7 years later, Valve's Proton has been an incredible game-changer for Linux
7 years later, Valve's Proton has been an incredible game-changer for Linux
Yeah it has. I don't even bother looking at the supported operating systems for most games on Steam anymore. I also don't play overhyped microtransaction-laden bullshit like cod or fortnite, either, so no loss there. If I ever wanted to play that kind of game, I have a PS5.
So, my middle aged ass plays the microtransaction-laden bullshit known as Roblox because my 3rd grader and all his friends love it.
It doesn't even have a Linux version but thanks to the project "sober" it plays absolutely fantastically on Linux. I think they claim 2x the performance of the windows version. I just know I have a powerful but old system (8c/8t 9700k cpu and gtx1080 gpu) and I can lock it at 144fps at 1440p and it uses like 20% of my system resources. Not that it's a visually demanding game, lol.
Going all-in on my switch to Linux (my win10 partition for dual booting lasted less than two weeks) has had zero negative impact on my ability to play the games I want. In fact, it has led to me using my PC a lot more and my phone a lot less. Feels good.
I've suffered one loss, I can't play Mechabellum any more. But other than that my experience has been much the same, smooth across all fronts.
So, Valve has indeed done a lot to make Linux more attractive for gamers. It isn't perfect yet, but we are getting there. And yes, kernel-based anti-cheat is one of the reasons why it isn't perfect yet.
I'd argue kernel-based anticheats are one of the areas gaming on Linux excels. Video game developers should not have that level of permissions over consumers' machines, certainly with how little your average gamer understands the potential consequences of these rootkits. So the fact that all of the ones I know of can't be installed under Linux is more than acceptable, it's ideal.
Are they working on a fix for the kernel anti cheat? Is it possible?
Not really. But from a security perspective, giving software for a video game, done by InfinityWard, EA, Activision, Treyarch and similar, access to the lowest level of your operating systen is kinda insane.
I wouldn't want any personal data on such a device, let alone do online baking on that thing. It's weird how normalized it has become give entertainement-software this kind of power over your devices.
Common GabeN win
It's pretty cool.
I really only miss fortnite and the ocassional call of duty warzone but other than those two or some multiplayer games Linux is far more enjoyable. Yeah I know this games and those companies but let someone enjoy something for once. Help me find a work around. Until then I dual boot mint and windows debloated as much as possible for only a few multiplayer games.
Praise be to Gaben!
Destiny 2 was the old game I played 2 years ago when I switched to linux full time that does not play nice with Proton. And given how its driven itself off a cliff. I will miss the old space opera, but nothing of value was lost.
Whatever allows us to leave the clusterfuck that is Windows is a blessing. M$ has had a monopoly for too long and I'm not paying for MacOS.
macOS has been free for, like, 15 years.
Yes, you have to already own an Apple computer, but Apple users don’t pay for OS upgrades.
Technically, anyone could download the OS images, but there’s not a lot that non-Apple users can do with them.
macOS is included with every Mac, not free.
Bruh what? Did you really just say that not having to buy software exclusive to a certain hardware makes the software free?
That's like saying the OS on a PlayStation is free because you only had to pay for the PlayStation.
Nah man, you purchased the OS with the hardware. That's why it's exclusive.
Anybody can download Windows images too. That doesn’t mean the OS is free.
Macos is free. At the cost of paying *2 for hardware
Hackintosh is a thing (or at least used to be), but it’s against the EULA.
This is a dumb argument. Apple does provide you the OS upgrades for free but getting an ISO file and installing it on a non-Mac computer is impossible so no it's not really free
there’s not a lot that non-Apple users can do with them
Oh, there is.
I am a web developer and I use this to run Safari and the iOS simulator without paying Apple's "debugging tax".
Proton is the reason I daily drive Linux. That is a simple, unequivocal fact.
Same here.
Windows 7 EOL is why I switched to linux.
proton is why I've stayed on linux.
I only have windows on my laptop atm, and thats only because of sheer laziness and the fact i dont use it much anymore... will be putting linux on it eventually, though.
Not me! I switched in 2017, right around the time Windows 10 "telemetry" (read: spyware) was getting backported to Windows 7.
It was a rough first couple of years, gaming-wise, but I managed to get by playing mostly Linux-native games and using PlayOnLinux with pre-Proton WINE for the one or two games important enough to justify the hassle.
(INB4 "weird flex but OK")
I gotta admit, I was pretty conflicted about Proton when it was first announced, since there was a lot of fear that it would reduce developer impetus to make proper Linux-native games. I'm not actually sure whether that came to pass or not, but I feel like the issue is a lot less important than it seemed at the time.
It would make sense that developers would support their game as played through Proton, which is not really that different from just making a proper linux-native game. It should work just as fast both ways.
weird flex but OK
Samsies. Steam Deck showed me it was possible. Made the switch a little after that (waited for Hell Let Loose to turn on EAC for Linux).
Me too, soon I guess. I have a Steam Deck, and now using Windows on my laptop is kind of like torture, so the Deck has been my main PC.
I want it to evolve to support more desktop applications. This is the one thing that will continue to hamper Linux adoption. Games are the best place to start, but we need all those old obscure, irreplaceable desktop apps to work now.
It's built on Wine, any general improvements to compatibility will generally support desktop programs using the same APIs
A custom wine
Get it to run Office and you've a game changer.
Yes, yes I know Libre/Open Office but try telling Shelly in Accounting who still struggles with Excel after 36 years of experience.
Well, Office365 works fine. You can even run it in MS Edge if you want.
Or Adobe, that’s the most frequent complaint
I would imagine older versions can run properly, no? Like maybe 2007 or 2010. Later ones got too integrated with the OS which must be the main difficulty.
Thank you Lord Gaben
Thank you to the workers who actually programmed, tested, and implemented the thing*
to his credit as a billionaire he could have paid all those people to do something that sucks way more
To Gaben's credit he collects a lot less of the surplus these workers create than most other billionaires. But yes.
I'm glad he's not as evil as the other billionaires, but can we stop with the billionaire simping? Ironic that an account on a left-wing anarchist instance made that comment lmao
It's a meme
He's still a billionaire tho 🤮
I love it! Not only do I use it on the Steam Deck, but also on my Desktop PC running Linux.
I'm getting back into PC gaming after being consult exclusive for a while. I'm assuming anything with kernel anti-cheat is still not trying to work which is a problem because it means I either have to buy a windows licence or mess around with a cracked one which has its own security concerns.
I think my plan is to dual boot and use Windows as little as often.
If you have a particular game in mind you can check protondb.com, which tries to cover both Proton compatibility and Deck compatibility.
There's this handy list of online games with anti-cheat that are compatible with Linux. The majority isn't supported, but some major titles are, surprisingly.
Yeah, when w10 dies this is probably what I'll end up doing too. I want to ditch windows but a lot of the programs I use don't have Linux support
You can use windows freely without activating, or at least you could last time I needed it.
Literally this week I learned that you need to install flatpak Nvidia drivers if you use flatpak Steam. Once I found that out, proton works great!
A sidestory to this is that Flatpak and AppImage have been miraculous boosts to Linux OS machines. After I figured out that ya gotta throw the --user flag into your flatpak installs so they don't jam up your / tree, and also throwing flatpak override --user xyz.app onto a few apps that benefit from universal access, things have been fine and dandy.
I continue to be happy with how awesome Linux has gotten just over the past 5 years.
This is why I have used flatpak steam. It's a lot easier to manage drivers in it vs the shitshow that is doing it natively with adding custom driver specific repos and whatnot.
Hoping the new PC I just ordered (with an AMD GPU) will be better with the native app.
I've been using mint exclusively for like 3 months and have been using a hearty blend of terminal installs and the program manager app.
It seems to not have caused any problems YET, but I've been assured it will. I see flatpack conversations a lot and don't fully understand the differences (apart from the install method).
Is it worth understanding and committing to a single system or can I just be a low-power user for a while?
One thing you might notice is that flatpak defaults to "system" installs. Is your root system directory filling up? You probably want to start installing onto --user, as this will put things in /home where they belong and, by default, sandbox permissions away from root (that, too, can be easily changed).
Also, don't fear mixing different ways of installing. I use AppImage, Flatpak, the default app-get install method, and .deb. FlatPak at this point is the best, because it offers the ease of use of AppImage, but the flexibility and auto-maintenance of apt-get/Software Update. The only problems I've encountered were due to me not understanding that it was filling up my root partition by default...
I've been running Mint MATE for about 9 years. Love it to death.
Basically every app is sandboxed to some extent. That way you don’t get conflicting dependencies. Because I use this machine for work, game performance is a much lower priority than file system permissions and stability and for most typical workloads. MacOS does the same thing by default now and very few apps get access to the actual root directory.
Is there a straightforward way to see at-a-glance which games in my library are not compatible?
Connect to protondb.com and you can filter by games with issues - the community is also great there for posting tricks to resolve those issues. I have a gargantuan library of 250 games including tons of recent big games and everything runs without any problems for me (Linux Mint). The only thing you need to worry about is the big multiplayer competitive games like fortnight or COD because they use really invasive anti-cheat systems which don't work on Linux (mostly). I'm not a fan of that type of game so for me it isn't a concern, but it might be for you. I would be extremely surprised given my experience with it if you ran into difficulties beyond that!
You can connect your steam library via protondb.com - but I also play games flawless that are ranked silver so yeah
I still use wine for most of my games on the desktop.
Didn't it all start with Wine and later Vulkan / DXVK? Didn't Valve just put it all together in a nice package or am I missing something?