Intel and Linux Stardew Performance Guide

[thmtrxhsu]

So for a while it seemed, the Linux version of game under-performed compared to the windows versions particularly with SMAPI and over one hundred mods.
However, I have demystified the issue.

The Linux version is designed to work with Ubuntu. However not all Buntus are created equally. Xubuntu, Lubuntu and the other unofficial buntus will not perform as well as the standard Ubuntu, but the standard Ubuntu also calls for (Unofficially) a dedicated GPU; Intel graphics don't count. This begs the question, what do you do if you have a netbook with 4GB of ram, Intel 600 UHD graphics and 32 GB emmc? The solution is Linux Lite 5.0. So that or Ubuntu 20.04 is strongly recommended. Another thing, Intel graphics suck especially on Linux regardless of the version of MESA you use. Remember MESA is open source, and if you recall there is a huge performance boost going from Nouveau drivers (open source Nvidia) to proprietary Nvidia drivers; mostly apparent in games. So if you have Intel graphics, Windows 10 is strongly recommended with latest proprietary Intel graphics drivers.

But for those with Intel graphics that still want to stick it out with Linux, definitely use one of the two distros above. You'll experience plenty of bugs and performance drop offs if you use any other variant of Ubuntu or Debian.

With that being said, you also need to be using kernel 5.4 or newer and have the microcode packages removed (terrible combination with 5.4, but 5.4 performance better than 4.19 without microcode). These patch flaws in Intel and AMD cpus, but browsers are protected now days and no home user cares about local computer take overs or attacks. With proper iptable configuration you can null and void all cyber attemps at these exploits. Then SMAPI of, course, requires mono to be installed, so follow the instructions on web site and install mono-complete. Now because we are on Linux any graphic configuration applet needs to be configured for maximum performance; screw quality. If you are using something like Geforce 9400M the 340 series driver is what you need to use, and all proprietary nvidia drivers come with a GPU configuration applet. If you have a "real" nvidia GPU, you'll want to use something later...preferably near a mature series (390.99, the 99 means the 390 series is mature) that first supports your GPU for the purpose of stardew that is. Of course, if you are also going to be playing some big IPs and recent ones than the latest nvidia driver is the best unless you have a piece of junk like 9400M in which case you stick with 340...and all in all this piece of chunk kicks Intel's UHD 600 ass any day regardless of the mesa version. That being said, you'll want to add the ppa "sudo add-apt-repository ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers" for latest all open source drivers i.e., mesa, OR "sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa" for closed source drivers (i.e., Nvidia, AMD). Of course, because Intel Graphics are so terrible on Linux you absolutely require the latest mesa version 20.3 minimum. And you'll have to find a way to configure it for maximum performance because it intrinsically sucks.

There's a lof of bugs to experience with the game if you deviate from the the two distros above. The smallest thing like a low latency kernel could send the game performance down the shoot. Remember games designed for linux are designed around the main kernel of the linux distro they official support. With the above guidance your linux stardew experience should be much better.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

In my experience, the oibaf drivers suck really bad. Any distro based on Ubuntu 20 (such as Mint 20) has pretty good MESA drivers right out of the box. No additional driver installation is necessary. And the oibaf drivers aren't really all that good, IMO. You get spammed with multiple updates daily, but it doesn't have any sort of actual performance impact whatsoever. And it's also a royal pain in the rear to get rid of the oibaf drivers. What it says on the instructions is to use "ppa-purge" to revert the drivers back... however when I tried using it I got like two hundred plus errors and rather than risk bricking my system, I just told it to abort.

Integrated graphics APU's have always been a problem for Linux, especially Intel's hot garbage. Any AMD APU's should be covered by the MESA drivers that come with your distro natively, no PPA's necessary. And of course any dedicated GPU is going to be just fine because Nvidia now supports Linux and AMD's drivers are open-sourced. Just update to a modern distro, and you should be golden, obviating virtually all of these problems entirely.

Bluntly, if you're using an APU, you probably aren't all that concerned about performance, and even an older Intel APU is going to be good enough to get stable performance from a game like Stardew Valley anyway, even with the inefficiencies involved. The only difference between vanilla and modded SDV is going to be RAM, not your graphics anyway. And most laptops tend to skimp on RAM to keep costs down, so unless you've got 8GB RAM in your system, yea... having over 100 mods installed is gonna chug. Not because your graphics is acting up or has bad drivers, but because you're running yourself out of available RAM.

Basically, you went down a rabbit hole that got filled in a couple of years ago. None of these issues are relevant with modern distros (including non-Debian distros like Arch). In my experience, having run SDV on Linux since back before the official Linux release came out and I was running it on WINE, on several different distros, none of these things are actually problems, especially not in the past couple of years. I think you've been reading too many out of date support articles.