News, Tutorials, Howtos for Ubuntu Linux
RetroArch, the popular free open-source front-end for emulators and game engines, released version 1.20.0 a few days ago.
The new release added illuminance sensor support for Linux users. Meaning you can play Boktai with real light, just as intended. While, it’s also working on sunlight and camera support.
Want to beatify your Steam app window in Ubuntu or other Linux. Here’s a free open-source project to do the job in GNOME.
It’s Adwaita for Steam, a skin to make Steam look more like a native GNOME app. With it, the title and tool bars will be merged into a compact GNOME Client-Side Decoration style header bar.
Along with rounded window corners extension, it will look just like a native app.
Steam with Adwaita skin
Dolphin, the popular free open-source GameCube and Wii emulator, released new 2412 version today!
The game emulator supported Linux previously through an official Ubuntu PPA, however discontinued! In the new release, it added back official Linux support through Flatpak package, which works in most Linux distributions, through runs in sandbox.
This tutorial shows how to install and play the popular Minecraft sandbox game in Ubuntu 24.04, Ubuntu 22.04, Linux Mint 21/22, and their based systems.
Minecraft has different editions, including Java, Bedrock, Legends, and Dungeons, as well as the discontinued Pi edition.
So far, only Minecraft Java edition runs natively in Linux. User can however install and play the Bedrock and Pi editions through sandbox environments, though they are unofficial and have limitations.
Want to see frames per second (FPS), as well as CPU, GPU, RAM usage in your game screen? Here’s how to do the job in Debian, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint based systems.
Most Linux distributions include a free open-source mangohud package in their system repositories. Which, allows to add a Vulkan and OpenGL overlay for monitoring FPS, temperatures, CPU/GPU load and more while gaming.
And, here’s how to install and configure mangohud for gaming in Debian/Ubuntu based systems.
This tutorial shows how to install and setup RetroArch (v1.20 updated) to play classic video games, including Arcade, Atari, Commodore, Nintendo, Sony Playstation games, in Ubuntu PC or laptop.
RetroArch is a free open-source cross-platform front-end for emulators, game engines, media players, and other applications. It’s the reference frontend for the libretro API, that offers several uncommon technical features, such as multi-pass shader support, real-time rewinding, and video recording.
This tutorial shows how to install the latest dolphin emulator (2412 updated) through either Flatpak or PPA repository in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, and Ubuntu 24.04.
It’s been 8 years since the latest major 5.0 release series. The Nintendo video game console emulator finally announced Dolphin 2407, which uses new date-based versioning scheme. 2407 means version released in July of 2024.
According to the announcement, it adopts a rolling release cycle, and will roll out new releases every few months. The development releases will have sub-numbers, for example, Dolphin 2407-144 means dev build with 144 commits after 2407. And, hotfix releases will have the addition of a suffix, so it can be Dolphin 2407a.
Ubuntu has a few offline games out-of-the-box. Now, the developer team is going to remove them from the installer in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.
Since Ubuntu 23.10, Ubuntu Desktop no longer provides ‘Minimal installation‘ option in the installer. Instead, it’s “re-named” to “Default installation” with just the essentials, web browser and basic utilities. User can choose “Full installation” option for the office, media player, games, and other app packages that’s previously installed by default in old Ubuntu releases.
Just a few days ago, the desktop team proposed to remove the games from full installation, then made the decision with wider support.
Meaning that the game packages may be completely removed from the iso image, though they are still available to install in Ubuntu Software (App Center).
Play Final Fantasy XIV Online in Linux? There’s a custom launcher for the game for better experience!
It’s XIVLauncher, a free and open-source launcher that provides a customized WINE version for perfect compatibility with FFXIV.
Since the original launcher is slow and cannot save your password, XIVLauncher provides a faster experience, better Linux integration, as well as following QoL features:
Got GameBoy, GameBoy Advance, or GameBoy Color ROMs? It’s easy to play them in your Linux PC through VBA-M emulator.
There are quite a few game emulators for Linux. You can use PPSSPP to run PSP games, and RetroArch for multiple consoles support. For Nintendo Game Boy and Game Boy Advance, VBA-M is a good choice.
VBA-M, stands for VisualBoyAdvance-M, is the continued development of the now inactive VisualBoy Advance project, with many improvements from various forks.
It’s a free open-source emulator app that included in system repositories for many Linux, including Fedora, Arch, Manjaro, and so forth.
