Why are there so many different Proton versions? Proton 8, Proton 9, Experimental, GE-Proton
Why are there so many different Proton versions? Proton 8, Proton 9, Experimental, GE-Proton
Are you confused on why there's many different versions of Valve's Proton? The compatibility layer that runs Windows games on Linux / SteamOS and Steam Deck. Here's a little guide on what it all means.
For anyone who wants the same info without the ads see: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Proton-Versions
And for proton-ge: https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom?tab=readme-ov-file#overview
Proton-sarek: https://github.com/pythonlover02/Proton-Sarek
The only reason for the article to exist is to have an excuse to serve ads.
Have we really hit the point where we have to explain versioning to people now.
Lemmy is a more technical crowd, but many deck owners don't understand what proton is, or why they might need different versions.
Most software you don't even have an option to easily use older versions, so choosing to downgrade proton for a specific game may be a unique experience for some.
The article has one sentence on using older versions for better compatability with some games.
The rest of the article is basically summed up by "bigger number means newer"
The whole article seemed very surface level and didn't really give any more info than could be derived from the names of the versions. As for the community forks mentioned people could find much better info just looking at the readme.
Maybe I'm just too technical but it just feels to me as pointless as an article explaining the difference between hot and cold taps on a sink.
Edit: fix autocorrect
Everyone has to learn something for the first time. Today's 10,000 and all that.
the question about "why keep half a dozen stable versions around" is a legit one, if you are not deeply familiar with the background of the project
Why are you gatekeeping so hard bro
Helps them feel better than others, maybe they have low self esteem or something
Seems like an SEO article. Im all for getting simplified articles easily accessible to the people who pick up a steam deck or the steamos lenovo legion and really do go "whats the difference between proton experimental and proton 7"
Because quantum physics is hard
Yet, not the article nor proton GitHub readme explain which version proton-hotfix is based of. I suppose based on proton-experimental, but then again it also makes sense to be based on proton-stable.