Hey mate, fellow Intel HD user here with an i5-6500 and HD 530, which is mostly the same chip you described but with a few improvements. If you decide to use Steam, I’ve got a couple of pointers to get better performance and it might help elsewhere.
Usually updating the kernel, downloading the latest Proton-GE & enabling FSR, and updating the Steam Linux Runtime to 4.0 can give a good boost. There’s another somewhere in my head but I’ve forgotten it and might post later.
Kernel is straightfoward, sometimes the kernel provides performance boosts for Intel HD like how 6.14 gave us a ~50-150% graphics boost. I use Debian so I’m not sure how to update kernels in Ubuntu but I heard it’s pretty easy.
Proton-GE gives performance boosts each update and fully supports adding FSR to every game (by adding WINE_FULLSCREEN_FSR=1 %command% to Launch Options). Your games will tend to look worse but I’d rather have frames than resolution.
Steam Linux Runtime 4.0 is based on Debian 13 while 3.0 is based on Deb11. SLR 4.0 has updated Vulkan & OpenGL packages courtesy of Deb13, which helps with performance and game support. In fact, on 3.0 Pseudoregalia kept throwing a hissyfit about Unity and wouldn’t launch but once I updated to 4.0 it worked straight away. I believe any new updates Steam has will come with 4.0 by default but it’s always good to double check.
For example, at the beginning of 2025 (before kernel 6.14) I could barely run Night-Runners Prologue on the lowest settings + GE-FSR, running at about 20-25fps and the performance dipped after an hour. Nowadays I can run it at 40-48 fps on a slightly higher resolution but I cap it at a stable 30fps. Skyrim SE also works well on the lowest settings + GE-FSR + a lightweight ENB and get ~30fps outside of caves and buildings. And I’m running LMDE with Backport kernels, so Ubuntu might behave slightly better than mine since it’s more up-to-date in some areas.
Some games I recommend are the ones listed above, boomer shooter games like Ultrakill and Dusk and most indie platformer games like Lunistice and, again, Pseudoregalia. Luanti and Minecraft beta 1.7.3 don’t need Steam and runs on just about anything and I highly recommend Better than Adventure! for a fresh spin on Minecraft. Just make sure you don’t give Microsoft any money 😉
No worries, I finally have expertise in something so I chipped in. Also I just remembered that fourth point!
Lowering the resolution of your monitor from, let’s say, 1080p -> 720p can give a decent amount of frames. When I had a decent GPU (GTX 960), Night-Runners was able to run at a steady 60 on high settings + 720p monitor cap but when I put the monitor on 1080 it dipped into the 40s.
How I understand it is the iGPU is not spending it’s vram trying to display a 1080p picture and uses less of it at 720p to gain more frames. Unfortunately, capping the monitor will make the screen look generally worse, but we’re dealing with so little vram that we need to mold around the poor little iGPU and you could probably switch resolution only when gaming.
That’s about it, have a good one, one day we’ll be able to upgrade 😅