[HN Gopher] Valve Introduces Proton Next ___________________________________________________________________ Valve Introduces Proton Next Author : WallyFunk Score : 249 points Date : 2022-11-23 17:47 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (linuxgamingcentral.com) (TXT) w3m dump (linuxgamingcentral.com) | SahAssar wrote: | Is there something substantially new here or is this just a beta | branch of the regular proton? | impulser_ wrote: | Why doesn't Apple put this much effort into bring MacOS into the | same realm as Windows in terms of gaming? | | You would think they would invest more money and time taking away | one of the last major advantages of Windows vs. MacOS. | | Microsoft obviously sees gaming as one of the big advantages to | Windows, hence why they have been buying up gaming studios and | combining Xbox and Windows into the one gaming platform. | IshKebab wrote: | They probably would prefer to parlay iPhone games to Mac, then | they have tight control over them and can offer things | Microsoft can't. | musicale wrote: | >Why doesn't Apple put this much effort into bring MacOS into | the same realm as Windows in terms of gaming? | | I don't speak for Apple, but their bread and butter is the | zillions of App Store games, so the business incentive is | clearly to move those developers and games onto macOS so that | Apple gets a cut of every game sale and in-app purchase. | Moreover, those games are already optimized for Metal and Apple | silicon. They already work well on modest hardware running on | batteries. | | In a sense it's a very clever strategy: Apple completely | sidesteps the "PC game" market, which has largely left Apple | behind, and creates its own "App Store game" market - a huge | collection of games, all of which are optimized for Apple APIs | and silicon, and which make billions of dollars for Apple | through App Store commissions. Moreover, those games run across | iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV. Apple also avoids potentially | unflattering GPU and game performance comparisons (especially | with compatibility layers like WINE) - the hardware fades into | the background, which is something Apple likes. | | From the user perspective though? Many Mac users would still | like to be able to run PC games (especially ones that aren't in | the iOS or macOS App Stores) out of the box, and this would be | served by developing a high-quality version of Proton (or | equivalent) for macOS. And they'd also like Steam to work well | out of the box. Making this happen would be a drop in Apple's | bucket, and probably wouldn't reduce App Store sales. And it | might help with hardware sales for students and others who | might be on the fence due to certain Windows games not running | on macOS. | 999900000999 wrote: | Gamepass is a gift and a curse, on one hand, it makes Windows | gaming dirt cheap. But it also makes Linux Gaming like this | pointless. | | If half the games I want to play are locked to Gamepass, I'm not | having fun with Linux. Now, if Gamepass could run on Photon, we | can talk. | MikeMaven wrote: | ShamelessC wrote: | Can someone please summarize this rather than giving a one | sentence blurb about why you love proton, as that is only | tangentially relevant. | fhd2 wrote: | It basically means you can now try the upcoming release, not | just stable vs experimental, which is the choice we had so far. | You can select it on a per-game basis, so if things don't work | in stable you can select next. | LegitShady wrote: | proton now has an opt-in beta build | ShamelessC wrote: | It did before- one of the many reasons the article is so | confusing. | LegitShady wrote: | proton's beta build now has a cool name, I guess? | jasonpeacock wrote: | I had to go figure out what Proton is: | | "Proton is a tool for use with the Steam client which allows | games which are exclusive to Windows to run on the Linux | operating system. It uses Wine to facilitate this." | | https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton | psychphysic wrote: | It's witchcraft is what it is. | skywal_l wrote: | You can learn some of the spells here: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33156727. | johnxie wrote: | It has come a long way. When running through Proton, the game | and all its middleware are supported seamlessly. Take a look at | https://www.protondb.com | SkyMarshal wrote: | It's Steam's downstream fork of Wine, which is not an emulator. | musicale wrote: | 1. An emulator is a system which implements another system's | functionality so as to serve as a usable replacement. | Examples include in-circuit emulators for hardware | components, or software emulators for game system hardware. | In each case, the emulator is a usable replacement for the | original system. | | 2. WINE reimplements the functionality of Windows, as exposed | by the Windows ABI, as software running on Linux. | | 3. The combination of WINE and Linux is in fact a usable | replacement for Windows. | | 4. Which means that WINE running on Linux conforms to the | above definition of an emulator for the Windows system. | | 5. Therefore, WINE running on Linux certainly is an emulator | for the Windows system. | | QED | Asooka wrote: | Wine is not an emulator, therefore if your definition of an | emulator brands Wine as an emulator, your definition is | wrong. :) | giraffe_lady wrote: | It may not be an emulator in a highly specific & | technical sense used by and useful to a small group of | experts. It is an emulator in the general and widely- | recognized sense of "software that runs software | originally intended for a different, incompatible | system." | | You see this all the time when a jargon word enters the | general non-specialist vocabulary. It doesn't make either | usage wrong, though it can be confusing sometimes if the | contexts can be difficult to distinguish. In this case | that's unlikely so just give it up please. | | Honestly the quirk where that is its name could be a | really useful entry point for educating non-specialist | readers on the different technical approaches used to | solve this problem! I never see that though, this is only | ever used as a wellackshully on internet forums. It | sucks. | alasdair_ wrote: | Quick, do "GNU is not Unix" next! | TulliusCicero wrote: | Proton is just a UI/service/convenience layer for Wine, right? So | when there's specific fixes for games, are those actually Wine | updates? | kubik369 wrote: | No, Proton is Valve's fork of wine. | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | Why does Proton have so many Wine dependencies? | | > Proton is a tool for use with the Steam client which allows | games which are exclusive to Windows to run on the Linux | operating system. It uses Wine to facilitate this. | jandrese wrote: | Because it is built on top of Wine. The difference is when | you try to run a game on just Wine you'll often have to do | some fiddling on the command line or in configuration files | to get the thing to work, if at all. Proton is much less | fiddly. Stuff more often than not just works from clicking | start. | ACS_Solver wrote: | Importantly, Proton also integrates DXVK. I don't know the | details too well but I think DXVK is responsible for a large | part of Proton's "it just works" and it's a separate project | from Wine. You can configure Wine to use DXVK but in Proton | everything is preconfigured so you never have to think about | them as different components. | ydlr wrote: | Thanks to proton, I have completely forgotten how to configure | wine prefixes. | hypothesis wrote: | Is this unique to Proton? There seems like quite a few game | managers on Linux nowadays, none require knowing much of Wine. | dudeinhawaii wrote: | Proton was instrumental in my move from Windows to Linux. With | over 400 games in my back catalog, I didn't want to lose | thousands of dollars not to mention thousands of hours on games | which I enjoy. | | Thus far, 92% of games have ran flawlessly for me on Fedora (4 | failures in the last 50). The main issues have been related to | games that have kernel mode drivers for copy protection or other | exotic types of anti-cheat. Perhaps most amazing (to me anyway) | is the fact that mods and workshop items work perfectly. In most | cases, I could pop open a saved game and continue on Linux, | custom mods included. | | Performance-wise, I haven't noticed a difference but I generally | run very modern hardware which works better with the DirectX to | Vulcan implementation. I also swapped to an AMD chip/gpu when | moving to Linux and I think that removed the headaches that | people often have with Nvidia drivers. Overall, it's been | fantastic. | skywal_l wrote: | Do you mind giving us the name of those 4 games failing on | proton? | dotancohen wrote: | I would rather have the names of the 46 games that did work! | overlordalex wrote: | If you're curious, ProtonDB is the place to check if the | game you're interested in is supported (and how well). | | You can also just browse and see what is supported. Here is | the list sorted by the highest user ratings: | https://www.protondb.com/explore?sort=userScore | jandrese wrote: | Some notable Linux gaming failures for me: | | Roblox. Kids really wanted me on this but I've never been | able to get it to work. Technically not on Steam/Proton, but | a notable failure. | | Eador: It runs but the graphics are completely garbled. | | Anything VR: No luck at all getting QuestLink working on | Linux. | | Several games don't like later versions of Proton and I have | to force them on older versions. This isn't a huge problem | except that it it an annoying amount of fiddling to figure | out which version is working. | inyorgroove wrote: | Grapejuice [1] works excellent for me with Roblox, simply | launch games from browser just like windows. Super easy to | install if you are on Arch [2] as well. | | [1]: https://gitlab.com/brinkervii/grapejuice | | [2]: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/grapejuice | javawizard wrote: | At risk of picking nits, 4 failures in 50 would be 92% :) | dudeinhawaii wrote: | Haha, just spotted that myself, thanks :) | musicale wrote: | I wouldn't mind it if someone made a version of Proton that ran | on macOS. | climb_stealth wrote: | I wish they would sell the Steam Deck in Australia. Does anyone | know whether you can buy one overseas and use it anyway? | SXX wrote: | Basically it's normal PC so you can even just install Windows | there (but it will degrade overall experience). So there is | absolutely no lock-ins and you can use hardware any way you | like. | [deleted] | climb_stealth wrote: | That makes sense from a hardware point of view. I was | wondering whether there would be issues using a Steam account | from an unsupported country. | | It requires a Steam account in a supported country to order. | But after receiving it, can you log in to an account from a | different country? Technically it should be doable. But there | might be some policy that stops it from working. | SXX wrote: | I didn't manage to get one myself, but friend of mine use | Steamdeck he ordered through UK in Turkey just fine. | Obviously you can't buy one in Turkey. | 91edec wrote: | You can buy a Steam deck from any country and use your | account, the deck isn't account locked. For example my | friend bought a deck in the UK, moved to America and | changed his region then came back to pick it up. We were | both able to log into the device UK & US. | jackvalentine wrote: | Yes, I got mine from an eBay reseller shipped to Australia for | a bit of a markup and it works fine - only 'foreign' thing I | noticed was on the KDE desktop the date format was american | which is obviously a single setting change and you're done. | boppo1 wrote: | Can proton be used to run other windows software well under | Linux? I would KILL to have desktop-excel in xubuntu. | MerelyMortal wrote: | Excel and Word in Office 2016 work pretty well in Crossover. (I | don't know about the newer versions.) | G3rn0ti wrote: | If you restrict yourself to older office versions like e.g. | 2013, they should be working fine with vanilla wine. At least I | remember running Word seamlessly on my gnome desktop. I even | created a ,,desktop" file so I could double click on word files | to fire up Word. | | I recommend using the ,,play4linux" fronted to wine which makes | it rather easy to install and maintain windows applications and | games. | trelane wrote: | If you're looking for applications, CodeWeavers' Crossover | Office is the place to go. If you _actually_ can 't afford it, | you can use plain WINE. But Crossover is nicer, has support, | and funds WINE development, since CodeWeavers sends their | patches upstream. | | https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover | gkhartman wrote: | Will desktop excel actually run smoothly on this? It's been | ages since I've tried, but I didn't have much luck in the | past. | | I'd really love to ditch my windows machine, but my employer | makes use of excel plugins that only run on the desktop | version. | trelane wrote: | Looks like it's changed a lot. It looks like it was good | until about 2010, then it stopped working. Might also be | why they apparently renamed it to "Crossover" from | "Crossover Office." Guess I'm really out of date here. :) | | Wait, maybe I was looking at _Mac_ compatibility. It looks | like 365 runs decently on Linux. | | They have a site you can check compatibility at: https://ww | w.codeweavers.com/compatibility/crossover/microsof... is | the page for MS Office 365. | | You can download a free trial and see if it works. | openmapsguy wrote: | You're looking for wine https://www.winehq.org/. Proton is | built on top of wine. | gjsman-1000 wrote: | A reminder once again that Proton only exists because, for all | the benefits of Linux, making a native Linux port is a massive | mess. The community calling for developers to make native ports | often forget that Linux's userland stability and consistency is | simply not at the level developers expect or need for a quality | port. | | Until the day arrives when you can install a game on, say, Fedora | 37 that was initially developed against, say, Ubuntu 16.04 or | Fedora 26, it is not happening. Win32 is by far the most | consistent and widely-supported API on Linux right now, which is | a damning indictment of Linux, not game developers who don't | support it. Even macOS has way better backwards compatibility and | consistency than Linux does, but developers are scared to touch | that. If macOS isn't good enough for developers, native Linux | ports are a pipe dream. | trelane wrote: | I've yet to have a game not work because I was using the wrong | distro. | Yuioup wrote: | Really? I have nothing but problems trying to play native | Linux games. 99% don't even launch. | | Proton is a much better experience. | gjsman-1000 wrote: | I am talking about native Linux ports and people who complain | about the lack of native ports instead of, at best, Proton | ports. | trelane wrote: | I am also talking about native ports. I preferentially buy | Linux native ports. | irusensei wrote: | I thought this was something really new. TBH you can probably | take advantage of many of these new features by using one of the | Glorious Eggroll releases. It's nice that it can be used from the | interface though. | Nullabillity wrote: | This seems to be in between stable and experimental, which is | in turn usually behind the GE builds. | LeSaucy wrote: | It is incredible how well proton works on the steam deck. | irusensei wrote: | Also works very well on a full AMD laptop I own. Running | Fedora. | | I often play FFXIV with it. Not verified. It's ironic that the | game runs perfectly on Proton but the main source of problems | and incompatibilities is the launcher which uses MSHTML for | wathever reason. Proton GE seems to have fixed the issue with | the launcher but game patches sometimes break it. | mattbee wrote: | It really is. | | And I noticed quite early on: the Steam games which had | problems were the ones _with_ native Linux ports - wonky | display settings, or controller not recognised or something | like that. The fix is always to tell it to "force" a version | of Proton, which caused Steam to go and download the Win32 | build instead. | opan wrote: | I get the feeling people hit a bad game or two and stopped | checking, so I just want to say native ports actually work | fine in my experience, both before and after Proton's birth. | Terraria, Garry's Mod, Valve's own titles, and Starbound | should all work fine to name a few. | | I fear we'll get fewer proper native ports because of Proton, | so it's hard for me to get excited about it. Especially with | how it seems to be on by default and work sort of invisibly, | it's like they want to hide from people if they're playing a | native game or not. I don't even think it's a malicious move, | more like the common sin of trying to appeal to the lowest | common denominator at the cost of the older advanced users. | | I have heard some old ports were actually just shipping their | game with wine, so for those Proton is probably an | improvement, but some games (indie especially) actually made | proper ports years ago and I think we ought to use them and | recognize their efforts. | mattbee wrote: | I'm sure there are lots of working Linux ports! I was just | saying that when I _did_ have a problem with a game on my | Deck, disabling the Linux port fixed it. | | Where are the compromises for a developer in using Proton? | There's one binary for them to ship (and update), they get | to use industry-standard tools, and Valve makes sure it | works on other platforms for free. | | Surely the result is more games you can run on a Linux | system? | | Or rather - nobody cares when Windows leans on layers of | backwards-compatibility to run a binary perfectly, why does | anyone care when Linux does the same? | gjsman-1000 wrote: | Looking over the Linux ecosystem, I would say that Linux | itself has far more blame for the lack of native ports than | the developers do. Developing for Linux is complicated, | requires constant intervention, has frequent compatibility | gotchas, has little "best practices" established, among | other issues. Games are complicated things - name one | native Linux port that works just fine on Fedora 37 when it | was built for Ubuntu 16.04. Unless it got recently updated | or is only a simple 2D Game, odds are not in your favor. | | For an example of this, read Mike Rose about the game | _Defenders._ Linux was 0.8% of sales, but over 50% of | technical complaints. Whereas, if they dumped it for a | Proton build, the onus is no longer on them for a working | Linux build or for compatibility issues on Linux - its way | easier to just say YMMV. | | Blaming developers for the lack of native games is like the | pot calling the kettle black. Until Linux becomes a decent | platform to build for, developers aren't interested in | rewriting major parts of their games every time the Linux | community has a new idea. The lack of native games, I would | argue, is more a failure of Linux than a failure of game | developers. | | Whether we like it or not, this lack of stability in Linux | and the ability to just fork every time you don't like | something, has led to Win32 becoming the common API for | Linux. You build for Windows and Vulkan, and specifically | test your game against Proton, and you can run on almost | any Linux distribution that supports Proton without banging | your head into a wall, or doing frequent patching every | year. | tracker1 wrote: | I think flatpak/appimage/snap are good for similar | reasons... If you're developing commercially supported | applications and want to support Linux as well as Windows | and Mac, it's a pretty natural target. Less (although not | none) issues with the host OS depending on what your | application does. | | Yeah, it means a lot of duplicate libraries, but it also | means things will work... and aside from games, not aware | of many that install more than a couple one-off | applications to work with. | ip26 wrote: | What a mirror world this is, where Win32 (via Proton) is the | best & most stable Linux ABI. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | As one of my buddies put it, 'it is basically magic'. I agree. | Compared to manual fiddling, it is amazing. For the proton work | alone, Steam got a lot of goodwill from me. | Shared404 wrote: | Same here. | | I almost went to GOG, but Proton pulled me back to Steam very | quickly. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | GOG has a place in my heart. I still try to throw them | money every so often, but I will admit that at this point | Steam won when it comes to a platform as a whole. GOG can | still manage, but they will need to secure non-DRM for | popular games, which may be a taller order. Divinity was | great, but it is such a rarity these days. | bagels wrote: | Still no pubg, afik :( | nyadesu wrote: | Is it related to steam deck's anti-cheat support? | Nuzzerino wrote: | Okay, but what does it actually do? | manchmalscott wrote: | Valve's continual focus on Linux (SteamOS 1.0 was released | _eight_ years ago) is honestly incredible, Proton even sometimes | works better than native Linux builds. Truly nobody else (in the | gaming space) is doing it like Valve are. I saw a talk[1] from a | KDE dev talking about features Valve sponsored to be added to KDE | Plasma and it 's things that are useful for everyone outside the | context of the steam deck. | | The only thing that doesn't really work I've noticed is when | games have an online component, whether it's like easy anti cheat | which I've heard _should_ be just flipping a switch to enable but | I haven 't seen anyone actually do that, or some weirdness | happening with whatever the new Microsoft Flight Simulator is | doing that makes it seemingly a 50/50 coin toss as to whether | it'll run with the exact same settings. | | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0gEIeFgDX0 | polishdude20 wrote: | It makes sense from a survival perspective. Microsoft has their | own game store, apple too. If you want to sell games to people, | you need a way to play them and not be at risk of being shut | down by the big players. | smeagull wrote: | I have a incredibly well specced Mac from work that I could use | for gaming, but Linux support on steam is so far ahead that I | don't bother anymore - it's a pain to figure out what games are | supported on Mac - something I no longer even bother to check | on Linux. | MagicMoonlight wrote: | Proton works better than native windows builds. In some cases | it actually fixes bugs in the windows version | smeagull wrote: | It's also true for support of old games. I could use a VM | with a flaky version of Windows XP (which I have done, and it | always crashes) OR I could use wine and have no issues. | andrepd wrote: | Proton is literally what made me permanently go from dual- | booting Windows to going Linux full time. I can play all games | I care to play with excellent performance on Linux. It's pretty | amazing. Kudos to the Wine and Proton team. | zamalek wrote: | I watched a talk by GabeN _years_ ago, where he explained his | business philosophy (which also had to do with his exit from | Microsoft). It was strikingly simple: treat your customers | well. Supporting Linux is treating his customers well (even if | the majority of customers don 't understand that... yet). | MikusR wrote: | > treat your customers well | | That's why it took a lawsuit to get refund support for Steam. | soulofmischief wrote: | That lawsuit specifically had to do with meeting Australian | guidelines. I personally have had zero complaints with the | Steam refund system here in America. | girvo wrote: | They didn't have a refund system initially. | bombcar wrote: | Valve's customers are the studios. | | Only half-sarcastically. | chairmanwow1 wrote: | Not really. More like hostage to distribution. If you | list your game on Steam, you can't list your game for a | cheaper price anywhere else on the internet. | | People put up with that because they still come out ahead | by listing on Steam. | IshKebab wrote: | In fairness Steam's prices are very reasonable. I imagine | there are ways around it anyway. | ip26 wrote: | If his customers don't feel they are being treated well (e.g. | they don't understand, and won't for years) then does it | really fall under that principle? | Teever wrote: | Needless pedantism. | ip26 wrote: | If I explained to you that Musk's decision to buy Tesla | was founded on his principle of _"make the requirements | less dumb"_ , would it be pedantry to inquire what I | meant? | zamalek wrote: | This is more along the lines of Apple having (at least | historically) being pro-privacy before the problem became | common knowledge. | Keyframe wrote: | Yet fleecing game developers with 30% cut on sales at the | same time. It's a soft big cushion to talk profound thoughts | from. Reminds me of billionaires giving advice like "you just | have to believe and work hard"... yeah, but that's a low | baseline you have to have anyways. | neura wrote: | How do you think they got to where they are? by not | believing and not working hard? Valve has been working at | what they do for longer than some people commenting here | have been alive. Steam has been around for 19 years. | | Do you believe developers should be able to use something a | company has spent the last 19 years investing in and | building... for free or cheap? Is there a competitor in the | market that would bring them as much exposure while not | charging as much? The only thing I can think of are | platforms like EGS, where they basically pay people to sell | their games on there, so they can grow the platform. | | I haven't done the math myself, but I'm guessing indie | developers would be hard pressed to make the same money | without using Steam as they do using Steam, even with the | "fleecing" you're talking about. | jlund-molfese wrote: | Sales through the store, yes. | | You're welcome to sell Steam keys on your own website, and | Valve won't take any cut at all, while still providing the | same services as a purchase through the store. | | See https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys , at | face value, it's a completely reasonable policy. | satvikpendem wrote: | If only Apple and Google could do the same. | Keyframe wrote: | That's actually quite good and impressive. I haven't | realized that. | neura wrote: | Still comes back to "can you sell enough keys on your own | to make up for the amount of sales you get through Steam, | even after the 30%?" It's great if you think you have a | hot game or product that will be sought after by a large | enough audience vs people seeing a game show up in their | feed or on sale or a friend is playing it or however it | ends up in front of you on Steam, a game that maybe | you've never heard of before and now you're going to buy | it. | worble wrote: | This is a really good power play - the idea being that if | you can get more eyes than Steam can through your own | store, go ahead, keep the money. | | But if you're getting the sale because of Steam itself, | then we get the cut. | | You can still debate whether 30% is fair even if Steam | are providing the discoverability but still, it's a solid | policy and they're putting their money where their mouth | is. | manchmalscott wrote: | It totally makes business sense for them to not have to | depend on Microsoft (who have their own gaming business) for | their customers to play games, we all win when consumers have | meaningful alternatives. | firecall wrote: | The Steam brand and mindshare is second to none in my | experience. | | My tweener kids will preference Steam over all other | platforms. They would rather buy/re-buy, or pay more for a | game on Steam than use another game launcher. | | Their are games that are free to play with Xbox game pass, | but they would rather buy and play them under Steam. | | They have negative views on Epic, Ubisoft and so on. | Blizzard/Battle.net aren't even on their radar. | | They are mostly indifferent to MS/Xbox Store. | | With Steam, the brand respect they have is five-stars! | christophilus wrote: | It's well earned. Steam is BS-free relative to the others | on your list. Steam could degrade significantly in quality | and customer satisfaction and still handily beat that lot. | denkmoon wrote: | I'm the same, as a 30-something. Steam is so much better | and Gabe has fostered my undying loyalty. He'd have to | shoot my dog to stop me using Steam. | xdfgh1112 wrote: | > Their are games that are free to play with Xbox game | pass, but they would rather buy and play them under Steam. | | Why though? | gatonegro wrote: | > _treat your customers well. Supporting Linux is treating | his customers well._ | | It's really won me over, I can say that much. When I was | using Windows, I favoured buying games from GOG over Steam | whenever possible. DRM and all that. | | Ever since I moved to Linux, it's been the opposite. GOG | couldn't care less about Linux compatibility, and while you | _can_ get their stuff going through some combination of Wine | /Lutris scripts, the experience I get with Steam is so much | better. | the-smug-one wrote: | I'm sure GOG would care if they had more resources. Valve's | push into Linux is because Microsoft is making a big push | towards there being a single walled garden store: | Microsoft's. Valve is doing this ultimately to benefit | themselves. That's of course the case with GOG too, but GOG | has very little money to put into any sort of Linux push so | they have to lean on Valve's investments. | boudin wrote: | I wouldn't put GOG in the same basket as other stores like | EGS though, they did make some efforts and officially | packaged and distributed games for Linux quite early. It's | not the same effort as Valve but it's still to their credit | (I'm saying that as a Linux user). | | Nowdays, Heroic Game Launcher is the easiest option to play | GOG games though (as well as EGS ones) | https://heroicgameslauncher.com/ | mhh__ wrote: | Forget native Linux, it's more stable than native windows for | me on a few games (and sometimes faster because of windows FS | horribleness) | KptMarchewa wrote: | If it was Google instead of Valve, those projects would been | killed approximately 47 times already. | viraptor wrote: | It's a bit more than flipping a switch with the anti cheat. | Those are absurd systems which use every a bit of trickery on | Windows to both detect any manipulation and hide themselves | from being interfered with. They both load up as Windows | drivers and check for things like enforced driver signature. | Steam will need either perfect compatibility with everything | they do, or EAC and others will need to cooperate to provide | SteamOS-specific versions. | | It's in EAC interest to _not_ work on wine out of the box, | otherwise it would be too easy to work around. | SXX wrote: | Basically Valve already partnered with anti-cheat developers | and enabling their support on Linux is in fact just flipping | of a switch. | | Unfortunately this switch need to be flipped by developers / | publishers of particular game and they dont cooperate too | well. | Thaxll wrote: | It's not just flipping the switch, this is none sense. | | That means now the dev has to officialy support the game on | this platform and all the problems that comes with it. | | On top of that the anti cheat on linux is a joke because | it's running in user space so serious game won't enable it | just for that reason. | | https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/14907597078411591 | 7... | smoldesu wrote: | Couple things to note: | | - The developer has no obligation to support the | platform, Valve provides and pins a working runtime and | unless the game is redesigned from scratch (see: Final | Fantasy XIV) it should work in perpetuity. | | - Anticheat on Windows is also a joke unless it runs in | Ring 0, which is literally impossible on platforms like | Steam Deck (Flatpak Steam only runs in user space for | security reasons). No self-respecting developer should | write kernel mode DRM in the first place, though. | | - It very well could be as simple as flipping a switch - | in the case of Apex Legends, the game already ran | perfectly fine but couldn't connect to servers without | the anticheat library loading properly. When EA updated | the anticheat drivers, the game worked fine on Linux | without any modification. | | Of course, nobody has a de-facto obligation to support | Linux. The larger point is that it's deceptively easy to | get your game working on 90% of the world's Linux | systems, much more so than shipping to MacOS or console. | If all the world's 'serious game[s]' won't run on Linux, | than that makes it the world's greatest casual gaming | platform :) | FridgeSeal wrote: | Maybe Mr Sweeney should focus more on making an anti- | cheat that actually works, compared to the dumpster-fire | that is EAC. | | Its functioning is spotty-at-best on windows, and when it | takes issue with _something_ on your system the | troubleshooting is useless. At least Valorants' anti- | cheat will tell you what it doesn't like. | tapoxi wrote: | The issue is that flipping that EAC switch means you're | effectively disabling a lot of its checks, which is why not | many developers want to do it. Maybe this will change as | the Steam Deck becomes more popular. | rob74 wrote: | My own experience with Proton has been a bit more spotty, maybe | because I tried it with some really old games that are not that | well tested? Bioshock 1 crashed several times, then I got it to | work with some hints from ProtonDB, Bioshock 2 worked "out of | the box", Batman: Arkham City (which I bought years ago and | never actually got around to playing) didn't work, and I wasn't | motivated enough to fiddle with the settings long enough to get | it to run. One way to improve Proton would be to provide a | possibility to automatically import settings from ProtonDB | (it's called "DB", but actually it's more of a forum). But if | you look at ProtonDB, every user seems to have different | problems and different solutions for these problems, so it's | hard to see if some kind of consensus has emerged on how to | best get a game to run. | kjuulh wrote: | Happy to see a fix for final fantasy XIV launcher. That thing had | been an infuriating ordeal. | | Kudos to the proton team for supporting such an archaic | technology. | UI_at_80x24 wrote: | I want to buy a SteamDeck. But I don't think I have the spare | hours. After work, taking care of the kids, and housework I | _might_ have 1 spare hour a day to sit down with the wife. I'd | rather watch something on TV with her. To have any kind of free | time I have to stay up till 1am! | | I could bring the SteamDeck when I bring the kids to the park, | but that just feels like I'm cheating the kids. | | I work from home. | | 8am-9am get ready for work/get kids ready for the day | | 9am-5pm work | | 5pm-8pm doing stuff with the kids | | 8pm-9pm eat, get kids ready for bed | | 9pm-11pm housework/watch TV | | 11pm-midnight miscellaneous stuff to prepare for the next day. | | I almost wish I had a commute by train or something. Or a | housekeeper, or an Au Pair/nanny. | | How the fuck do other grownups do it? (I'm 49, and exhausted all | the time) | http-teapot wrote: | Same boat! I picked up a Steam Deck, was desperately looking | for a multiplayer game I could play 20-30 minutes in the day, | and found Deep Rock Galactic. I only play when my wife watches | a TV show or in bed. | PrivateButts wrote: | My wife loves the Steam Deck, mainly because I've been playing | more games in the living room at night, instead of playing | games in my office. Being in the same room as one another, even | if we're doing different things, works pretty good for us. | | It's also gotten them back into PC games, as they have more | access to games through family sharing and the Deck does a | great job of taking care of most of the fiddly bits of playing | on PC. | | I fully expected the deck to be the typical valve hardware | experience for me. Something that was well built, and very | neat, but would be gathering dust in a month or two. However, I | think we've got more usage out of my Deck in 6 months then | we've gotten out of my Index, Vive, Steam Controller, and Steam | Link combined. | girvo wrote: | I am 32 and don't have kids, so I have more spare time luckily | -- but the exhaustion for me was originally low iron (unlikely | unless you have a vegan diet too), and low B12 (which is | surprisingly common in people on non-vegan diets too!). | Supplementing iron and drinking more (fortified, here in Aus) | soy milk solved the exhaustion for me: if you haven't had a | blood test in a while to check some levels it might be worth | looking into | Asooka wrote: | > How the fuck do other grownups do it? | | Wait until the kids are old enough to take care of themselves | at home. Once they're about 12, they should be more than | capable of helping with housework a bit, taking care of their | own affairs, and even going alone to the park with their | friends. | weatherlight wrote: | Sometimes it's fun to cuddle with the kids while you play a | game that they enjoy. | | My 6 and 4 year old love "Tunic" and "Stray." | | The Steamdeck is a lot of fun. | atemerev wrote: | Of all this, I have chosen not going to work. I work from home | as a consultant. I don't know how people can possibly live and | keep their families while going to their office jobs every day. | | Since you already working from home, you might want to look for | something more asynchronous than working 9-5 non-interrupted. | dark-star wrote: | The SteamDeck is actually _perfect_ if you only have like one | hour here and there, since you can just pick it up and continue | playing from where you left off (suspend /resume works | flawlessly)... | Scramblejams wrote: | You have decided to be an engaged parent! That's awesome. The | world needs more of that. | | The SteamDeck is, as a wise sibling said, not for playing more | games, but for playing games more. It's really excellent for | gaming in very small doses as opportunities arise. Find | yourself waiting for 5 minutes for someone to do something? Hit | the button, pick up the game right where you left off. When you | get interrupted, hit the button, it goes right to sleep. | Perfect for a busy life. | Tade0 wrote: | > How the fuck do other grownups do it? (I'm 49, and exhausted | all the time) | | I suppose the answer is "they don't". I've found that I can't | really commit to any side project any more because my time off | is not consistent. | | Also: | | > 5pm-8pm doing stuff with the kids | | You're a better parent than me. I have such days, but I can't | say I spend this much quality time with my child every day. | | In any case I have a friend from two previous projects whose | child is just two weeks older than my toddler, so we compared | notes regarding this and many other topics. | | Summary of what's definitely possible with _one_ child: | | -Inviting grandma/pa over - provided they live close enough. | | -Scheduled leave from parenting - like one evening a week. The | other parent takes over. | | -Cleaning person. Personally I just get up every hour from my | office and do some chores. It's not enough, but it helps. | | -Nanny. | | -One parent as the homemaker. | | -Natural tendency to sleep less. I have maybe 7h of sleep ahead | of me right now but somehow this is fine. Perhaps I'll pay the | price for this later in life, who knows. | atemerev wrote: | "One parent as the homemaker" -- this looks very unfair in | 2022. | [deleted] | milliams wrote: | How is this different from Proton Experimental? | bcrescimanno wrote: | Proton Next - Candidate build for the next major version | release. | | Proton Experimental - "Bleeding edge" builds. | cybersol wrote: | So Proton is like Debian, Proton Next is like Debian Testing, | and Proton Experimental is like Debian Sid. Got it, thanks! | Dwedit wrote: | How much of Proton fixes go back to Wine and vice versa? | tomnipotent wrote: | CodeWeavers is responsible for upwards of 2/3 of Wine commits. | A lot of open source projects benefit from similar | relationships, like Postgres/Crunchy Data. | NayamAmarshe wrote: | Using Proton feels like magic. The fact that you can run games | made for a totally different OS, which isn't even based on Unix | or Linux is a big feat in itself. | | Valve is just a single company pushing for Linux gaming and the | results have been excellent. | | Linux is the perfect candidate too. Efficient, open, easy to | modify and adapt. I hope more companies follow Valve and realize | the true untapped potential of Linux systems. | kilolima wrote: | Why is it magic? Wine has been around since forever. It's not | like Valve wrote most of the underlying code proton runs on. | | And what's with all the valve/steam hype from people that | should know better? At the end of the day you are using a DRM | front end (steam) that fragments the mod ecosystem and | obfuscates the process of installing and running the software | you paid for on your own computer. | girvo wrote: | As someone who paid for CodeWeavers/CrossOver back in the day | and spent far more time fighting WINE configs than I did | gaming, Proton honestly does feel a bit like magic. | ACS_Solver wrote: | The initial release of Proton felt like magic to me. | | I tried many games with Wine across many years, from versions | well before Wine 1.0 to 4.0, I also tried CodeWeavers | something (Crossover?) when that was a thing. A few games | worked very well, for example I remember running a newly- | released Civ4 almost seamlessly. But most games didn't. Some | would be playable but with graphical or audio glitches, | performance or stability issues. Others wouldn't be playable | no matter what. Tinkering with dll overrides, wineprefixes | and all that was often necessary. | | Then Proton came and, almost overnight, the Linux gaming | experience improved more than in the previous fifteen years | of Wine-based attempts. A few years later now, my default | expectation has changed to games just working on Linux, | unless they use a rootkit-style anti-cheat system. Most games | I played under Proton have worked with native-like quality, I | could as well be running them on a Windows gaming rig. A few | games worked with minor issues such as a few seconds of | garbled audio on startup or slower startup. There's only one | recent game where I had to give up on Proton, and that game | is supposed to run well according to ProtonDB, I just | couldn't it right on my system. | ip26 wrote: | Wine didn't get that much beyond "tech demo" level magic for | many years. Magic for sure, but not of the same grade. | NayamAmarshe wrote: | Wine is amazing too but if you notice, Wine is not as great | at running Windows apps as Proton is at running Windows | games. Most games work great with Proton but only a few apps | work properly with Wine. | | > And what's with all the valve/steam hype from people that | should know better? | | In Linus Torvalds' own words: "Valve will save the Linux | Desktop" | miohtama wrote: | Linux and Wine open source ecosystem have always been | resource constrained. For this reason, they have not been | able to deliver the polish Proton brings to make the Linux | gaming available for mass markets. | | If DRM locked frontend like Steam is the price to pay for it, | it is a small price. Eventually their changes get upstreamed | and it improves the ecosystem overall. | hypothesis wrote: | I think it's "magic" in same sense that, say, Ubuntu used to | be in the beginning. There were other distros too, but none | did mix it all together for easy of use/polish. So ignore the | hype and enjoy benefits to the ecosystem. | tomnipotent wrote: | Wine gets you 80% of the way there, but that remaining 20% | that Proton fills in takes it from "awesome technology" to | "usable product". Everyone is building on the shoulder of | giants. | howinteresting wrote: | Others have already covered Proton being actually usable | without tweaking compared to Wine. But I want to dispute your | other point. | | Obfuscating usually means to make harder. Steam generally | makes it easier to download and play games with features like | automatic updates, remote play and cloud save sync, not | harder. | musha68k wrote: | Due to Proton I feel like coming back to PC gaming after almost | 20 years, great stewardship by Valve there. | | The last "rig" I built was for Doom 3 after which I'd never | bothered with keeping a NTFS partition again. | | Apple silicon just doesn't seem to get to the levels needed for a | state-of-the-art Cyberpunk 2077 experience even on pricier high- | end Macs. I'm also still not willing to buy any "next-gen" | consoles for the first time either (trend of maybe efficient but | still glorified PC architecture continuing). | | Would anyone have a list of well tested Linux + Proton compatible | components? | | Nvidia or AMD? Which drivers are better maintained at this point? | It would still be cool to run some machine learning workloads for | fun of course. | | Any pointers would be appreciated. | AlotOfReading wrote: | My current experience on alder lake + Nvidia 30 series isn't | quite a smooth enough experience to move my non-technical | fiancee over, but it's close enough that I've considered it. | | The AMD drivers are mainlined and they've gotten a lot better | about stability than where they were a couple years ago. Valve | has done a lot of compatibility testing/fixes for the steamdeck | as well. | | The Nvidia drivers are also pretty stable and many distros | provide them out of the box. They're still going to be your | main choice for ML stuff. | | For CPUs both Intel and AMD are extremely well supported. There | are generally more eyes on the Intel side though. | eggsome wrote: | For GPU: AMD (but not _too_ cutting edge is the easy answer | here). Any of the Radeon 6000 series will work well out of the | box with recent open source kernels. | | CPU wize Intel/AMD does not matter. | themoonisachees wrote: | Basically anything recent but not the latest components will | work well. If you want hassle-free then going with amd | everything is the most efficient IMO. | | I'm running a ryzen 3600 and a radeon rx5700xt, and i've not | had any driver issues, be it with x11 or wayland. I've been | playing a bunch of games from my library but there are still | some games that aren't compatible (for ex. Vermintide 2 has | non-compatible anticheat) so i keep a spartan windows instal on | a 128gb ssd for those and VR. VR is a non-starter on linux. | | That being said, nvidia has RT cores now, which can do very | fast matrix multiplication which is advantageous for ML | workloads (on top of a lot of ml work being optimized for cuda | cores). Can't speak to their drivers but older cards should be | safer, especially considering the 40 series hasn't been shown | to be worth it over used 30 series. | terribleperson wrote: | Go with wired networking or be careful about your choice of | WiFi hardware. Some wireless chipsets have poor Linux support, | but there are usually lists of good ones and bad ones. When it | comes to graphics, AMD GPUs Vega or newer work incredibly well | on Linux. NVidia has a fairly substantial lead in GPU | performance, but they have poor Linux support and appear to be | actively working to make their hardware a bad deal. Most | motherboards have no issues on Linux, but audio and networking | can be pain points. CPU brand is not an issue with Linux, but | since your choice of CPU and choice of motherboard are tied | together, it is something you might have to think about. | Perhaps pick a price, find AMD and Intel motherboards that | support the features you want and have good Linux | compatibility, and then figure out which brand gets you better | performance at that price with your desired feature set. | | Hardware that requires a proprietary windows app to control can | be a problem - think RGB hardware and fancy gaming mice. There | is some software to work with these sorts of things and you can | get Logitech gaming mice working on Linux but it is somewhat | harder than it should be. Stay away from Razer - their software | is more troublesome than anyone else's. | | Steam has absolutely incredible controller support. It is | ludicrously good. If you want to play games on PC with a | controller, hope they're Steam games or at least work well when | launched through steam. | | Use PCPartPicker when you're putting together your build. Their | website is a wonderful tool for checking compatibility even | though it's not perfect. If you ask someone for advice on your | build, being able to give them a PCPartPicker link really | speeds things up. If you're looking for a place to get advice | on a build, /r/buildapc is generally decent. | | If you're concerned about upgradeability or future-proofing, | it's not a great time for that on the CPU front. AMD's AM5 | socket just came out and probably has a good few years ahead of | it, but the first-generation motherboards are awfully expensive | and you should never buy first gen mobos anyways. It is also | quite possible they will have poor support for Zen 5 CPUs. | Intel's LGA 1200 socket is obsolete and current LGA 1700 | motherboards probably won't support anything past the 13th | generation (Raptor Lake). That said, a new mid or high-end CPU | is likely to remain useful for many years since popular games | are somewhat limited by the need to support 9th gen consoles. | Similar is true for GPUs, but GPU prices are not great at the | moment though they are better than they have been in the past | few years. | | If you have any other questions let me know. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-23 23:00 UTC)