LTS Enablement Stack for Linux Gaming

[AnirbanG007]

Although I'm not new to Linux, I'm fairly new to Linux gaming, having a budget laptop as my only machine. I like both Pop OS and Manjaro, and have used them both in the past. I'm a fan of the rolling style, but Pop calls out to me.

Coming to the main point, even though it's a better bet to get a rolling release distro like Manjaro, esp. for AMD GPU's for gaming, I kinda wanna stick to Pop for the moment, as I'm more familiar with Ubuntu's whole system.

Question is, with all the rapid development in Linux Gaming Community, will I get away with using a fixed release distro like Pop OS (with an LTS kernel), through the LTS Enablement Stack? Will I get the latest drivers? Will it be a good option in the long run?

 

PS: I'm asking this question not from the point of view of my laptop which has dated internals, but for any PC, being an enthusiastic advocate of Linux.  

[Nayr438]

If your going with an NVIDIA Card, the difference will mostly be negligible between the two.

If your going with AMD however, then you will lose out on any improvements to the the Graphics and Driver stack until the next major release. This "could" limit your ability to play certain titles under things like Proton and "could" negatively affect performance in various titles. You can however mostly offset this by going with a more upstream kernel such as Liquorix and finding a stable mesa-git repo.

 

Regardless of your GPU, you may also miss out on various library improvements that Wine may utilize,  which is part of Proton, but these are far less frequent.

 

Gaming has come a long way and most of the major improvements have landed into Ubuntu's stable repositories, which PopOS! is built on. The overall difference in performance and compatibility may not be a big enough difference for you to notice. The best thing you can do is just load it up and see how it performs and if your satisfied with the results.

[gardotd426]

Quote

Question is, with all the rapid development in Linux Gaming Community, will I get away with using a fixed release distro like Pop OS (with an LTS kernel), through the LTS Enablement Stack? Will I get the latest drivers? Will it be a good option in the long run?

No, not really. 

 

HWE updates only come with Ubuntu LTS point releases (so think 18.04.2, 18.04.3, etc). Each edition only gets a handful of point releases throughout its entire lifetime. Ubuntu 18.04 has only had 5. 5. In 3 years. 

 

It's basically the same, or even slower, than just running the latest release, for example going from 18.04 to 18.10 to 19.04 to 19.10 to 20.04 to 20.10 to 21.04, etc. 

 

That's a LONG way off from what you get with a rolling release, especially when it comes to gaming. 

 

Just as importantly, most of the packages are already quite old even on release day for that Ubuntu release. The kernel is usually months old, same with Mesa. You don't get the latest software available at the time of release, you get 2-3 month old (or older) software. 

[AnirbanG007]

16 minutes ago, gardotd426 said:

No, not really. 

 

HWE updates only come with Ubuntu LTS point releases (so think 18.04.2, 18.04.3, etc). Each edition only gets a handful of point releases throughout its entire lifetime. Ubuntu 18.04 has only had 5. 5. In 3 years. 

 

It's basically the same, or even slower, than just running the latest release, for example going from 18.04 to 18.10 to 19.04 to 19.10 to 20.04 to 20.10 to 21.04, etc. 

 

That's a LONG way off from what you get with a rolling release, especially when it comes to gaming. 

 

Just as importantly, most of the packages are already quite old even on release day for that Ubuntu release. The kernel is usually months old, same with Mesa. You don't get the latest software available at the time of release, you get 2-3 month old (or older) software. 

Thank you, I get it. But if I decide to stick to relatively older titles, and use hardware that has been out for sometime(say like a 1660 ti in 2021), would Pop negatively affect my performance? Will I notice a big difference If I stay off of the bleeding edge of gaming?

 

PS: I hope you don't mind me asking so many questions. I'm just very curious. I don't actually have any new gaming grade hardware.

[gardotd426]

Yes, you likely will still not be getting the best experience.

 

It doesn't matter how old the hardware is, because Linux gaming performance and compatibility is advancing rapidly. A 1660 Ti or 5700 XT is going to perform better on the latest kernel and drivers and other related packages than it is on whatever was out 6 months ago. This has been demonstrated countless times. Hell, Phoronix just did an article showing the 5700 XT drastically improving from just a few months ago, which itself was a drastic improvement from 6 months before that, which was an even more drastic improvement from the performance at launch. 

 

Hell, I have an RTX 3090 and Ryzen 5800X and even since September when the 3090 launched my performance in Shadow of the Tomb Raider has increased like 17% (and its like 20-25% higher than Windows performance) at 1440p. Go look at Hardware Unboxed's latest video showing Shadow of the Tomb Raider on Windows with a 5800X and RTX 3090. They got 141 fps at 1440p. I get 171. I got 152-154 at launch. And that's for a Linux *native* game. The real huge improvements are coming with Windows games running in Wine/Proton. 

[AnirbanG007]

39 minutes ago, gardotd426 said:

Yes, you likely will still not be getting the best experience.

 

It doesn't matter how old the hardware is, because Linux gaming performance and compatibility is advancing rapidly. A 1660 Ti or 5700 XT is going to perform better on the latest kernel and drivers and other related packages than it is on whatever was out 6 months ago. This has been demonstrated countless times. Hell, Phoronix just did an article showing the 5700 XT drastically improving from just a few months ago, which itself was a drastic improvement from 6 months before that, which was an even more drastic improvement from the performance at launch. 

 

Hell, I have an RTX 3090 and Ryzen 5800X and even since September when the 3090 launch my performance in Shadow of the Tomb Raider has increased like 17% (and its like 20-25% higher than Windows performance) at 1440p. Go look at Hardware Unboxed's latest video showing Shadow of the Tomb Raider on Windows with a 5800X and RTX 3090. They got 141 fps at 1440p. I get 171. I got 152-154 at launch. And that's for a Linux *native* game. The real huge improvements are coming with Windows games running in Wine/Proton. 

Thanks for including real performance metrics which I would understand. Now I get it. Manjaro for gaming. End of my curiosity.