How to optimize
Fedora Startup and Games

A practical guide to improve your experience with Fedora Linux optimizing your startup times and gaming performance.

This guide applies for both KDE and Gnome flavors of Fedora Linux including versions Fedora 36, Fedora 37, Fedora 38, Fedora 39 and Fedora 40. Specially built for desktop users including those who play on Linux through Steam Proton, Native Games or via launchers like Lutris.

Startup optimization

We will start disabling some stuff that is not required for a desktop use case:

1. Optimize startup by masking systemd-udev-settle:

   sudo systemctl mask systemd-udev-settle
   

   Why disable this? More info

2. Optimize startup by disabling NetworkManager-wait-online.service:

   sudo systemctl disable NetworkManager-wait-online.service
   

   Why disable this? More info

3. For KDE: disable check for updates at startup.

   sudo mkdir /etc/xdg/autostart.disabled
   sudo mv /etc/xdg/autostart/org.kde.discover.notifier.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart.disabled/org.kde.discover.notifier.desktop
   

   You may need to re-apply this commands after some system updates that restore some KDE settings to defaults.

   In case that you’ve wanted to go back, just restore the files from the backup directory autostart.disabled.

Gaming optimization

• Start games using GameMode:

  • Edit the Steam launch options for the game:

    gamemoderun %command%
    

  • For others, you must manually request GameMode when running the game. This can be done by launching the game through gamemoderun:

    gamemoderun ./game
    

  • For games/launchers which integrate GameMode support (like Lutris) simply running the game will automatically activate GameMode. More info.

• On KDE Plasma X11, fullscreen games may feel less responsive if the compositor stays active. If you notice stutter or extra input latency, try disabling the Compositor while gaming:

  

  You can toggle compositing back on with Shift + Alt + F12, or install the KWin script Autocomposer to handle it automatically for fullscreen apps. This tweak is mainly relevant on X11; on Wayland, the compositor is part of the session and is not disabled the same way.

Extra tips

• Install additional codecs:

  sudo dnf groupupdate multimedia --setop="install_weak_deps=False" --exclude=PackageKit-gstreamer-plugin
  sudo dnf groupupdate sound-and-video
  

  More info

• Install wmv codecs to play Windows Media Videos on Fedora:

  sudo dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
  
  # Install fedy copr repository
  sudo dnf copr enable kwizart/fedy
  
  # Install fedy
  sudo dnf install fedy -y
  

  Type fedy on your terminal and go to utilities then install Multimedia codecs.

  Fedy Repository

• On KDE: Enable Dolphin video previews:

  sudo dnf install ffmpegthumbs
  

  To see correctly all video previews, it is also suggested to install these packages:

  sudo dnf install vlc vlc-plugin-gstreamer vlc-plugin-ffmpeg
  

• On KDE: Disable calendar reminder:

  

  cp /etc/xdg/autostart/org.kde.kalendarac.desktop ~/.config/autostart
  

  Open the file ~/.config/autostart and modify it, replacing this line:

  X-KDE-autostart-condition=kalendaracrc:General:Autostart:true
  

  With the following line:

  X-KDE-autostart-condition=kalendaracrc:General:Autostart:false
  

  More info.

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