Wish you could wring every single drop of performance from your computer when gaming on Linux?

Well, a new open source tool from games porting company Feral Interactive wants to help you do exactly that.

‘GameMode lets games optimize system performance on demand.’

Say hello to GameMode.

GameMode is all about performance

Launched today, ‘GameMode’ is a small daemon/lib combo for Linux that allows games to temporarily request your CPU’s frequency scaling governor is set to “performance mode“.

Or, to put it another way, GameMode lets games optimize system performance on demand.

Feral say this small tweak lets Linux users ‘get the best performance out of their games’.

“GameMode was designed primarily as a stop-gap solution to problems with the Intel and AMD CPU power save or ondemand governors, but is intended to be expanded beyond just CPU governor states, as there are a wealth of automation tasks one might want to apply,” Feral explain on the Github repo for GameMode.

As an open-source tool community developers will be free to build on and integrate other performance variables, like, er, …Well I’m sure someone will think of something!

Doesn’t Ship by Default

GameMode isn’t going to ship as part of games releases by the company. Rather, the tool is something you need to choose to install yourself (as it relies on systemd it will work on recent versions of Ubuntu with minimal fuss).

Installing the tool isn’t for the feint of heart; you need to be build system savvy to get it up and running.

But once it is installed on your system the tool should work with all future games from the company, like the upcoming Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration Linux release.

You’ll find all the information you need on the Github repo page. It’s there that you’ll want to file any issues you encounter while using it.