NVIDIA and Intel graphics, you must know that Ubuntu Is not designed yet to support this and for this reason, you have to go with Bumblebee installation to have these things operable.

* One other thing to improve performance is using full-screen mode presented in the form of ‘Unredirect Fullscreen Windows’ with the latest Ubuntu updates. This option needs to be enabled and in this way, the game appearing in full screen will run at full speed while the compositing manager function (the one that otherwise slows down the image evolution by more than 20%) is skipped.

* Making use of a non-composited desktop you will get an optimal performance with games played in 3D. At this point, you must know that GNOME Shell and Unity will not give you access to disabling compositing, as compared to other desktops that allow you to do this. For this reason, you should give it a try in another desktop environment such as KDE or Xfce.

* When installing Ubuntu stay away from using Wubi as the way through which Ubuntu is easily installed. Why? Because using Wubi comes with performance failure for disk writes and reads.