ok, confirmed... it took a little massage but steam eventually figured out it already had all the things... i guess it was indexing them

and sure enough

i play my fave Kingdom Two Crowns and zero judder

on X11, yes, i paused my composition to double check and enable X11 and yes

so, kernel 6.8.0-40-generic is the default kernel they put on the Zorin 17.2 live usb

it by default automatically updates to 6.8.0-49 which is a bunch of shit

it was worse with 17 but in fact zorin 17 was the first live usb i found after about a week when i got this AMD RX 7800 XT video card that actually booted and didn't give me CPU rendering

and likewise, many different stock ubuntu and mainline kernels running Steam on my rig give me juddering framerates on a FUCKING pixel art game 2d, with a few layers of antique parallax overlay rendering

but zorin gives me my smooth framerate

just like i got with stupid ubuntu 24... using wayland, which proceeded to crash and break all of my apps, jetbrains IDE, brave browser (which is mostly nearly current chrome engine)

idk what to say

linux kernel since 6.8 totally fucks you if you own radeon

ubuntu fucks you at all

zorin has been a beacon, a lighthouse in a stormy sea of shit that lets you get onto dry land and under some fucking shelter