I used one of the i5 CPUs with HD2500 integrated graphics in my main gaming PC for several years, up until only about 3-4 years ago. The performance was OK for me, but I paired it with a much newer, discrete GPU. Those integrated graphics are really going to hold you back. In games from 2012-2014 (around when those CPUs came out), they average 20-40 fps on lowest settings.

You don’t have to use Steam, but it is a very painless way to play games that you own on Steam. I use Lutris for my non-Steam Windows games. It works well on my main gaming PC, but I often have issues with it on my laptops which have older integrated graphics, due to lack of Vulkan support, which Lutris seems to insist upon even when the software can use OpenGL.

Stardew Valley is my jam right now.

Slay the Spire

Do I have to use steam?

No, but it’s a relatively-plug-and-play way to get access to a lot of commercial games.

GOG.com is another alternative, and there are a few other stores.

There are also free games in your existing distro. They aren’t generally comparable to commercial games, but they’re there.

Which tittles do you recommend for integrated intel hd2500 graphics on linux

I mean…that’s pretty broad. Maybe if you could list some games that you like, or a genre at least?

I can list games that I like, but they might fall completely flat with other people.

From a performance standpoint, that’d be probably any 2D game and…let’s see. The HD 2500 was released in 2014, and wasn’t a stellar performer at that time, so probably any 3D game that was released prior to that date?

Like, you can probably look at any list of popular older games for ideas; doesn’t need to be Linux-specific.

searches

https://gamesreq.com/50-best-games-for-weak-pcs-2025-edition/

From that list, games that I’ve played that I enjoy are Half-Life 2, Hades, Terraria, Vampire Survivors, Slay the Spire, Balatro, Fallout: New Vegas, Far Cry 3, FTL: Faster Than Light, Basion, Transistor, Don’t Starve, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, Max Payne 2, Factorio, and Rimworld, all of which you can get on Steam and have worked fine for me on Linux, but…again, it really depends on what sort of games you like. There are games on there that are popular that didn’t particularly rub me the right way (e.g. Dota 2 is popular, but realistically should be played multiplayer, which I don’t want to do. Ori and the Blind Forest is pretty, but didn’t grab my personal interest). But…they might be exactly what you’re looking for.

Also can i get a recommendation about using mame emulators.

MAME is a particular emulator, which emulates many different types of hardware. There are a number of different frontends to it — setting up MAME manually takes a bit of work, though it’s how I’ve used it — but I’m not sure what you’re asking. If you just want recommendations for an emulator and not specifically MAME, then maybe list a system that you’d like to emulate (e.g. Super Nintendo, or whatever). If you want a frontend recommendation, I haven’t used other frontends myself, though you might get recommendations from others. If you want a recommendation as to games for older systems that you could run emulated in MAME, that’s another possibility, but again, I think I’d ask what sort of games you’ve enjoyed or a genre or something.

Really depends on your preferences. If you like weird retro-style stuff: Ufo 50 sure is a trip. Some definite bangers there.

I recommend Portal 2. It’s a great game.

Minecraft is always great. Or the free Luanti.

No idea how powerful that card is but everything up to Quake 3 should work. Maybe more. Unreal Tournament 99 and 2004 are free now and can be found on https://oldunreal.com/.

You don’t need Steam but it makes buying and installing games very easy. But you can also buy games on https://gog.com/ and install them with Heroic. It’s more or less as easy as with Steam.

Or you can just look through your distributions software repository. It should have plenty of free games.

In the end it really depends on what you’re looking for. “Games” is a vast field.

I recently installed Sim City 2000 on Linux, I think I had to use Lutris just because the install media disk wouldn’t autorun.

Steam uses Proton to make games compatible but there are several popular games with linux support by default such as Factorio, Minecraft, Lethal Company, and Stardew Valley. these two titles rely on Proton