In the next article we are going to take a look at Gamebuntu. This is an app that tries to make accessing games in Ubuntu easy for newcomers. It does this by offering the ability to install everything a player needs. The program reached version 1.0.6 recently.
This version introduces several new features over previous versions, a complete code rewrite has been done and the user interface has also been revamped making it easier and more accessible for users of all levels. With it, users will be able to install only the things that interest us or we need for our game sessions in Ubuntu, instead of installing a bunch of packages.
General features of Gamebuntu
- Gamebuntu is a free open source project. So far it is recommended for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. The source code can be found available at your gitlab page.
- The interface of this program offers five main sections, which are divided into Game Launchers and Emulators, Streaming, Tools, Kernels and Social:
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- In the section Game Launchers and Emulators, we can find; Steam, Heroic/Epic Games Launcher, PlayOnLinux, RetroArch, Yabause, Stella, GameHub, the Minigalaxy GOG client, and Lutris.
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- The button Streaming it will allow us to install a streaming application. This is the powerful streaming and screen recorder app OBS Studio.
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- on the button Tools we will find the possibilities to easily install other useful applications with which to configure Ubuntu for games. Among them we can find Wine, MangoHud HUD, GOverlay (for configuring HUD), GameMode (Optimize performance for Linux), OpenRGB (for configuring RGB devices), Polychromatic (for configuring Razer devices), Piper (for configuring gaming peripherals), NoiseTorch (for microphone noise suppression), VLC (video player), ProtonUp-Qt (to manage Proton-GE), vKBasalt and DOSBox.
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- on the button Kernel we will find two Kernels available.
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- The option Social includes the ability to install Discord y mumble.
- If you want Gamebuntu developer to add more tools to the app, can suggest them here.
Install Gameubuntu on Ubuntu 20.04
as bin package
In previous versions, this program had an AppImage to be able to use Gamebuntu, but as indicated by the creator, this was replaced with a package in the MPR. In his Gitlab repository he explains how to install it, and the instructions shown there are as follows (it must be said that it is necessary to have git installed to be able to follow them):
wget -qO - 'https://proget.hunterwittenborn.com/debian-feeds/makedeb.pub' | \ gpg --dearmor | \ sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/makedeb-archive-keyring.gpg &> /dev/null echo 'deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/makedeb-archive-keyring.gpg arch=all] https://proget.hunterwittenborn.com/ makedeb main' | \ sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/makedeb.list sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install makedeb
git clone https://mpr.makedeb.org/una-bin.git && cd una-bin makedeb -si && cd .. && rm -rf una-bin
una update; sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/una una install gamebuntu-bin
When the installation is finished, we can look for the program launcher on our computer to start it.
According to the creator, this installation will make the upgrade process more streamlined as you pack and load more and more tools. When necessary, the update only requires the commands:
una update; una upgrade
uninstall
For remove this program of our system, in a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) we can execute:
sudo apt-get remove gamebuntu-bin
As deb package
If you are new to Ubuntu system, you can download the latest version of Gamebuntu from from this link. This zip file contains a .deb file that can be run on any supported Ubuntu version, including Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (which I understand is the recommended version).
In addition to using your web browser to download this package, you can also open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run wget on it as follows:
wget "https://gitlab.com/rswat09/gamebuntu/-/jobs/artifacts/main/download?job=build" -O artifacts.zip
The next step to follow will be unzip the file we just downloaded. To do this we have to go to the folder in which we have saved the zip file:
unzip artifacts.zip
Once we have decompressed the package, we get into the folder that was just created (distance call). then we can install it by running in terminal:
sudo dpkg -i gamebuntu*.deb
After installation we can search for the program launcher in our system to start it.
uninstall
For remove program installed as DEB package, in a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) it is only necessary to write:
sudo apt remove gamebuntu
This tool has been designed thinking of making life easier for users. With her it will be easy to install in just a few clicks all the necessary software and libraries to create your own gaming setup on Ubuntu.