Good idea. This is probably to stop new Linux users from panicking when they buy a new game and then Steam gives them the "this game is incompatible with your operating system" error when they launch without enabling Proton first. I know that message popped up for me a lot.
this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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I had finally convinced a friend to switch to Linux a few months ago. And they installed Steam and the first thing they said was "oh great none of my games work on Linux."
Lol. And I just thought man they should really just turn it on by default.
So I'm glad they're doing this now.
It was a little silly to have to change a setting away from the default given that nearly everything works on proton.
Its not even new linux users.
I semi-recently built a new PC and even having done this repeatedly... it took me longer than it should to have realized why re-adding my library folders didn't add those games to my installed games list.
I had the same experience introducing Linux to other people:
"Oh yeah, gaming just works out of the box on Linux", one install later...
"Hey, it says 'Only for 🪟' for everything except Portal and a couple other games!"
"Whoops, you have to go in the settings and check this very particular box, then it just works out of the box."
So which distro are you referencing here? The Steam OS? I'm about to jump off the sinking Windows ship and wondering if the Steam OS one is stable enough or I should go with something else. All I use my comp for is gaming and web browsing.
Any Linux OS with Steam installed, but yes most likely the same on SteamOS.
My experience with games on Steam:
- 75% of games: Click to Download, click Play, nothing more needed.
- 20% of games will work, might need to select a special Proton version or put in one command.
- 4% of games need tweaks specific to that game, to enable multiplayer, get around certain crashes etc., OR the game works fine but multiplayer doesn't work at all due to anticheat set to block Wine users.
- 1% of games don't work at all due to either anticheat, DRM or another problem.
Workshop works just fine, 3rd party mods will often work, but then you'll need to get into the weeds of Wine to properly set it up, since installers are separate to the game.
Thanks man, appreciate the response.
I've been exclusively gaming on my Steam Deck since launch and have a slightly different experience. For me, if the game is certified "Playable" or "Verified" on the Steam page, I just download and play it. I have never once tweaked any settings or tried a different version of Proton. I'm sure there are tweaks that can achieve better performance on certain games, but I have never personally felt the need to research that on any game.
For reference, below are my recently played games. All but Trials worked great for me. Trials is marked "Unplayable" on Steam, though I did get it to work for a few hours before it broke.
SteamOS definitely isn’t made for a traditional desktop computer. It has a desktop environment for when you need it, but that’s basically bolted onto the side of Steam’s Big Picture mode. It would likely work well if you have a dedicated PC for your living room TV. But for a traditional desktop setup, you’d likely want something else.
Maybe Bazzite? It’s basically built for gaming, but doesn’t default to Steam’s Big Picture mode like SteamOS does. It comes with Nvidia drivers pre-installed, which is a big sticking point for lots of people; many have found and/or lost religion while trying to install Nvidia drivers on Linux, so having them ready out-of-the-box is a big selling point. And you can choose which desktop environment you’d prefer when installing it; I’d suggest KDE if you’re familiar with Windows, or Gnome if you prefer MacOS. It’s immutable, which is, to put it simply, controversial. Some people love it, because it means you won’t accidentally destroy your OS. But others find it limiting, because they enjoy being able to go elbow-deep in their OS config.
Nice, thanks for the type up.
Debian and Ubuntu have been seemless, I suspect you'll find the same on all the other relatives.
I have to add an extra parameter to all my proton enabled games so that I use wine for 3d. If I don't, I get blank screens. If I do, works like a charm. I post to the proton db after I verify it on each game.
Do you mean PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 ? If so, you don’t have Vulkan compatible hardware (GPU from like before 2012) or missing drivers. With this flag you use OpenGL rendered instead, that is inferior in every way. If you try it on modern hardware with the right driver in place you’ll get much worse performance, if it even works. This flag shouldn’t be promoted generally.
If you run ancient GPU and want to always fallback to OpenGL, you can put the line
PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1
in /etc/environment and reboot. No need to set that in properties for every individual game.
Do you think adding to /etc/envoronment would work with kde-inhibit? I've been trying to find a way to have Steam block sleep when a game is running, which I can do on a game-by-game basis with kde-inhibit, but I want it to run for every steam game. For some reason my machine does not inhibit sleep when games are running, or even when audio or video are playing
I don't think that’s the good idea even if possible to do with env variable. This should just work correctly, you either miss something in your system or hit some nasty bug of your distro/build or it’s general KDE bug
How to disable Proton?
I don't want to (even accidentally) be counted as a Windows user, neither do I want to support "just build a Windows version, Linux users can run that too". That's how developers treated OS/2, and look where that got them.
You are not counted as windows user if you are playing games with Proton as long you are using official Steam client for Linux, if you are using Steam for windows and running it with WINE then (i think) you are counted as windows user