Following NVIDIA’s announcement back at CES of their GeForce NOW game streaming service coming to Linux as a native desktop application, today’s the day. The GeForce NOW Linux-native build is being published and the review embargo has lifted.
NVIDIA already has been offering GeForce NOW for Valve’s Steam Deck while now they are offering it as a Flatpak build for the typical Linux desktop. While confined to a Flatpak, for now NVIDIA is just “officially” supporting it on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and later. Granted, thanks to Flatpak it should run on other non-Ubuntu distributions too but in terms of the official support and where they are qualifying their builds they are limiting it just to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and later. It’s understandable from the corporate perspective and with there being a free tier to GeForce NOW, you can always try out the Linux build on the distribution of your choice before having to put any money down. At launch the Flatpak build is also just for x86_64 Linux with no AArch64 Linux builds or similar at this time.
Running GeForce NOW on Linux while games are rendered in NVIDIA’s cloud with Blackwell GPUs, you still need to be using a modern GPU with H.264 or H.265 Vulkan Video support NVIDIA isn’t yet supporting Vulkan Video AV1 with GeForce NOW on Linux but just H.264/H.265. If you are using NVIDIA graphics the NVIDIA R580 series or newer is recommended while using the X.Org session. If you are using Intel or AMD Radeon graphics, Mesa 24.2+ is recommended and using the Wayland session.
When you are up and running with GeForce NOW on Linux, you have access to over 4,500 games. The free tier of GeForce NOW provides standard access to the gaming servers and limited session caps for an introductory-level experience. It’s with the performance tier where you can enjoy RTX ray-tracing and 1440p @ 60 FPS performance and up to six hour sessions. With GeForce NOW’s Ultimate tier is where you are running on GeForce RTX 5080 GPU servers with support for up to 5K @ 120 FPS gaming or 1080p @ 360 FPS with up to eight hour gaming sessions in length.
While the native GeForce NOW application for Linux is built as a Flatpak, NVIDIA is not going to be distributing it via Flathub. Those wanting to initially download GeForce NOW for Linux will be able to access the Flatpak via NVIDIA.com beginning today.
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