Canonical Hiring For An Ubuntu Linux Desktop Gaming Product Manager

Canonical is looking to capitalize on the renewed interest around Linux gaming and the raised prospects thanks to Valve's Steam Play allowing a growing number of compelling Windows games becoming playable on Linux.

Canonical is now hiring for a new role of a Desktop Gaming Product Manager for Ubuntu. Canonical wants to "make Ubuntu the best Linux desktop for gaming. We work with partners in the silicon world to ensure the latest graphics drivers and tweaks are built-in for optimal frame rates and latency, as well as with partners in the gaming industry to ensure that mechanisms such as anti-cheat capabilities are available to ensure fairness and product availability."

Canonical's Desktop Gaming Product Manager will lead desktop graphics driver choices around Ubuntu, work on partnerships with GPU vendors and other IHVs/ISVs, convey the Ubuntu gaming story to users, and work on other engineering design and development tasks.

More details for those curious about the job posting via canonical.com/careers.

It will be interesting to see if this ambition ends up resulting in Ubuntu pushing down more liberal stable release updates to its users such as around new Linux kernel and Mesa versions in order to improve the GPU/gaming experience or whether it will still be left to PPAs, etc. Nevertheless if they are trying to take on Linux gaming seriously it will be interesting to see what changes end up in the distribution.