this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
1072 points (98.8% liked)

Linux Gaming

15802 readers
55 users here now

Gaming on the GNU/Linux operating system.

Recommended news sources:

Related chat:

Related Communities:

Please be nice to other members. Anyone not being nice will be banned. Keep it fun, respectful and just be awesome to each other.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Happy birthday, Proton!

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 188 points 1 year ago (15 children)

While I appreciate the efforts Valve puts into improving WINE/Proton, lets not forget that they are standing on the shoulders of giants and gaming with WINE was not that bad before the integration in Steam either.

[–] ampersandrew@kbin.social 196 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Gaming with Wine was decidedly far worse before Valve started pumping money into it. Back before Proton was officially announced, there was a silent acceleration in Wine compatibility, getting better a rate we weren't used to, and it's in large part due to Valve partnering with CodeWeavers.

[–] sab@kbin.social 84 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think the point isn't to say Valve's help isn't appreciated, but to give a little reminder to share some gratefulness with the amazing people developing Wine before Valve got involved as well. It was and is an impressive piece of software in its own right. :)

That doesn't mean Valve wasn't a complete game changer. The fact that they managed to make a handheld Linux gaming device popular among gamers rather than just open source fanatics is impressive as hell, and we're all better off.

[–] ampersandrew@kbin.social 44 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh of course, but I was particularly addressing "gaming with WINE was not that bad before the integration in Steam either", because it really wasn't great, as important and foundational as it was.

[–] sab@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean, enthusiasts made it work. Compared to nothing, it's a hell of a lot better. PlayOnLinux was also popular.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "that bad". It has certainly gotten a lot better, nobody is denying that.

[–] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 6 points 1 year ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=bKFPRQA-j0A

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

[–] circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org 82 points 1 year ago

Yeah, that's not necessarily the case. Did it kind of work? Sure, if you knew what you were doing. Was it at all the seamless experience that Proton is now? No.

[–] kadu@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You're correct in giving WINE the credit it's due.

But I couldn't disagree more with the "gaming with WINE was not that bad" statement.

It was horrible. Game updates broke compatibility a thousand times, outdated Wine wrappers were a mess, setting up most games involved convoluted scripts, and even when things magically just worked performance was usually lower (except for some specific CPU bound games).

[–] ricecake@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago

The results were fine, but the work to get there was quite bad quite often.

UX polish is one of those things that just isn't as fun to do, and isn't as rewarding either. So pumping a bunch of money into it is going to go a long way towards making all the other hard work come out better.

[–] Zorque@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

I think their efforts are more for bringing gaming on Linux to more mainstream attention. Not knowing you can game on Linux is a major factor for a lot of people in not switching.

[–] kratoz29@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I didn't even know that Proton was Wine, until somewhere else pointed it out here on Lemmy... (granted, I am not a proton user, that's why my lack of context was there, but I follow the Chinese retro handhelds community so that's why I knew why Proton is awesome).

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] Cynoid@lemm.ee 90 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think a lot of people are misunderstanding what Proton actually brought to Linux gaming.

I had been running Linux exclusively for some moths in 2013-2014, and trying to get games to work on Linux felt like this : Wine is likely able to run it if you can found the right configuration, but good luck with that. I think the only game I managed to run without issues was Civilization 4, so I rolled back on Windows some time later.

Of course, Valve contributed to Wine, and projects like dxvk and others are major achievements (if a team effort), but that's not their main contribution. Valve understood that gamers may be somewhat more tech-litterate than other people, but that making games work on Linux should be easy. And that's what Proton was made for.

Nowadays, most games I buy on Steam work out of the box. I sometimes forget to check protondb before buying a games, and I rarely had an issue. Even if in 2018 you had to tinker a bit, you rarely needed more than to choose the correct Proton version (big up to Glorious Eggroll).

I think it's symptomatic of the situation of the Linux Desktop : technically, it's where it needs to be. But there is still a gap in accessibility and easiness. Tinkering is nice, but you should not have to do it to have something that works.

[–] shitescalates@midwest.social 14 points 1 year ago

Not only that but they helped reach critical mass to drive adoption, and used their dominance in the industry to push studios to work with us, instead of against us.

[–] sirsquid@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago

Nice to see some comments like yours truly get it. The amount of people I've seen that now use Linux just because of Proton is surprising. It also gave us the Steam Deck. Valve do tons and people saying it's just "Wine patches" or moaning I didn't focus on Wine are missing the big picture that you get nicely :)

[–] silvercove@lemdro.id 74 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I feel like attributing this to Valve is really disrespectful to the folks who developed wine for decades (and more recently also Vulkan). The real game changer is Vulkan, which made Linux graphics to be competitive with DirectX. (OpenGL interfaces to DirectX was simply not competitive)

[–] basxto@discuss.tchncs.de 25 points 1 year ago

The kickoff meeting for Vulkan was hosted by Valve. Like everything it’s not only Valve, but they had their fingers in this too. Valve is just one of the companies/groups that is pushing linux ports and vulkan support.

Valve is mostly moving interests of big game companies with steam machines and steam deck. Steam machines flopped, but initially they made companies consider ports. The success of steam deck will likely result into them paying more attention to not break wine/proton.

[–] sirsquid@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 year ago

I feel like attributing this to Valve is really disrespectful to the folks who developed wine for decades

Honestly, it feels like comments like this are just intentionally missing the big picture, or just don't understand any of what Valve actually do.

It's been said by comments elsewhere, but Wine was really not good years ago. It was difficult to use, obscure as you had to seek it out and know what to do. Valve funded DXVK, VKD3D-Proton, various extra Wine patches and pushed it all together into Proton with Q&A testing, regular upgrades for big games to get them working ASAP and put it in front of millions easily directly in the Steam client.

and more recently also Vulkan

Which once again, Valve massively helped push and even hosted the early discussions on it.

[–] SootyChimney@hexbear.net 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's a collaborative effort. The Wine and Vulkan projects have all done a lot and deserved credit for doing massive, amazing things. But for Linux gaming specifically, Proton has absolutely changed the landscape, and if Valve continues down this path, will make Linux an ever better gaming platform. So I don't think it's unfair to say thanks to Valve.

Not only have they sunk significant resource into making Linux gaming more viable, they've released Proton under BSD and seriously pushed developers to make Linux-compatible binaries. If Linux continues it's slow upward trend in popularity, Valve will be in large part to thank.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

At least initially this was mostly DXVK though, which is a project that was secretly funded by Valve after it showed some promising initial results. Edit: but I agree that WINE deserves more credit.

[–] silvercove@lemdro.id 2 points 1 year ago

as someone else said, it's a "standing on the shoulders of giants" moment for Valve

[–] sfera@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

I feel like attributing this to Valve

What exactly do you mean by "this"? The post is about the 5 year anniversary of Proton. Also, why do you consider crediting the developers of Wine disrespectful? I just can't follow.

Of course Proton wouldn't have been possible without all the many years of work that went into the Wine project in the first place, and everyone who contributed to Wine should be applauded for their effort. Valve has funded a lot of extra work though to get things like DXVK and VKD3D-Proton for the translation from Direct3D to Vulkan into a state where performance can be really great! Valve also funds work on Linux graphics drivers, Linux kernel work and the list goes on.

[–] makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Thank you. I found this post disrespectful, and insulting. Valve have started contributing to a long running project. Which is great, but there has been tremendous work over the years before valve, and even still

[–] nakal@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're right. So many people to thank here. One thing you cannot deny is that Valve is one of few companies that loves gaming on Linux and it deserves a huge credit.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] regalia@literature.cafe 67 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's great and all, but the Wine devs deserve much more credit. Proton is just like the icing on top.

[–] sirsquid@lemmy.ml 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're massively simplifying it. Proton is a lot more than just "icing" on the top.

[–] NanoooK@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For those who don't know such as myself, care to give more detail?

[–] drislands@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Check out this comment above for why it made such a huge difference.

https://lemm.ee/comment/2589498

[–] Llewellyn@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago

Are you kidding? Proton is much, much more than "icing on top".

[–] LesbianLiberty@hexbear.net 16 points 1 year ago

fidel-salute-big

Thank you Valve for consistently making gaming easier even in my silly little operating systema

[–] Bobby_DROP_TABLES@hexbear.net 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Valve is the only corporation I will unapologetically simp for. It's amazing how far Linux gaming has come in the past few years, especially now that the developers of stuff like EAC are finally making their shit compatible.

Valve is such a weird company.

They became where nearly every PC game is sold by using some of the greatest games of all time as advertising. The orange box has to be the biggest return on a loss leader ever.

[–] hummel@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 1 year ago

Oh those memories, playing Commandos 2 on an old Laptop running Lubuntu in the summer of 2016. The wine setup worked strangely easy. But yeah, Proton accelerated everything immensely!

[–] vojel@feddit.de 8 points 1 year ago

Arthur Morgan voice (while running through Proton): Thank you.

[–] detox@infosec.pub 7 points 1 year ago

Proton made me uninstall my dual-boot windows-steam-launcher

[–] harpuajim@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

Are there still more people with VR headsets than Linux gamers on the steam survey?

load more comments
view more: next ›