Hey everyone! I’m a Software Development student and I primarily use Ubuntu 25.04 for my coding projects, along with Windows 11 for gaming. I was curious about how Red Dead Redemption 2 would perform on Ubuntu using the Nvidia 570 drivers and X11 since Wayland has been freezing for me during heavy loads. I installed RDR2 from Steam and ran some benchmarks. I know a bit about Proton and I’ve got some Linux gaming experience thanks to my Steam Deck, but I also realize Ubuntu isn’t viewed as the go-to gaming distro.
So, I’m gaming on an Aorus 15 9kf laptop equipped with an i5 12500h processor, an RTX 4060 Mobile GPU, and 16GB of DDR5 4800MHz RAM. I was using an external monitor and rendering at 1440p. I tweaked the game settings to be optimized and removed DLSS during the tests. The results? On Windows, I averaged about 65.47 fps while on Ubuntu I got 67.59 fps. So, Linux had the edge with FPS! Plus, the frame rates on Ubuntu rarely dropped below 60fps, while on Windows I noticed some fluctuations, dipping down to 52fps occasionally under heavy load. What do you all think? I’ve made no special adjustments to Ubuntu since I mainly use it for development, and I used the .deb version of Steam for this.
2 Answers
You’re right, RDR2 actually has native Vulkan support which is why it might perform better on Linux than you expected! It’s great because Linux can run the game almost natively while only translating some calls from the Windows APIs. This is also true for games like Doom Eternal that support Vulkan, so you’re in good company with your findings!
I haven’t had any issues with Wayland on version 25.04. If you’ve recently upgraded from an older version, I’d recommend doing a clean install instead. Over the years, I’ve found that sometimes certain bugs can only be fixed by starting fresh, even though Ubuntu upgrades usually go smoothly.
Unfortunately, I already did a clean install. It seems like most users are doing fine with 25.04 and the Nvidia drivers, so I might just be experiencing an edge case.
I didn’t know that! It’s so cool that Vulkan makes things smoother on Linux, especially with Nvidia drivers improving lately.