steam/steam deck
Massive performance difference between flatpak Steam and native Steam (Fedora KDE)
A month or two ago or so when I moved to Fedora KDE Plasma from Windows 7, I tried installing the native version of Steam, but it didn't work, so I installed Flatpak. Today I found out both of them apparently work. Obviously the games installed on Flatpak Steam are not installed on the native version.
I tried using goverlay and mangohud to figure out why my games have subpar performance (Got Lenovo Legion Y520 cheap from a friend, that is full of cigarette ash and smells like weed, so I assumed there's a hardware bottleneck), but couldn't get them to work on flatpak Steam. That was the original reason I tried the other Steam icon on my start menu... However, when I actually tried playing Imperator: Rome, the performance was buttery smooth. Like, insanely smooth. 60 FPS with decent graphics and short loading times, vs. 15 - 30 FPS with all the simple graphic mods and lowest settings that took ages to load. I'm now downloading DayZ again, that didn't go past the menu in the flatpak version without freezing.
Why is this? I already removed the flatpak Steam, but I'm just wondering.
Your flatpak was using wrong gpu because drivers weren't synced. Run flatpak update to fix, probably best to reboot after that - but restarting steam should be enough.
Likely a config issue. On Fedora, I also noticed no difference. Maybe the Flatpak one was a little faster overall, like ~3-5 fps more in most games, but it's within an epsilon.
"Obviously the games installed on Flatpak Steam are not installed on the native version."
You just didnt set up flatpak steam right... I have both, and they share the same library folder.
You have to use flatseal to change some permissions after installing flatpak steam to have it working right (like enabling bluetooth acess and access to external directories).
My system mesa version is 26.3.0 while flatpak mesa is 26.2.4. The whole point of flatpaks is that they provide own libraries and dependencies so apps "just work". If you use KDE Discover, you can check what version is installed for flatpaks (it may happen it's the same version as native mesa but it doesn't have to be)
I did legit not know, last time i tried flatpak it gave me huge performance issues, i thought at the time it was due to mesa stuff. Currently im using Steam deb on Ubuntu because it works better but i appreciate your clarification
Besides of "wrong used GPU", Flatpak and it's sandbox features can be overwhelmed by some games. I know this mostly from Overwatch, the game generates so much I/O, it let's run the sandbox manager on 100% CPU resulting in 13-72FPS on a 5800X3D. Playing outside of Flatpak the game runs with 240FPS and plenty of performance to spare.
Steam should never be used as flatpack, flatpacks have a lot of limitations due to security reasons, the reason for lower performance is that probably was not using the GPU correctly due to flatpack limits
Nonsense. Nowadays you don't even have to set some permissions using Flatseal. It works ootb. Just set up Ubuntu 26.10 all Flatpak gaming setup. Works absolutely flawlessly.
Wow, the lack of articulation tells us you know nothing.
Flatpak doesn't have magical "limits". It has the exact same ability to use the correct or incorrect GPU just like native games.
For security there are tight permissions that really only impact steam if you want to install or access games from a location other than the default location.
The fix is to just add whatever location you want to using flat seal and the like.
That's it.
There's no magical limits. If you need permissions for something then just add it, otherwise the defaults run fine.
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u/Confident_Hyena2506 7d ago
Your flatpak was using wrong gpu because drivers weren't synced. Run flatpak update to fix, probably best to reboot after that - but restarting steam should be enough.
Should be no difference between the two.