From Fedora Project Wiki


Rework Games Lab

Summary

Modernize the Games Lab deliverable by leveraging the latest technologies to offer a high quality gaming and game development experience. This includes a change from Xfce to KDE Plasma to take advantage of the latest and greatest Wayland stack for gaming.

Owner


Current status

Detailed Description

The Games Lab has been on minimal maintenance for some time, with nearly all members having left. There have been many developments in the ecosystem that benefit gamers that could be pulled into this lab to make it a more compelling offering and potential platform of growth for Fedora. In the past ten years, there's been signficant effort around Linux gaming, and the past five years have seen a meteoric rise in adoption of Linux for gaming. In that timeframe, technologies like Wayland and PipeWire have matured and now exclusively offer compelling features (such as HDR and VRR) that are increasingly considered critical to gaming.

As part of this rework, we are:

  • Refreshing Fedora gaming documentation to showcase the new capabilities of Linux gaming, and give references to game playing, emulation, development, installation, ways to improve, etc.
  • Providing an environment to upstream common gaming patches that provide functionality for handhelds and other gaming hardware, that have otherwise stayed within downstreams.
  • Showcasing a strong set of open source games and creation tools to demonstrate what an open gaming platform is capable of.
  • Leveraging the work of the Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop Edition as the basis for building our experience.
  • Emphasizing the role of downstreams (ex. Bazzite) in delivering to the needs of users, by providing a commons for Fedora-based gaming focused downstreams to acheive common goals.

Feedback

Benefit to Fedora

This change will modernize the Fedora Games Lab, bringing the user experience and documentation up to speed as a modern, customized Fedora experience built on the flagship Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop Edition, while showcasing the best of gaming on Linux for users and developers.

Scope

  • Proposal owners:
    • Make new Games Lab definitions in fedora-kiwi-descriptions
    • Improve the state of Plasma Bigscreen
    • Document contemporary aspects of Linux gaming
      • Actually playing games
      • Emulation
      • Game Development
      • Game Installation
      • Issues
  • Other developers: N/A (not needed for this Change)
  • Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)
  • Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)
  • Alignment with the Fedora Strategy: This effort aligns with the objectives to broaden our audience and expand our connections with gaming communities to make Fedora the preferred platform for gaming and game development.

Upgrade/compatibility impact

There will be no change to existing Fedora Games Lab installations, only new installations will get the new experience.

For those who would like to manually switch, there will be documentation on how to do so.

How To Test

Install the refreshed Games Lab and play any of the preloaded games.

User Experience

Users will have a modernized entry point into the Fedora gaming ecosystem, with improved access to information regarding the game experience on Fedora/Linux.

Dependencies

N/A.

Contingency Plan

  • Contingency mechanism: Revert back to pre-Change configuration and defer to the next Fedora release
  • Contingency deadline: Beta Freeze
  • Blocks release? No

Documentation

The current Fedora gaming SIG documentation will be redone and brought to the same standard as the new Lab.

Release Notes

The Fedora Games Lab now uses KDE Plasma as its desktop experience. Existing users who have the previous Xfce-based experience will not be upgraded to this. Users who want to adapt existing installs to the new experience can read the Games Lab documentation for more information.

The Fedora Games Lab now includes a modernized games and game development tools package set.

Gaming on Fedora documentation has been modernized and greatly expanded on.

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