Canonical Continues Snap'ing Up Linux Gaming For Ubuntu

In addition to continued improvements to its Steam Snap for running that gaming client within Canonical's sandboxed confines, the latest Linux gaming component to receive similar treatment is now Feral Interactive's GameMode.

In addition to adding mesa-utils to their Steam Snap to assist in testing/debugging graphics driver issues, it looks like Canonical wants more of the Ubuntu gaming ecosystem also operating within Snaps as their preferred app distribution and sandboxing tech.

The latest to report on is a Canonical engineer working on a GameMode Snap. GameMode is Feral's daemon for being able to automatically set the CPU frequency scaling governor to performance mode among other system tuning dynamically when games are launched and restoring them to the prior defaults after exiting games.

GameMode has already supported operating within a Flatpak containerized environment while now they are working on Ubuntu to transition it to a Snap. GameMode has been available on Ubuntu for a while now as a Debian package and even installed by default.

This is currently "preliminary" Snap support for GameMode while it will be interesting to see if this is another package they transition from DEB to Snap in a future Ubuntu release. Canonical has been indicating they are wanting to improve the Linux gaming experience on Ubuntu (and hiring for it) and ensure its a dominant platform for Linux gaming, but frankly not sure how many gamers are interested in Snap versus other areas of opportunity like system optimizations, making it easier running more bleeding edge drivers, etc. We'll see how these ongoing Linux gaming improvements for Ubuntu pan out moving forward.