Godot on Linux: App Center, Direct Executable or Steam?

General
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Hi! First time posting here!

Been studying programming for a while now, and wanted to try out Godot for a project. I’ve looked around but haven’t been able to find a good answer for this - although I may not have looked well enough?

Still, I wanted to get a good answer on which - or rather, where I should download Godot.

I am using Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS, and Godot is offered for download on three main platforms:

  • Direct Download from the Godot official website, in the form of a direct executable
  • On the Ubuntu App Center (aka snap store)
  • And on Steam

Before I commit to using either one, I’d like to know if there are any issues I could encounter if using either, or if there are any mayor (or minor even) differences between them??

Despite how easy it would be to install and run, I’ve heard about snap versions of programs giving permission issues sometimes, and the version of Godot on the snap store seems to be one stable version behind - but actively maintained.

Any help or further tips would be appreciated!
PS. I’m sorry if this was posted in the wrong category - since the ‘Help’ category seems more oriented to asking for help in projects itself, I guessed I should play it safe and post it in General instead.

EDIT:
Thanks for the responses! I’ll stick from the official webpage’s direct download executable for now, since Steam has given me some permission and compatibility issues before, just in case.

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Hi and welcome!

Considering snap is both unofficial and lagging behind it’s probably not a great option to use. Both steam and standalone releases are official and you can switch between them easily if desired, so either should be good.

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I’d recommend the Godot official website download. Keep in mind Godot gets updated frequently (every few weeks with dev, beta and RC releases), so being a version behind is actually pretty serious when a new minor version is released literally 4 times a year.

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If you use the Wayland compositor, the editor will be laggy unless you set ‘prefer Wayland’ in the project settings. Also (for me, at least), mouse input on Wayland is broken (for v4.6.2; works in v4.7.b1). Everything still works in X11.

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To be precise, snap is right now one patch version behind, i.e. on 4.6.1. Which isn’t good for sure (it’s been about a month since 4.6.2), but still better than 4.5 series.