Canonical Hiring For An Ubuntu Linux Desktop Gaming Product Manager

[Sonadow]

I'm mostly an Ubuntu user, I game on Ubuntu and it could shine with little interest and effort, all it needs is to pack modern Mesa and more recent Kernel IE: Kisak mesa fresh, Liquorix Kernel and modern Firmware package.

I will never understand why the LTS desktop edition of Ubuntu provides with an up-to-date copy of browsers but not Mesa/Kernel/Firmware.

I started toying with Arch after the 32bit debacle in case Canonical wouldn't come to their senses. And guess what? Arch is great and lately I have been thinking to jump ship. Canonical is its own worse enemy.

Oh boo hoo, look at the linux users who boast about being superior to Windows users but don't even know how to build their own kernels, Mesa and retrieve the latest firmware from upstream.

[bemerk]

I don't get this strong need for more recent kernels.
It seems that nvidia drivers are binary modules whose shim can be compiled for many different kernels as a module on demand.
AMD seems to send patches in to the mesa and kernel lists well before they release the hardware.

So far my issues with games were not on the driver but on the translation layer and therefore need more work and funding for wine, crossover and proton.
The only thing that really IS necessary for me : wine ppa , because the project moves a lot faster than ubuntus update.

I welcome this new position offer by Canonical and will watch what comes out of it.
I just think it is a problem that other companies can and should do more about.

[Mike Frett]

I don't have a problem with this. Wanting to improve something is always good.

[9Strike]

Thanks to Valve, the Linux gaming reference plateforme will now become one : SteamOS 3. Period.
Nobody will care if games work or not somewhere else and it’s a good thing. For once in the Linux world, efforts won’t be wasted across a million distros and their million isolated issues.

If I was a Linux gamer, I would just go Arch and that’s it.

Actually not really. The Steam Linux Runtime is what will run all the games - on any distro. Nobody would build their games for Arch, that would be really stupid. The only thing that the distro really affectecs is the graphics drivers (including the kernel part).

And just as a fun fact, the Steam Linux Runtime containers are based on Debian's stable releases, maintained by a Debian Developer hired from Collabora.

So far, Valve seems to care that games work on most Linux distros. And if Canonical hires a guy to make sure they have easy tools for gamers to update their graphics drivers and kernels, there shouldn't be a large difference if you game on Arch or Ubuntu.

[pinguinpc]

The latest 21.10 version came with pretty old stuff. Good luck gaming with that, especially on Wayland.

yeah.....

[Anux]

As an Arch user I don't get why everyone hypes it as a game plattform. The typical linux game is tested under Ubuntu because it has the most reach in the Tux world. I've used Ubuntu for a long time and always had the best out of box experience gaming wise.
In Arch you allways have to fix something, starting with sound problems or getting a library from AUR, etc. Yes a real Arch user fixes those with ease but I'm not sure what benefits the typical gamer gets from Arch. For Steam it probably means independence from a fixed release model, newest hardware support and customizability.

[Charlie68]

I've been an Ubuntu user for years and if I have to look at their announcements, now Ubuntu should be the best OS on the face of the earth. We know how it went ... so these announcements, not new from Canonical, leave me quite indifferent.

[mdedetrich]

Actually not really. The Steam Linux Runtime is what will run all the games - on any distro. Nobody would build their games for Arch, that would be really stupid. The only thing that the distro really affectecs is the graphics drivers (including the kernel part).

Well considering we are dealing with games along with a monolithic kernel (linux) where the graphics are bundled with the kernel itself (assuming AMD here due to steamdeck, NVidia is a different story), this is a really big deal. In fact SteamOS used to run on debian and Valve to Arch precisely because they were having issues running really outdated kernels/packages.

Due to the huge amount of improvements that are only going to be available in the most recent kernels, i.e. the new mutex implementation your best bet will be running Arch or its derivatives.

[Amano]

Well this is not wrong but compared to 10 years ago gamers used to use mostly Ubuntu - now there are a lot more users on Arch, Manjaro...
Steam, Lutris, gamemode and co are way easier to install on rpm based Distros.

Yes, Steam alone is very, very complex to install:

sudo apt install steam

Very complex and hard for some. They need to swap their distro soon for that reason alone.

[Michael]

Michael

Honest question:
Have You considered applying for the position?

Personally, I think You would be a great fit for the position and could use the PTS as the foundation to actually backup the claims that a gaming-optimized Ubuntu build can be an excellent platform for gaming.

Please really do at least consider it!

Also, there are some Canonical employees frequenting this forum, who maybe could recommend You as a potential candidate to their employer.

Would actually be quite happy for You if this would pan out.

So, just in case You decide to give it a shot:

Good luck!

Not for this particular position at Canonical but have and do evaluate other possible opportunities elsewhere...