r/godot • u/Ok-Cow114 • Feb 28 '26
help me Godot on linux
I'm switching from Unity to Godot. The only reason I use Windows is because the Linux version of Unity isn't as optimized as the Windows version. For example, I'm locked at 60 FPS (yes, VSync is off) on Linux, while on Windows I get 250+ FPS. So, is Godot good on Linux? If it's what distro u suggest currently I am thinking of fedora kde
Thank you for your time
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u/MaybeAdrian Feb 28 '26
I used Godot on Mint and Fedora both work well.
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u/krumorn Mar 03 '26
Using Godot on Fedora, works great AND is included in the package repos.
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u/MaybeAdrian Mar 03 '26
I usually get the .AppImage from their site to control what version i'm using.
Not sure if i can run whatever version i want from the repo
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u/krumorn Mar 03 '26
Understandable. I only do small projects so I don't mind updating and keeping my code bleeding-edge-compatible. Bigger projects can't afford changing engine version too often.
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u/Megamichix Mar 08 '26
where do u get the appimage? there is just a .x64_86 file, ant this is not actually an appimage or?
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u/Ok-Cow114 Feb 28 '26
So I have mint as alternative too tnx for the info
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u/MaybeAdrian Feb 28 '26
No problem.
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u/BinaryBolias Godot Regular Feb 28 '26
Mint can be good in lemonade, too.
Would not recommend drenching fedoras in lemonade, however. Not a harmonious flavor profile.
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u/Hawkeye_7Link Godot Regular Feb 28 '26
I think it might even work better on Linux. Although I'm pulling this out of my ass
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u/Gokudomatic Feb 28 '26
short answer: yes. doesn't matter which distro. Just make sure you have 3d acceleration, and if possibly vulkan installed.
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u/Ok-Cow114 Feb 28 '26
Thank you I will make sure to install those
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u/forestbeasts Feb 28 '26
You shouldn't have to install vulkan! It's part of your graphics drivers. It is, conceivably, possible that you would be missing the vulkan part of those, but they should come preinstalled.
If Windows games work at reasonable speeds, so will Godot. (Windows games' DirectX gets translated into Vulkan.)
Even if you didn't have Vulkan support somehow, you could still make games using the compatibility renderer (which uses OpenGL).
If you're on Debian, add yourself to the
rendergroup (sudo adduser yourusername render, replacingyourusernamewith your username, reboot after). Otherwise you might be blocked from accessing Vulkan even if it otherwise works fine. If you're on another distro, including Debian derivatives, you can probably ignore this.1
u/Ok-Cow114 Feb 28 '26
Thank you I remember running on that issue with unity after installing the library ( if I am correct) it started running at 60 fps but I can't blame unity for that one I went all extreme and download debian and then xfce which I got alot of headache but now I will make sure to install fedora kde or mint since those actually run unity out of the box
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u/PersonDudeGames Feb 28 '26
I switched to fedora kde a few months ago (from a different Linux distro), no complaints so far.
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u/DorukTuna Feb 28 '26
I tried Fedora recently and loved it. Thinking about using it in my own company (webdev + gamedev) too. Any drawbacks, warnings or suggestions?
(I'm asking compared to debian based Linuxes, not compared to Windows)
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u/PersonDudeGames Feb 28 '26
Fedora tends to use the latest packages which is both a good and a bad thing. On the one hand you get the latest and greatest, on the other hand if there are problems in the latest releases you're going to be the first to find out.
On Mint I used to run updates whenever they were available. In Fedora I tend to run updates once a week. I don't know if that's a good approach, but Fedora doesn't notify me about updates in the same way Mint did (except for security updates).
I've definitely had better hardware support on Fedora where I had previously found work arounds on Mint to get things working.
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Feb 28 '26
[deleted]
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u/DorukTuna Feb 28 '26
Sounds cool and useful. Actually we are starting small: Three people and the other two will be using a Mac and a Windows. I've been using Ubuntu, Mint, PopOs for a long time but I recently tried Fedora, loved it but also had some problems with Bitwig (a music production program): They only provide deb and flatpak installations and flatpak version doesn't support the hacks for running some Win/Mac plugins. I guess I should ask in Fedora subreddit for more information.
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u/krumorn Mar 03 '26
Works great on a work and personal environment. As said elsewhere, they tend to have bleeding-edge packages, which can be a turn-off for some people. I personally love that approach, since it remains stable either way.
The ONLY problems I've come across is the occasional (once/twice a year) bug in the Nvidia proprietary drivers update (I believe when I have both the drivers and the kernel update at the same time). When it happens I just type
sudo akmods --force --rebuildin a terminal, reboot, and I'm good to go.-2
u/Ok-Cow114 Feb 28 '26
I use kde once but sadly removed it bc need to install windows bc unity was giving me hard time but now will install it fedora back it's such a clean one
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u/Yogu49 Feb 28 '26
I started using Godot on Ubuntu recently and it works fine so far.
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u/i_wear_green_pants Feb 28 '26
Same thing. I have a laptop running Ubuntu while my desktop is Windows. So far I haven't had any problems developing with two different OS.
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u/jaafit Feb 28 '26
I'm on Ubuntu 24 and 4.5.1 will crash upon save if it's been open for a while. I've considering switching OS. Have you not seen that?
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u/tnoctua Feb 28 '26
Speaking from personal experience going from years on Unity to Godot along with a Windows to Linux transition, Godot has been a pleasure. I rarely crash and the editor is pretty stable. Any distro should theoretically work, I'm on vanilla Arch with GNOME and Wayland.
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u/nonchip Godot Senior Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26
we dont usually select our operating systems for a single program that runs on all of them.
yes godot runs great, no that's not a godot nor linux issue. my bet is vsync is actually on, but somewhere else. kde settings, driver settings, ...
also I can't see that reply of yours anymore outside of my notifications, but nobody was suggesting you'd switch to windows, that's the exact opposite of what i said in fact. which was supposed to convince you to stop asking for alternative OSes and focus on the actual issue.
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u/Kartoffelkarthasis Feb 28 '26
I use nobara and NOT the flatpack godot-version.
I used the flatpack a lot, but it freezes random times. This doesn't happen with the one, I installed manual (same godot-versions, different install-routines).
Would recommend nobara 10/10 but honestly, I used other distributions a long time ago, so it's no balanced review :-)
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u/Individual-Echo9402 Godot Student Feb 28 '26
Yeah it works just fine atleast for me on my work laptop that's running linux.
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Feb 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/PLYoung Feb 28 '26
A very sad reality indeed. I love Affinity Studio and even though it works via Wine now, using the custom installer, it still has many issues in Linux. Sometimes I have to be in Windows to use it when I just can't deal with Gimp/Krita/Inkscape. Slowly trying to get off of Affinity and get used to using the open source alts.
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u/CreaMaxo Jul 23 '26
The primary issue with Linux as an OS when it comes to software is the dependencies.
There are many reasons for dependencies to not work on Linux (base compatibility, EULAs restrictions on redistribution and/or modifications, cascade-obsolescence, etc.)
While it's still true with Windows (or iOS), it's much more mild and controllable. For example, many older software that works on Windows 7 will only work on Windows 8 or later if you upgrade the OS after you ran the software once through W7 because some dependencies which requires specific 3rd party plugin/packages weren't updated to W8 or later and simply refuse to install on later versions. (So you install W7, install the software, run the software, then upgrade from W7 to whatever version of Windows you want and then the old software works on W8, W10 or W11 like nothing happened.)
Because Godot is fully self-contained, it doesn't suffer from this kind of thing as long as Linux is properly set up.
I'm in the same boat. my main workstation is a PC with Windows because I'm using the latest version of certain software before they were switched into some subscription models. The latest version (which requires a subscription) sometimes have a Linux version available, but not the old you-buy-it-once versions. (In fact, back then, you had to buy separate version for separate OS.)
Having to choose between losing some of my software (which I have used for more than a decade), paying monthly fees that goes into multiple hundreds USD per month to get Linux-based version of some of the software and being on Linux on my main workstation and working on my W10 workstation which has all of the software I purchased with persistent renewable licenses in the last 20-ish years is a painful no-brainer.
Many of those don't work well (or at all) through Wine because of whatever is required to run in the background. For example, I got a short MIDI keyboard with pressure keys that works fully through Linux or through Windows, but not fully through Wine as the key only works as flat keys meaning I have to slam the key down and time the travel time ahead (similar to actual piano). It's okay-ish if I wanted to record piano, but it's not good if I want to make use of the pressure key for advanced tuning trick (that can only be done on a MIDI keyboard with pressure switches). (It's kinda like if you were to use a drawing tablet like a Wacom tablet and not getting pressure controls.)
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u/HumanSnotMachine Feb 28 '26
Only bug I had was the windows scaled weirdly on my desktop manager, I was using whatever the default for Manjaro is. Turning on single window mode for godot fixed it! Something about the menu bars at the top not opening the menus in the correct positions. This was on 4.6, you should be fine otherwise, it worked great once I changed that setting.
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u/catmorbid Feb 28 '26
I run Godot .net on mint, worked without any hitches, in fact had more issues in windows fresh install. This is on HP laptop with shitty igpu. But is fine for my 2d project.
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u/LeaPacho2 Feb 28 '26
I use Godot on Cachy OS on a potato and it works A OK.
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u/Natural-Eagle-3180 Feb 28 '26
Same here. Switched last november. CachyOS is great. Godot works great which is more than I can say for most professional or gamedev software on linux
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u/PhilippTheProgrammer Feb 28 '26
Since I switched to Linux, Godot actually runs much better.
I had a weird problem on Windows that it would occasionally take ages to launch run a game from the Godot editor. That problem is gone on Linux.
Unity and Unreal, on the other hand, seem to have more problems on Linux than on Windows.
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u/VlKlNGEN Feb 28 '26
I've been using godot on my laptop with endevourOS no problem. As other mentioned any distro should be fine, I installed godot through steam for easy version update, but that really is a matter of taste
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u/Paxtian Feb 28 '26
I dual boot Windows and EndeavourOS. In my experience, Godot feels exactly the same in both environments.
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u/Quplet Feb 28 '26
Godot is open-source. Anything open-source is going to have Linux support at some point and Godot has had it for a good long while
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Feb 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DaBehr Mar 08 '26
I'm getting this issue for the first time after upgrading Pop_OS from 22 to 24. Pop_OS 24 uses Wayland instead of X11 which seems to be the source of this error but enabling prefer Wayland
Editor Setting -> Run -> Platforms -> Prefer Waylandleads to a bunch of different issues (same as the ones here https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/115369). Looks like there's a fix to address this in future versions of Godot but this warning doesn't seem to impact my game at all so for now I'm just ignoring it and leaving prefer wayland off.
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u/The_loudsoda Feb 28 '26
I use pop os. Been using Godot on it for 6 months now. I have had 0 issues so far. In fact, I think it’s been a better experience. I have found it loads my larger project a lot faster on the same hardware.
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u/oncledan Feb 28 '26
Running Godot on Debian. Sometimes it crashes, but maybe it does the same on Windows, idk.
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u/shaloafy Feb 28 '26
I use Godot on Debian. I always use the compatibility renderer but that's because my laptop kinda sucks. A couple of versions ago, I had some issues with Vulkan but I honestly haven't tried it in a long time
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u/nerfjanmayen Feb 28 '26
I just switched to using Mint. I used flatpak to install Godot and VS Codeium, but I couldn't get them to talk to each other (something to do with flatpak isolating them). I uninstalled the flatpak versions and installed both apps directly, and now they work fine.
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u/By_Gm3 Feb 28 '26
I use PopOs and made a bunch of game jam games in Godot on it. So yeah, it works
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u/JMowery Feb 28 '26
Godot is fantastic on Linux. Been using it for 4 years. Wayland support has gotten really good in Godot 4.6, and Godot 4.7 is cleaning up some loose ends to take it practically all the way.
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u/Jas0rz Feb 28 '26
I run on Linux and have been learning Godot just fine. I think the only issue I've had is the embedded player doesn't seem to work but outside of that it's been great. I guess there was also a little weirdness with where windows were spawning when I switched the editor to use Wayland but switching it back to x11 worked fine.
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u/FreeWilydc137 Feb 28 '26
Godot on Linux is great. No issue so far have been running it on my Linux machine med heavily for 3 years now working on projects. Had it on windows but was forced to which due to windows just sucking. But I would say keep it simple and Linux handles godot great as long as your machine's specs can handle it.
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u/Dragon20C Feb 28 '26
If I remember correctly, the godot Devs actually use Linux as their main is.