Okay, so. I installed Steam in Ubuntu 10.04. (crosspost from Gaming Group)

[Occulus]

I think I did everything right. Maybe. It runs, and installs games, and they actually play (I even have the tray icon, woohoo)! But there's a problem.... the games are laggy as hell.

Now, I've only tried two games so far: Plants vs. Zombies and Puzzle Quest: Galactrix. Both games stutter horribly, and there are a couple other issues as well. Frankly, I'm just happy to get them running at all! But I would like to get them running smoothly, or at least smoother than they do at the moment.

Eventually, I'd like to get everything I actually play installed on my Ubuntu partition and remove them from Windows. I know that's very likely not going to be possible, but I really would like to play Left 4 Dead 2 (for example) in Ubuntu.

I've tried turning off Compiz, but that didn't make any measurable difference. I don't believe I'm using the latest NV drivers, but I'm loathe to update them, as getting the drivers running in Ubuntu 10 was a saga all by itself, and one I do not care to repeat.

Does anyone have any advice? I did come across one post online during my research that stated that Steam will be linux-native for Portal 2 (joy!!!), but as of now, everything's being done through WINE and Winetricks.

Anyone have any ideas?

[RoyGBiv]

1. Just a general observation ...

I haven't messed with Steam, so I have no specific advice there.

But, if what you're describing is the way things work, then Steam is no more than a front-end layer on top of wine, so the problem may be with how your application is performing under wine.

That is usually very individual to the particular game. Often it's as simple as changing some simple thing in a config file.

I would suggest going to the wine forums and looking for issues related to those particular games.

Also, updating the drivers may well be necessary.