I remember when Proton launched it was like magic playing games like Doom and Nier Automata straight from the Linux Steam client with excellent performance. I do not miss the days of having the Windows version of Steam installed separately.
I remember using bare wine to play games before proton. You would have to go and find the exact libraries needed to run the game, install them one way or another, pray a bit, and maybe the game will run with acceptable fps. If it ran at all.
And these days its just plug and play. Dont remember the last time I had to install a game dependency with proton, from steam or otherwise.
I still remember installing the sims 3 on wine. This was before proton, before the sims 4. I started by looking the game up on winehq - the results were not promising. The rating was not exactly garbage, but still runs with problems. Some brave soul had come up with installation instructions though.
So I try to install the game using those instructions. Took me about 40 minutes of installing things like ms c++ runtimes. Then when I tried to run the game? Crash. Doesn’t work. So I went back to WineHQ and found another instruction (luckily there were multiple ppl that made the game work)
After following it for another hour, the game still didnt work. After googling the error for some time im pretty sure I just downloaded some random dll that was missing from runtimes and put it with the game. Voila, the game ran! Laggy, but playable. Took only about 3 hours of research and tinkering.
Today? I’m pretty sure I can just download the game and it will run, just like that, no config required.
I remember back in the day I thought one of my favorite games, Elite: Dangerous, would never run on Linux. I dualbooted for a while just so I could play it. After a while I stopped playing it much and figured I could get rid of Windows, so I did. About a year later the community came out with a complicated setup you could perform to get it running on Linux through wine. It’s just as you said, lots of manually finding and installing libraries, tweaking environments, and eventually got it working (jankily) at a pretty mediocre framerate. I thought that was the best I was going to get. Another two years and it was running seamlessly on proton with no configuration or tweaking at all. It really is incredible what Valve has done for Linux gaming.
Freaky to read your account. I switched to ubuntu desktop like 3 weeks ago, bought a gpu, installed steam (ok, I had to reinstall from apr since snap didn’t work well), 2 days ago I installed cyberpunk and it runs at 80 fps mostly high-ultra settings without one crash so far, no special boot parameters. (I had to edit the exe today so it wouldn’t force controller config though)
It’s insane how far linux has come in the last 5 yrs. I hope it goes on like this. In opposition to amd, linux actually is our friend. :)
@Haui@Dizzar wdym by in opossition to amd? As far as I know amd is better than nvidia. I recently built a new pc from ground and choose to use both amd cpu and gpu and I had 0 problems so far. Back when I had a nvidia gpu it used to cause more headaches by simply breaking once every few updates
I was wondering that too. As far as I know, when it comes to Linux, AMD and Intel are the way to go. Nvidia are the ones who generally tend to suck on linux (although I never had problems with my nvidia gpu, its pretty old tho)
In this case, you need to take my comment more literally.
AMD does a lot better than nvidia but amd still makes a lot of business decisions that are not consumer friendly. For example pricing their gpus a lot higher than they used to instead of more competitive to nvidia.
They do good but in opposition to open source, it is still a company and therefore not our „friend“. Open source in contrast is made by us, therefore undeniably more our friend.
It was a figure of speech, not meaning to dump on amd.
Okay I can definitely back up the second claim. World of Warships, a DirectX only game, runs and loads better on Linux with Proton. I tested both on SSD and HDD, and in both scenarios the game runs at a higher FPS and loads faster. I legitimately have no idea why.
I originally tested on HDD and guessed that ext4 was just much better with the IO speeds because NTFS would fragment like hell. But then it also was the same with an SSD and now I’m not sure.
I’ve gradually gone from being peeved at Proton for not being able to support certain brands of anti-cheat, to actively avoiding games with anti-cheat solutions that are fundamentally incompatible with Proton.
I have to stick to windows only because of VR, once performance and UX improves I will nuke windows out of my PC but I still absolutely love linux, been hopping around distros like a madman almost 2 years ago until I settled on arch, couldn’t leave the damn thing.
I switched to Linux on my gaming PC about five or six years ago and tried a couple of different distros. Manjaro was the first one that worked really well for me, and I played through the original RAGE and Mass Effect using that setup, but for the last couple of years I’ve used POP!_OS, after Manjaro broke a couple of times. I’m never going back to Windows, mostly thanks to Proton. Even Elder Scrolls Online works really well using Proton.
For some reason DXVK makes the lava disappear in this game, at least at the final boss. If you’re a new player who knows nothing about this boss you’ll die not knowing why
This is my biggest gripe with developers. More often than not the native version either has worse performance or poor compatibility whereas the windows versions just seem to work. It seems like they aren’t putting effort into making their games compatible with newer compositors or something because proton “just works”.
Not only it works very often but one can even check www.protondb.com before buying to make sure it does work. It also works for VR games. I recently tried a brand new game, supposedly “Windows only”, and it worked without any tinkering. I then updated ProtonDB to clarify so that others could play too. It’s simple I didn’t boot on Windows to play for years now. I’m also traveling today and instead of bringing a laptop I bring my SteamDeck to play, to work I’ll also bring a BT keyboard.
TL;DR: it works, even with VR, and ProtonDB can help to identify problems
Correction: Rust doesn’t run properly on Linux because the developers fear an uptick on cheaters caused by EAC being less invasive on Linux than on Windows.
Honest question: if you’re not a Steam user, what does Proton do that wine doesn’t just as easily? I’ve played games in wine prefixes for years now, but haven’t bothered with Proton or PlayOnLinux or any of the other wine front ends. Are they worth it?
It “just works” 95% of the time with no tweaks. That’s the benefit. Games in your library will install and run with zero intervention, just like on Windows and at times with better compatibility because the tweaks and dependencies are already configured. It’s nice not having to manage wine versions and prefixes.
Proton tends to work better because steam games are identified by an AppID and it has a list of tweaks/settings required for games that need them (protonfixes). If you install a game on steam and launch it, it just works, because it knows that you’re trying to run game X and it needs patches Y and Z. On wine it will probably work the same, but you’ll have to install winetricks or change settings yourself.
Wine builds for Lutris made by GloriousEggroll are based on proton and include most of the extra patches along with newest versions of things like VKD3D or DXVK. You just need to install redistributables by hand via winetricks.
Proton is essentially a fork of wine thats fine tuned by devs bankrolled by Valve/steam to optimize it to work for any and every game they can (so that it works with the Deck which is linux and relies on proton alot). AFAIK regular ol’ wine is more of a general emulator that in my exerience is hit or miss when it comes to getting games running. Proton almost always succeeds where regular wine fails especially if its a big bulky AAA game with multiplayer and stuff such as Elden Ring. Someone on github maintains builds of wine based off cutting edge proton experimental for Lutris. You can find it here
I think another point worth mentioning is that some anti-cheats allow proton, which is nice if you wanna play online with others in a competitive game.
I believe they do this by checking the hashes of a lot of the system32 type stuff, I’m not convinced it would just work in vanilla wine.
Steam is a dependency for official proton builds at least, but there are wine builds with the proton patches added in. Base wine will end up getting a lot of them too.
In the case that proton works, you install game via Linux steam and just play. Maybe override proton version and add launch arguments like dll overrides if needed for things like mods or nitpicky performance tuning.
Base wine will generally get the same improvements eventually. I use it via bottles for the odd windows program. I often need to use other custom wine builds for some of the more annoying programs. For games outside of steam, builds like wine-ge have all the relevant proton additions without the steam dependency.
If you’re happy managing Wine prefixes, you aren’t missing out on much. Running a game on Steam with Proton is going to be about the same quality of experience compared to running a non-Steam game with Wine + DXVK + D3DVK. Proton is great because it’s already in Steam so everything “just works” if that’s where your games are, but Valve upstreams basically everything they do so everyone benefits.
If i’m correct proton adds a lot of gaming specific patches that increases game compatibility fixes in steam. Outside steam i’ve been using wine-ge which i find better than normal wine because it adds the proton patches and more which you can read about in the wine-ge-custom github.
For terraria tmodloader works no issue, I think forge has a native client for WoW, and Minecraft is linux native anyway EDIT: I only ever modded terraria and minecraft so idk about any more
Same as far as I can tell. I installed model swap mods for several games, workshop mods for binding of isaac and terraria, and did other random things to games like tweak configs and shit. All of it worked fine. The biggest issues I had is installing random old games in my collection to my steam deck that weren’t on steam already, and even that I still managed to make it work.
For most games I’m sure you can find a way to do it. If you use protontricks you are able to run an exe under a proton prefix for a game (basically a virtual windows drive in a folder for the game) which I’ve had pretty decent luck with.
If you play games that support mod organizer 2, there is a sh install script somewhere for support in proton/steam that works well (I can find if you like), but the program does run pretty slow and is fairly buggy. Usable with patience. Upside is it can run MO2 for a given game direct from steam if configured correctly
My son does tmodloader via steam, but I think its native Linux. Works without issue.
I play WoW and run Trade Skill Master (in the same wine bottle prefix). I also run RaiderIO/WoW Up/CurseForge (Linux native).
I had issues with mods for The Forest and Sons of the Forest. Never got them working.
FF XIV DPS meter worked after a lot of tinkering. Had to go to a specific discord to get the info as the modders didn’t keep their READMEs in GitHub up to date. Wish that shit was searchable.
It varies but generally if there is a will there is a way. Sometimes it just works, sometimes intervention required.
Typical things that may or may not be needed depending on game:
Windows packages and/or Dll overrides via launch arguments or winecfg/protontrick
Separate wine prefix with specific weird wine build to run mod managers or editors etc. with links to relevant directories in game prefix
Case insensitivity which can be set per directory on empty directories on ext4 (poorly made mods only usually)
Searching “[game name] mods [steam deck or linux]”
Regretting all of that to find that there is a Linux mod loader that works 100% but google stopped giving meaningful search results decades ago and the reddit trick doesn’t work as well post api-suicide.
I think this may well be the thing that, at long last, eventually leads to the end of the Windows hegemony on PC. Linux compatibility being a prerequisite for running on the default configuration of the Steam Deck. Gaming is the Microsoft OS’s last real stronghold.
Nah. Windows biggest customer is the corporate world. Windows is everywhere. Gaming isn’t much of a factor, especially when the majority of gamers are console players.
For entirely different use cases. The corporate world loves Linux for servers, but exceedingly few will use it for workstations, and generally only for developers even then
And even then the majority of developers aren’t on Linux cause the AM and ManagedInstalls doesn’t work as well as Mac or Windows.
The F500 I work for is almost entirely mac, with the few stragglers on windows for specific applications. Linux just doesn’t support the same kind of enterprise tools that the other 2 main OS’s do.
I… sort of agree? But also, kids game. Which means (part of) a generation could grow up using Linux systems to game, which makes Linux more palatable to businesses looking to hire those kids. I’m not sure how big a factor that might turn out to be.
Mine are learning more Linux than Windows. They really only use Windows for Office, and only then when Office Online absolutely won’t cut it.
Their laptops dual-boot, but flipping over to Windows is happening so rarely these days (school changed some things around) that I may just have them on Linux going forward.
Bonus round, it’s much easier on them for computer science classes.
Yes, but the discussion wasn’t about how Microsoft makes its money, it was about how important gaming was to promoting one OS over another, via hardware sales…
Gaming isn’t much of a factor, especially when the majority of gamers are console players.
And I would argue gaming is a big part of that, which is what my original reply was about.
First, those boomers do not want to learn Linux. It is a fact.
Actually they usually don’t give a flying F about the OS, they care about the apps they used to get their jobs done. They care about Outlook, Word, Excel, etc.
Also, as someone who just finished 35 years in corporate America, I’ve done retraining of older employees at many multiple companies plenty of times, so your Ageist assumption is not correct.
And finally, again, I was just commenting about hardware sales and how gaming drives that, and how an OS rides piggyback on top of the hardware sales.
I’m still waiting for games to release on Linux with good compatibility, I hope that’s the case since the steam deck has been out for a bit. Unfortunately every Linux native game I’ve tried so far has had some issues that were resolved switching to wine
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