20 ms·

With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux

932 points by bdefore 8y ago

seanhunter 8y ago
In my quick test it seems it depends enormously on the quality of Linux support for your graphics card. If you have a graphics card that DXVK works for then you are in business. Otherwise, not so much.
- bdefore 8y ago
  Right. It's important to have up to date drivers. ProtonDB receives many reports with outdated ones (those are colored in red and not counted toward the aggregate rating) https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Requirements https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Requirements
danschumann 8y ago
Sweet.. haven't checked the list in a while.
- ccnafr 8y ago
  Most major games still don't work. Sadly. Take the AC series, for example: https://www.protondb.com/search?q=creed https://www.protondb.com/search?q=creed
  - jcastro 8y ago
    Most of the difficulty in getting these to run circles around the uplay stuff, for example it won't even launch unless you have the Microsoft fonts installed, and then there's an outdated libgnutls library in the steam runtime that you need to workaround. But once you do that the games actually run, I've gotten Odyssey and Unity to run and they run surprisingly well. If Valve can convince Ubisoft to at least make the launchers not be too intrusive and can solve that last 10% of the config issue then it'd be viable.
- TheRealDunkirk 8y ago
  I see Skyrim, right at the top. And New Vegas. Wow. Any chance Valve could offer this support for Mac as well?
  - m_eiman 8y ago
    As soon as someone makes them a DXMT to use instead of DXVK, I suppose. Isn't there some Rust project working on that..?
    - diesal11 8y ago
      There's a VKMT. So they could double up and go DXVK -> VKMT.
loxs 8y ago
So it's just wine under the hood, so "working" is not exactly true?
- bpicolo 8y ago
  Wine is a big part of it, but there's a bit more to it. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton
  - lostgame 8y ago
    That is, um, incredibly not clear, based on the link you shared. '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.' Even reading down the article to look for more details provides information about building the product, but as far as I can see no other significant details about it's underlying technology. There may be other articles or posts that go over this more, but your link provided no useful or helpful information that I could see in two brief read-overs.
    - derimagia 8y ago
      The Github Readme says to consult the blog post for more info: https://steamcommunity.com/games/221410/announcements/detail/1696055855739350561 https://steamcommunity.com/games/221410/announcements/detail... For your question, look under "Q: What is Proton exactly? How does it differ from normal Wine? Who worked on it?"
      - lostgame 8y ago
        Okay, so, in the future, it may be nice to post a link to the blog post, instead of trying to back up your point with something that requires digging to get to. I appreciate the attempt to clarify, but it's nice to make sure the clarification actually makes things make more sense.
        8y ago
syntaxing 8y ago
Hmm title is confusing. Maybe changing to the original post title will be better? That being said, I wish I can run CAD like fusion 360 on Linux. Anyone know of any way to make this happen?
- jstanley 8y ago
  I use FreeCAD. It is sometimes annoying, but much better than any alternative I've tried. For more programmatic CAD, OpenSCAD is also good.
  - fartcannon 8y ago
    AND you can script them with Python! https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.php?title=Python_scripting_tutorial https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.php?title=Python_scrip...
  - syntaxing 8y ago
    I use FreeCAD and OpenSCAD (especially "automated" file generation) and like what they stand for but unfortunately neither really compares to a standard CAD program. Maybe I'm too used to the big three CAD software.
- krn1p4n1c 8y ago
  I'm in the same boat. Would love to be able to use Fusion in linux, especially with Apple dropping OpenGL support. Last I read they were looking to move the app to web-based and be platform agnostic.
  - syntaxing 8y ago
    I tried the web beta version and it's pretty limited and super slow. Nothing compared to OnShape but OnShapes license, policy and direction has been so bad that I dropped them pretty much after the official release (I used them during the beta phase).
djhworld 8y ago
Is anyone running this setup? The last time I used WINE was probably 12 or so years ago and I always got the impression it was a slow "it will do for now" experience Has it come on leaps and bounds since then?
- gyaru 8y ago
  I've used wine forever to play games with, it's actually really good these days. The difference between the past and now is that it lets you use your current native steam client and still run games through wine, in the past you had to run a separate steam client in each wineprefix and you'd end up with steam installed for each game. The addition of DXVK makes directx10/11 games really speedy, runs great! World of Warcraft runs better in DXVK in its dx11 mode than what it did with OpenGL when they still offered that. The "game-breaking" thing is usually DRM like denuvo though.
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 8y ago
    Is Proton tightly integrated into the steam platform or can it also be used to play DRM free games like GOG? I imagine Steam wouldn’t be too appreciative if GOG galaxy also integrated this
    - galapago 8y ago
      It is not tightly integrated. You can use it to play GOG games manually (from the command line) or using GameHub (https://github.com/tkashkin/GameHub https://github.com/tkashkin/GameHub).
      - SOLAR_FIELDS 8y ago
        I’m so glad that this is for ElementaryOS. It’s a good sign that their package management system is gaining popularity. It’s the only Linux based OS that I’m comfortable installing on friends/family old PC’s that can’t or shouldn’t run Windows 10. Runs fast enough and decent UX. I haven’t had much complaints from the non techies I install it on. Normally I’ll make Firefox the default web browser and throw on Ublock Origin and Privacy badger as well as installing LibreOffice before I hand it back to them. Great simplistic concept for an OS that I can really support.
z3t4 8y ago
We bought a Windows computer so the kids could play some old classics. Not a single game worked on Windows 10, not even in compatibility mode. But most of them worked in Linux/Wine ...
- wishinghand 8y ago
  How old are we talking here?
  - z3t4 8y ago
    I think they're from 2003-2005 System requirements: Pentium 166 or better. Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, or XP. Standard installer, nothing special. They are on PC cd-rom. Got them used for a bargain, mostly learning type games. Could probably run them in an emulator, for example emulating windows XP in the browser. But you shouldn't need to be a sys-op to install a game. And you don't want to fiddle around if you have inpatient children waiting. My point is that the games specially made for Windows, doesn't work on Windows. Byt they do just work on Linux after installing Wine, most of them.
- dudul 8y ago
  Did you get these games from Steam? I found that games distributed by GoodOldGames usually work pretty well on Windows10. I have a dozen of them and never ran into an issue.
  - thirdsun 8y ago
    GOG releases often includes compatibility and even unofficial community patches. You can generally assume that even their old games will work on modern computers.
    - stubish 8y ago
      Fallout 3 being an example, where Steam states it is only compatible with Windows 7, and the Steam reviews guide people to the GOG version which apparently works fine with Windows 10. (It's weird that Fallout 3 is an 'old game'. Am I an 'old man' too?)
bischofs 8y ago
PC gaming is a struggle for me as of now, I have an older rig which I would love to update but simply cant justify the cost. It is pretty frustrating when my friends xbox can run 4k games but the only GPU that is comparable is north of 500$. The ML and crypto hysteria as well as AMD not willing to compete is not healthy for the long term PC gaming industry. It is certainly keeping me out of it.
- wishinghand 8y ago
  Most PC gamers don’t play in 4K and 30 frames per second, much less 60 fps. That’s graphically taxing for many contemporary games, especially if other graphical quality is turned up. The consoles also typically don’t run at full resolution. In the 1080p era, I recall many games topping out at 900p. It was a great source of pc gamer smugness due to the fact most of them could easily run 1080p and 45+ fps. I suspect modern console 4K is the same. Since the generally accepted fps for consoles is 30, and that’s pretty low, it means developers can either compromise on resolution or other things like how many entities can be on screen at once, or how large open areas can be. I suspect catering to console audiences is why a lot of the last ten years some games feel either empty or constrained in scope.
  - beezischillin 8y ago
    While 4K is still somewhat far away on a reasonable set-up, a surprisingly large amount of games can comfortably push 3440x1440@60.
  - jtms 8y ago
    30 FPS? AHHH mah eyes! ;-)
  - Jach 8y ago
    Most gamers don't play in 4K, but a large number (maybe most? Surely the largest minority) on PC probably get 60 FPS. You can look at the Steam hardware survey results here: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw... I've been holding out to do a big upgrade myself, but I got a Gigabyte GTX 1050 Ti last year for $147 to comparably replace my dying AMD 7950. Same card today is $190 (on Amazon). It's more than capable for things at 1080p, and does just fine for some games at 4k too (or I survive with 30-50 FPS and/or tweak with the graphics options; "high" is usually acceptable even if it's not "ultimate"). The new xbone x can do 4k pretty reliably, but that's $500, plus $60 per game. Getting your aging PC (mine is nearly a decade old) up to par (and often exceeding) graphics wise is a cheaper investment in a GPU, and games on PC are routinely on mega sales.
briffle 8y ago
If steam spends some time working with the larger "anti-cheat" vendors, I think they could really bump up the list. Many of the 'borked' games use anti-cheat, like battle-eye.
- breakingcups 8y ago
  Considering the lengths these anti-cheat vendors go to to detect bad behavior (including but not limited to kernel-mode drivers and kernel-hooks), I doubt they have any incentive to go along with this until a massive amount of momentum for gaming on Linux exists.
  - drb91 8y ago
    Valve and steam are large enough to provide incentive themselves if they so choose.
  - uranusjr 8y ago
    I remember not being able to play anything BattlEye because it breaks on a Windows Insider version late 2017, and stuck for half a year until the next stable update cycle. It’ll be a loooong time until they even consider to support anything remotely interesting at all.
- Klathmon 8y ago
  I'd much rather those games just become unplayable. I've had so much trouble with anti-cheat systems that I will now refuse to buy or play any game that uses easyanticheat or battleye. I don't care how much it costs, how many of my friends are playing it, I'm not giving another penny to any company that uses those programs. I get that it's not an easy problem to solve, but i'm so goddamn tired of having to shut down services dedicated to controlling fan speeds in my machine, having to disable network adapters, uninstall vpn software (not just turn it off, uninstall it), and wasting hours trying to figure out why it would crash on startup only to find that it was finding a pcap.dll in a random folder in my downloads from when I was messing with some traffic sniffing stuff on this system like a year before that, and it decided to crash without any warning or error... Cheaters suck in games, and they can ruin it for many others, but there has to be another way other than forcing your paying users to jump through this many hoops. And if there isn't, then i'm happy to be doomed to playing against/with hackers and cheaters rather than not being able to play at all. And I know it's kind of co opting the purpose of Proton, but if they refused to accommodate these anti-cheat systems, then maybe either the game developer or the anti-cheat vendor themselves will see some of the potential paying customers they are excluding and will significantly retool their systems to work.
Waterluvian 8y ago
Admittedly rather reductionist, but I'd love it if there was some single number representing how close to Windows performance each title gets. The main issue I have is that I'm not about to bother with any titles when I consistently find that titles "work" but don't really work well enough.
- fabricexpert 8y ago
  it's at the bottom Current Game Rating Distribution Tier Rated Highest Report Highest Report (But Pending) Platinum 286 2356 1467 Gold 372 399 232 Silver 319 472 367 Bronze 178 195 158 Borked 245 1162 960 each game has this rating in winedb
  - Hello71 8y ago
    ╔══════════╦═══════╦════════════════╦══════════════════════════════╗ ║ Tier ║ Rated ║ Highest Report ║ Highest Report (But Pending) ║ ╠══════════╬═══════╬════════════════╬══════════════════════════════╣ ║ Platinum ║ 286 ║ 2356 ║ 1467 ║ ║ Gold ║ 372 ║ 399 ║ 232 ║ ║ Silver ║ 319 ║ 472 ║ 367 ║ ║ Bronze ║ 178 ║ 195 ║ 158 ║ ║ Borked ║ 245 ║ 1162 ║ 960 ║ ╚══════════╩═══════╩════════════════╩══════════════════════════════╝
    - ByThyGrace 8y ago
      Nice, it's been quite a while since I've seen such tidy use of ASCII in a forum message.
      - zeptomu 8y ago
        Nit-picky, but these are Unicode box-drawing characters which are not part of ASCII: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box-drawing_character https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box-drawing_character
AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
I enabled it on my Fedora laptop and tried a handful of games. About half a dozen of them bombed out immediately. So, very glad to see improvement, but we're still a ways off from being able to chuck my last Windows 7 machine. I find myself more often just biting the bullet and re-buying some old classics when they get "Enhanced" editions (ala Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, etc)--even though I still have the original CD's kicking around--just so I get native Linux support.
- jedimastert 8y ago
  >I find myself more often just biting the bullet and re-buying some old classics when they get "Enhanced" editions (ala Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, etc)--even though I still have the original CD's kicking around--just so I get native Linux support. I think it's a good thing to do anyways. It shows that there's a solid market interest in gaming on Linux.
  - kungtotte 8y ago
    That's another hidden feature of Steam/Proton: Whichever platform you play a new game on the most during the initial two weeks after getting it will be registered as the platform you bought it for. E.g. play a Windows-only game for two weeks using Proton and both Steam and the gamedev will see it as a Linux purchase in their stats. Meaning they get actual numbers how big their Linux demographic is.
    - jedimastert 8y ago
      Really? Wow. That's awesome. Of course, that's kind of unfortunate for games that don't work with Proton right now. Does that remove the Windows purchase too? That could be seen as 2 purchases for the same game.
      - kungtotte 8y ago
        AFAIK it's only for new purchases. So if you've played a game for some time under Windows it won't change the stats for that game.
nurino 8y ago
Can you install and run this without Steam? I already use wine-d3d9 which is very good for WoW but as its name says it doesn't run DX11/12 games.
- shmerl 8y ago
  You don't need Proton without Steam (since it has various Steam specific stuff), but yes, you can. See here for example: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/adamhms_linux_wine_wrappers_news_faq_discussion https://www.gog.com/forum/general/adamhms_linux_wine_wrapper... However, you can simply use upstream Wine with add-ons like dxvk[1] (which is used in Proton). Using esync[2] (also utilized by Proton) requires special branch of Wine, since it's not going to be upstreamed and it's not as simple as installing dll overrides. 1. https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk 2. https://github.com/zfigura/wine/blob/esync-rebased/README.esync https://github.com/zfigura/wine/blob/esync-rebased/README.es...
- folknor 8y ago
  Do yourself a favor and check out https://lutris.net/games/world-of-warcraft/ https://lutris.net/games/world-of-warcraft/ Lutris is excellent for getting many games up and running, and WoW runs much better with dx11+dxvk than wine-d3d9.
lostgame 8y ago
Kinda disappointed this seems to be yet another WINE wrapper with some extra stuff piled on, though I'm not sure what else I could've expected it to be. I long ago lost interest in PC gaming, both from the lack of cross-platform compatibility, and due to the fact that a great graphics card alone easily costs as much as a console these days. I've never played a WINE-wrapped video game or application that did not feel like a half-baked version of it's native application. It's usually things like fonts and strange aliasing that are a complete and dead giveaway. Small aesthetic issues like that completely ruin an otherwise immersive experience for me. I'm glad WINE exists, but I honestly sort of wish they'd just stick to supporting applications more, and pretty much just forget the gaming side. It's never going to get to an equivalent level, because Windows' gaming technology keeps moving forward. Two people start running a race. One of them starts when the gun fires. The other one sits and waits, decides it wants to follow the first runner every step of the way, and starts several minutes (or years, in this metaphor) behind the first. Even if this second runner (WINE) could run as fast as the first (Windows), it would never catch up. And that's assuming it could run as fast as a multi-billion-dollar company. WINE can, simply, never reach a point of compatibility that even most major console emulators have. Because, unlike consoles, Windows keeps on moving. Let's face it. None of us are running *nix or MacOS for the sake of gaming. If you want to run a desktop OS for gaming, there is one. Yes, it's not free, but neither are games. Windows is, at this point, just part of the initial cost of PC gaming, just like a couple extra controllers might be for a console.
- elcomet 8y ago
  > None of us are running *nix or MacOS for the sake of gaming This is true, but also irrelevant. A lot of people are using Linux as their daily driver, and dual boot is not convenient. So wine is very welcome, and I think proton is amazing, you should try it again (i didn't encounter any strange fonts or aliasing like you're describing on games ran with proton via steam). I've been gaming on Linux for the past year and i'm impressed by steam's work here.
  - lostgame 8y ago
    Hey, I mean, let me say, I'm happy to hear this, but again, I feel like it's irrelevant to myself personally that this even exists. Without 100% compatibility, I'm not really interested in something that may run half, or even 75% of my games. I play games to relax. I make games for a living. So all I want, personally, is to pop any disc in my console or hit a shortcut on my desktop and just have it work, every time, out of the box. I know this isn't everyone, but it does hopefully explain a little better why WINE will always be 'irrelevant' to myself. Personally, I think it's the graphics card cost that really prevents me from considering it at all, especially as if I was bothered with PC gaming again, I'd be getting a Vive, also for development's sake.
arcosdev 8y ago
Can they make this work for the Adobe Creative Suite too?
- jhasse 8y ago
  They're just using WINE with some additions for games. So if it doesn't work with WINE yet, there's nothing from Proton that would help.
- c487bd62 8y ago
  Maybe this could work for you? https://github.com/corbindavenport/creative-cloud-linux https://github.com/corbindavenport/creative-cloud-linux I suggest making your own script instead of using PoL (abandoned, check Phoenicis).
edoo 8y ago
I wonder if we can get Steve Carell to do a "Goodbye Windows" song. Been dual booting for many years now only for steam.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
nullifidian 8y ago
Microsoft can sue them in the same way Oracle sued Google, and win, right? Because you can't reimplement the Windows APIs without the reimplementation containing 'derivative work', I think.
- CodeArtisan 8y ago
  Microsoft did the same with Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux
  - nullifidian 8y ago
    Will the court consider it? I understand that suing Valve would be hypocritical for Microsoft, but, I think, legally speaking it's a separate issue. Will the Linux Foundation file a retaliatory counter suit against Microsoft because of its attack on Valve? I doubt it.
    - shmerl 8y ago
      After buying Github, it will be a pretty shortsighted move for MS to do it. Everyone remembers their position on API copyrightability in Oracle vs Google case. It's the reason many projects left Github after they bought it. If MS will attack projects like Wine based on that junk, a lot more will ditch Github for good.
      - nullifidian 8y ago
        The issue here is that games and commercial productivity software are the two main reasons people(power users) still use Windows. If Proton/wine begin to seriously threaten the market share of Windows (say loss of 5-10%), they'll have to do it, I think.
        shmerl 8y ago
        They'll lose gaming lock-in, that's already inevitable. Their only remaining leverage now is Xbox, and even there translation layers can undermine their API lock-in grip. However attacking FOSS projects using such copyright trolling will backfire and very strongly. In doing that, MS will admit their hypocrisy and all this "MS has changed" will be proven completely wrong. I'm not saying it's not possible for them to do such attack. But it will basically completely ruin the image they are trying to build now.
btreecat 8y ago
Something interesting to me is how many people are using either Debian family or Arch family of distros. Debian, Ubuntu, and Mint are over half, and Arch & gang are about a 1/4
- bdefore 8y ago
  Some context may be helpful, but the short of it is that I wouldn't look too far into those numbers. 1. Officially, Proton is only supported on Ubuntu. It doesn't stop you from trying though and many Arch-based OS reports are just as successful. 2. Reports people submit includes pasting Steam system info, which for some Arch installations reports as 'Linux 4.x' unless they install additional an additional library. If you're feeling generous, count the 'Unknown' category as Arch-based.
illiac_1962 8y ago
Why does anyone care about this? I know steam cares cause this would finally let them market a console with thier name on it. Then they could ship a proprietary closed source product built on Linux.
esotericn 8y ago
I've been using GPU passthrough for Windows gaming on and off for a while now. I think it's fundamentally a better solution. edit: (for desktops). Why is it better than dual booting? Well, it's faster, and you can use whatever backing store you like (e.g. ZFS volumes for snapshots, LUKS encryption, ...), run services in the background, etc. Why is it better than WINE? Far more compatible. Setting it up can be a hassle, but once you get it working it's (as far as I can tell) identical to a native boot. Better sandboxing (VM's aren't perfect and GPU passthrough likely introduces more holes, but that's better than running proprietary code on your main system). That said, it's a power user thing and probably always will be. But then, isn't that the PC gaming market anyway?
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > Why is it better than dual booting? Well, it's faster, and you can use whatever backing store you like (e.g. ZFS volumes for snapshots, LUKS encryption, ...), run services in the background, etc. Any way to avoid dual-booting is also good because if you do your work on Linux, you don't lose state. After a day of work, I sometimes want to play games, and I like it when I don't have to shut down my editor and the image of the program I am working on. In fact, having to reboot is a quite effective deterrent for me.
  - Hello71 8y ago
    Hibernation?
    - Avamander 8y ago
      Is quite wonky on Linux. Causes quite a bit of software to misbehave and in general instability after resume is an issue - at least in my experience over the last ten years.
    - esotericn 8y ago
      Not really viable if you want services running in the background. Passthrough allows me to have one beefy machine that does everything. It's just another VM. That said, I game very rarely anyway, but sometimes you just want to blow things up, y'know?
shmerl 8y ago
I'm not using Proton, but using regular Wine+dxvk (for DX11 games). dxvk[1] is an amazing project (it's translating D3D11 → Vulkan). With Vulkan finally landing VK_EXT_transform_feedback[2] and Wine and dxvk using it (Mesa has it in master for radv, and there are patches for anv; Nvidia blob has it in beta), games like The Witcher 3 can be played on Linux perfectly, without graphics distortions. 1. https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk 2. http://jason-blog.jlekstrand.net/2018/10/transform-feedback-is-terrible-so-why.html http://jason-blog.jlekstrand.net/2018/10/transform-feedback-...
beilabs 8y ago
I'm rather impressed with Proton. I was using wine quite obsessively well over a decade ago, wine tricks, fiddling with settings for one game, change them for another. Proton removed all of that for me. I'm not at the forefront of gaming, though i have a nice card, CPU and a heap of RAM (Perks of the job. Skyrim is my jam lately, I'm spending an insane amount of time in game at ultra settings. Played some Batman - Arkham Asylum, also a windows game, both run well. I'm happy!
- akiselev 8y ago
  If you get your hands on a VR headset, try out Skyrim VR. It works almost perfectly on Proton (you just have to do some stuff to get dialog/music working) and is by far the best VR experience with the most replayability I've tried so far. I stopped playing the original Skyrim after only one (heavily modded) playthrough because I was just burned out on TES games but Skyrim VR brought back a sense of wonder I can only remember from my Morrowind days. Every dragon battle, every scenic backdrop is an order of magnitude more impressive and I can even tolerate a large part of the dialog without skipping through. The only downside is how much time you have to waste getting the game configured and modded just right (afaik vast majority of major Skyrim mods work out of the box or were updated for Skyrim VR) and the cost. Bethesda has really been milking Skyrim.
  - mlevental 8y ago
    which headset? Oculus works through proton?
    - edaemon 8y ago
      I haven't tried it myself, but Proton works with SteamVR so it should be compatible with any headset supported by SteamVR.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- Twirrim 8y ago
  If you're up for it, there are some really good high quality texture packs available on Nexus Mods that have really improved the visual experience in the game. https://www.dsogaming.com/news/skyrim-high-quality-textures-pack-2018-available-for-download-improves-numerous-textures/ https://www.dsogaming.com/news/skyrim-high-quality-textures-...
CodeArtisan 8y ago
If the user has played more on Proton than on Windows in the first two weeks, it will count as a linux sale, not a Windows sale.
- jniedrauer 8y ago
  This is really good to know. On a related note, I finally got a hardware survey on one of my Linux machines! Was even running SteamVR at the time.
- BeefySwain 8y ago
  Do you have a source for this?
  - tokai 8y ago
    >Update #1: I spoke to Valve earlier, about how buying Windows games to play with this system counts, they said this: >Hey Liam, the normal algorithm is in effect, so if at the end of the two weeks you have more playtime on Linux, it'll be a Linux sale. Proton counts as Linux. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/valve-officially-confirm-a-new-version-of-steam-play-which-includes-a-modified-version-of-wine.12400 https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/valve-officially-conf...
88e282102ae2e5b 8y ago
I've been happy just dual-booting Windows and Linux. Windows 10 is free as long as you don't care about personalizing it, which I definitely don't, since it's just for games. I look forward to having a Linux-only machine but I'm not in any hurry.
- gnulinux 8y ago
  It's not about money though, at least for me. I can afford Win 10 just fine, and would also be paying for archlinux and/or Debian if they actually cost anything. But here I am using a free-as-in-beer OS because of other factors. If all games could run in my OS things would just be more practical, regardless of their cost.
tomc1985 8y ago
Just noticed Deus Ex: Human Revolution on that list. I'm pretty sure there's a native linux port for that one already out, I was playing it about a year ago. (Unless that was proton and I didn't know it?)
- cosarara 8y ago
  There's a port for deus ex: mankind divided. HR has not been ported AFAIK.
foxhop 8y ago
I've been out of the WINE scene for a long time, is Steam submitting patches to the upstream project?
- wjoe 8y ago
  Yes, for the most part. All of their work on Proton (their fork of Wine) is open source, they're working with Codeweavers (the largest contributors to Wine) closely, and contributing as much as they can back to upstream Wine. Part of what makes SteamPlay work so well is actually outside of Wine though - a lone developer started a project called DXVK a year or so ago, which is a separate translation layer for converting DX11 to Vulkan, and runs alongside Wine. Valve hired this developer and sponsored a few similar projects, and integrated them into SteamPlay. It also seems like Wine is slow and quite opinionated on merging in changes. For a while now, most people who used Wine for gaming would use forks and patches to improve performance. Some of it got merged into upstream Wine eventually, some things get rejected as it works differently to the usual Wine way of doing things. So Steam has used some of these patches and their own work for Proton, but some of it may not be suitable to be merged into mainline Wine.
jandrese 8y ago
Personal anecdote: Since SteamPlay dropped I have not rebooted into Windows once. I've been pretty impressed at its ability to handle the games in my catalog. That said I'm pretty sure I've just been lucky thus far. The only problem I have is when a game has a broken Linux port there doesn't appear to be a way to tell Steam to use the Windows version instead. An example of this is Eador, which has horrible graphics problems and is effectively unplayable on Linux due to it being a very slipshod port. I'm willing to bet that using SteamPlay on the Windows version would work much better if Valve would give me the option.
- bdefore 8y ago
  Issue here: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/5638 https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/5638 Haven't tried this myself but may be of help: https://github.com/Holston5/Native2Proton https://github.com/Holston5/Native2Proton
- Jach 8y ago
  What broke my uptime was when I decided to try and play Gothic... Not that it "just works" on windows, there's a series of patches etc. you have to install, but with Proton I kept getting a dreaded access violation error about a minute into the game that I couldn't work around. I too hope they make an option to run a so-called Linux compatible game using Windows instead. I've got a little category "failed in linux" for those. I bet you could do it manually by downloading the game using Steam running in wine and then using Steam's wine binary to run the exe...
- atomc19 8y ago
  they do give you the option to use Steam Play over native Linux client. Under the steam play menu in the preferences, select 'enable for all titles' along with 'use this tool instead of game-specific selections'.
  - jandrese 8y ago
    Doesn't seem to work for Eador. Even with both of those options checked it installs the Linux version and doesn't seem to have an option for anything else. I was hoping there would be a dropdown by the install button asking which version I wanted, but it was just a regular install button and it gave me the broken Linux version.
nuguy 8y ago
As soon as cs:go worked on Linux, I uninstalled windows. I never looked back.
amingilani 8y ago
If you're having trouble reading this on mobile, the Chrome Simplified Reading View will help. Visit `chrome://flags` and set Reader Mode Triggering to Always. The prompt is a minor inconvenience but I use it so much.
russianbandit 8y ago
Any Mac love on this?
- c487bd62 8y ago
  https://steamcommunity.com/games/221410/announcements/detail/1696055855739350561 https://steamcommunity.com/games/221410/announcements/detail... Q: Any plans for macOS support? While Wine and Proton work on macOS, there are no plans to support the new Steam Play functionality on macOS at the moment. -------------------- https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/06/28/why-macos-mojave-requires-metal----and-deprecates-opengl https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/06/28/why-macos-mojave-... https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK
nyghtly 8y ago
I've recently converted my primary operating system to linux and--although Proton is very good--I still find myself unable to unlatch from Windows. My solution was to install Windows 7 on a separate hard drive for those games that are still unplayable. Among those games are Final Fantasy X/X-2 Remastered and The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth. Although I'd like to kick Windows to the curb for good, it's hard to believe that some legacy titles (like BfME) with nontrivial minimum specs will ever run on linux. My other big concern with SteamPlay in particular is save game compatibility. It depends on the game, but a lot of the time your save games just won't be compatible across operating systems, which is quite a difficult problem to solve.
- loa-in-backup 8y ago
  I wonder what ever would make savegames incompatible between systems. Endianness? That should be handled by wine. Different path separator? I would think it's up to wine as well. So... unreported bugs in wine, or is there something fundamentally different about game state?
  - nyghtly 8y ago
    I'm guessing most saves--besides some really old games--are probably fine on a fundamental level. But even if a save technically works, the effort it takes to find that save in your old windows filesystem, then place it in the new location in your linux filesystem is actual quite substantial, especially when you imagine doing that for an entire catalog of games that you've played over the years. And if you're relying on steam cloud saves to keep track of it then you can expect to lose the saves for many of your games when changing OS. If you're looking to retain saves, its far from a simple migration. Which is another reason why I have trouble making the switch entirely.
    - gpderetta 8y ago
      That reminds me: a few years ago I got bored of playing Skyrim on my Xbox 360 and I wanted to play with mods on the PC. I didn't want to build a new character, but turns out that there are tools to extract Skyrim save games from the Xbox and are perfectly compatible with the PC version. In fact, not having a Windows installation at home I managed to play them with Skyrim on wine under linux. Everything worked pretty much flawlessly, mods included.
andrepd 8y ago
How does this compare with PlayOnLinux? It seems to be a very similar concept: coordinate Wine+other tools, package configurations and game-specific tweaks in a script that can be one-click ran by users, aggregate user reports on compatibility. What's new?
- c487bd62 8y ago
  https://steamcommunity.com/games/221410/announcements/detail/1696055855739350561 https://steamcommunity.com/games/221410/announcements/detail...
f4stjack 8y ago
This is actually mind blowing. Because in the last six months (I think) there are more developments in this front compared to last six years. Sure, there are little warts and niggles as of now but with this development speed I think we'll have a proper linux systems which can play non-linux games with negligible performance loss. In addition to proton and steam play one has to add Lutris as well. It makes the emulation of games in wine really easy.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
tofflos 8y ago
> The Linux desktop experience has improved by leaps and bounds in the last year or two. Does anyone know which improvements they are referring to?
- jplayer01 8y ago
  Not sure what he means tbh. The Linux desktop has been improving steadily for years. It's in a good spot now, Proton makes it even more viable, but it's still not perfect. I'd say the biggest barrier is if you require Windows-only programs that don't work with Wine (of which there are a lot).
cuddlecake 8y ago
Two days ago, I read an article on why kids should not interact with screens too much in their early life and I reflected on how that affected me. I also found that I have no fun in playing games lately. It feels like a chore, a heroin-like distraction, an addiction basically. So yesterday I decided to ditch my PC in favor of my Linux-only GPU-lacking work notebook. And now this. Me 0:1 Irony
- aerovistae 8y ago
  I feel the same way but I can’t stop. When I do other things I get bored and find myself thinking about video games. It’s pretty frustrating. I feel pretty shitty about it.
  - cuddlecake 8y ago
    Same. I just kind of reached the climax of boredom in gaming. To be fair, I mainly played CS:GO, LoL, and WoW. Basically games where I could also watch YouTube videos or do other stuff during downtimes in-game (such as death, queueing, wipes) I am quite safe with still having a gmaing console, since they are much more immersive in a sense that distractions will actually hinder the enjoyment. If I can only either do something productive or play a game, I usually try to be productive. What's your poison?
candeira 8y ago
Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I still can't play Windows-only HL2 mods.
- candeira 8y ago
  Oh, I had missed a step in the configuration. I can now announce that Windows-only HL2 mods play beautifully. _Minerva_ rocks.
azernik 8y ago
A note for people who want to go faster than Steam/Proton certification - in Steam settings you can turn on Proton for all Windows games, not just the ones that are certified by Valve. So far I haven't run into any problems running non-certified Windows games under Proton.
Paraesthetic 8y ago
Is this an advert for Proton? Why would you not just use windows 10, the platform that games were made to work on.
pathseeker 8y ago
So does anyone have a good recommendation for a gaming laptop that is good with linux?
- ivankelly 8y ago
  Consider getting a laptop with TB3 and using an eGPU. I don't know how eGPUs work with linux though.
stevefan1999 8y ago
Isn't this just WineHQ but for games?
paulhilbert 8y ago
Too bad Linux still has no proper mouse support... I would be glad if even the games that are Linux native would be playable...
ivankelly 8y ago
It's at the point now where the intro logos and stuff for games take longer than a reboot, so now I just reboot into windows.
then 8y ago
So...WINE with 'fancy' UI design?

932 points by bdefore 8y ago

In my quick test it seems it depends enormously on the quality of Linux support for your graphics card. If you have a graphics card that DXVK works for then you are in business. Otherwise, not so much.

bdefore 8y ago
Right. It's important to have up to date drivers. ProtonDB receives many reports with outdated ones (those are colored in red and not counted toward the aggregate rating) https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Requirements https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Requirements

danschumann 8y ago

Sweet.. haven't checked the list in a while.

ccnafr 8y ago
Most major games still don't work. Sadly. Take the AC series, for example: https://www.protondb.com/search?q=creed https://www.protondb.com/search?q=creed
- jcastro 8y ago
  Most of the difficulty in getting these to run circles around the uplay stuff, for example it won't even launch unless you have the Microsoft fonts installed, and then there's an outdated libgnutls library in the steam runtime that you need to workaround. But once you do that the games actually run, I've gotten Odyssey and Unity to run and they run surprisingly well. If Valve can convince Ubisoft to at least make the launchers not be too intrusive and can solve that last 10% of the config issue then it'd be viable.
TheRealDunkirk 8y ago
I see Skyrim, right at the top. And New Vegas. Wow. Any chance Valve could offer this support for Mac as well?
- m_eiman 8y ago
  As soon as someone makes them a DXMT to use instead of DXVK, I suppose. Isn't there some Rust project working on that..?
  - diesal11 8y ago
    There's a VKMT. So they could double up and go DXVK -> VKMT.

loxs 8y ago

So it's just wine under the hood, so "working" is not exactly true?

bpicolo 8y ago
Wine is a big part of it, but there's a bit more to it. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton
- lostgame 8y ago
  That is, um, incredibly not clear, based on the link you shared. '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.' Even reading down the article to look for more details provides information about building the product, but as far as I can see no other significant details about it's underlying technology. There may be other articles or posts that go over this more, but your link provided no useful or helpful information that I could see in two brief read-overs.
  - derimagia 8y ago
    The Github Readme says to consult the blog post for more info: https://steamcommunity.com/games/221410/announcements/detail/1696055855739350561 https://steamcommunity.com/games/221410/announcements/detail... For your question, look under "Q: What is Proton exactly? How does it differ from normal Wine? Who worked on it?"
    - lostgame 8y ago
      Okay, so, in the future, it may be nice to post a link to the blog post, instead of trying to back up your point with something that requires digging to get to. I appreciate the attempt to clarify, but it's nice to make sure the clarification actually makes things make more sense.
      - 8y ago

syntaxing 8y ago

Hmm title is confusing. Maybe changing to the original post title will be better? That being said, I wish I can run CAD like fusion 360 on Linux. Anyone know of any way to make this happen?

jstanley 8y ago
I use FreeCAD. It is sometimes annoying, but much better than any alternative I've tried. For more programmatic CAD, OpenSCAD is also good.
- fartcannon 8y ago
  AND you can script them with Python! https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.php?title=Python_scripting_tutorial https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.php?title=Python_scrip...
- syntaxing 8y ago
  I use FreeCAD and OpenSCAD (especially "automated" file generation) and like what they stand for but unfortunately neither really compares to a standard CAD program. Maybe I'm too used to the big three CAD software.
krn1p4n1c 8y ago
I'm in the same boat. Would love to be able to use Fusion in linux, especially with Apple dropping OpenGL support. Last I read they were looking to move the app to web-based and be platform agnostic.
- syntaxing 8y ago
  I tried the web beta version and it's pretty limited and super slow. Nothing compared to OnShape but OnShapes license, policy and direction has been so bad that I dropped them pretty much after the official release (I used them during the beta phase).

djhworld 8y ago

Is anyone running this setup? The last time I used WINE was probably 12 or so years ago and I always got the impression it was a slow "it will do for now" experience Has it come on leaps and bounds since then?

gyaru 8y ago
I've used wine forever to play games with, it's actually really good these days. The difference between the past and now is that it lets you use your current native steam client and still run games through wine, in the past you had to run a separate steam client in each wineprefix and you'd end up with steam installed for each game. The addition of DXVK makes directx10/11 games really speedy, runs great! World of Warcraft runs better in DXVK in its dx11 mode than what it did with OpenGL when they still offered that. The "game-breaking" thing is usually DRM like denuvo though.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 8y ago
  Is Proton tightly integrated into the steam platform or can it also be used to play DRM free games like GOG? I imagine Steam wouldn’t be too appreciative if GOG galaxy also integrated this
  - galapago 8y ago
    It is not tightly integrated. You can use it to play GOG games manually (from the command line) or using GameHub (https://github.com/tkashkin/GameHub https://github.com/tkashkin/GameHub).
    - SOLAR_FIELDS 8y ago
      I’m so glad that this is for ElementaryOS. It’s a good sign that their package management system is gaining popularity. It’s the only Linux based OS that I’m comfortable installing on friends/family old PC’s that can’t or shouldn’t run Windows 10. Runs fast enough and decent UX. I haven’t had much complaints from the non techies I install it on. Normally I’ll make Firefox the default web browser and throw on Ublock Origin and Privacy badger as well as installing LibreOffice before I hand it back to them. Great simplistic concept for an OS that I can really support.

z3t4 8y ago

We bought a Windows computer so the kids could play some old classics. Not a single game worked on Windows 10, not even in compatibility mode. But most of them worked in Linux/Wine ...

wishinghand 8y ago
How old are we talking here?
- z3t4 8y ago
  I think they're from 2003-2005 System requirements: Pentium 166 or better. Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, or XP. Standard installer, nothing special. They are on PC cd-rom. Got them used for a bargain, mostly learning type games. Could probably run them in an emulator, for example emulating windows XP in the browser. But you shouldn't need to be a sys-op to install a game. And you don't want to fiddle around if you have inpatient children waiting. My point is that the games specially made for Windows, doesn't work on Windows. Byt they do just work on Linux after installing Wine, most of them.
dudul 8y ago
Did you get these games from Steam? I found that games distributed by GoodOldGames usually work pretty well on Windows10. I have a dozen of them and never ran into an issue.
- thirdsun 8y ago
  GOG releases often includes compatibility and even unofficial community patches. You can generally assume that even their old games will work on modern computers.
  - stubish 8y ago
    Fallout 3 being an example, where Steam states it is only compatible with Windows 7, and the Steam reviews guide people to the GOG version which apparently works fine with Windows 10. (It's weird that Fallout 3 is an 'old game'. Am I an 'old man' too?)

bischofs 8y ago

PC gaming is a struggle for me as of now, I have an older rig which I would love to update but simply cant justify the cost. It is pretty frustrating when my friends xbox can run 4k games but the only GPU that is comparable is north of 500$. The ML and crypto hysteria as well as AMD not willing to compete is not healthy for the long term PC gaming industry. It is certainly keeping me out of it.

wishinghand 8y ago
Most PC gamers don’t play in 4K and 30 frames per second, much less 60 fps. That’s graphically taxing for many contemporary games, especially if other graphical quality is turned up. The consoles also typically don’t run at full resolution. In the 1080p era, I recall many games topping out at 900p. It was a great source of pc gamer smugness due to the fact most of them could easily run 1080p and 45+ fps. I suspect modern console 4K is the same. Since the generally accepted fps for consoles is 30, and that’s pretty low, it means developers can either compromise on resolution or other things like how many entities can be on screen at once, or how large open areas can be. I suspect catering to console audiences is why a lot of the last ten years some games feel either empty or constrained in scope.
- beezischillin 8y ago
  While 4K is still somewhat far away on a reasonable set-up, a surprisingly large amount of games can comfortably push 3440x1440@60.
- jtms 8y ago
  30 FPS? AHHH mah eyes! ;-)
- Jach 8y ago
  Most gamers don't play in 4K, but a large number (maybe most? Surely the largest minority) on PC probably get 60 FPS. You can look at the Steam hardware survey results here: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw... I've been holding out to do a big upgrade myself, but I got a Gigabyte GTX 1050 Ti last year for $147 to comparably replace my dying AMD 7950. Same card today is $190 (on Amazon). It's more than capable for things at 1080p, and does just fine for some games at 4k too (or I survive with 30-50 FPS and/or tweak with the graphics options; "high" is usually acceptable even if it's not "ultimate"). The new xbone x can do 4k pretty reliably, but that's $500, plus $60 per game. Getting your aging PC (mine is nearly a decade old) up to par (and often exceeding) graphics wise is a cheaper investment in a GPU, and games on PC are routinely on mega sales.

briffle 8y ago

If steam spends some time working with the larger "anti-cheat" vendors, I think they could really bump up the list. Many of the 'borked' games use anti-cheat, like battle-eye.

breakingcups 8y ago
Considering the lengths these anti-cheat vendors go to to detect bad behavior (including but not limited to kernel-mode drivers and kernel-hooks), I doubt they have any incentive to go along with this until a massive amount of momentum for gaming on Linux exists.
- drb91 8y ago
  Valve and steam are large enough to provide incentive themselves if they so choose.
- uranusjr 8y ago
  I remember not being able to play anything BattlEye because it breaks on a Windows Insider version late 2017, and stuck for half a year until the next stable update cycle. It’ll be a loooong time until they even consider to support anything remotely interesting at all.
Klathmon 8y ago
I'd much rather those games just become unplayable. I've had so much trouble with anti-cheat systems that I will now refuse to buy or play any game that uses easyanticheat or battleye. I don't care how much it costs, how many of my friends are playing it, I'm not giving another penny to any company that uses those programs. I get that it's not an easy problem to solve, but i'm so goddamn tired of having to shut down services dedicated to controlling fan speeds in my machine, having to disable network adapters, uninstall vpn software (not just turn it off, uninstall it), and wasting hours trying to figure out why it would crash on startup only to find that it was finding a pcap.dll in a random folder in my downloads from when I was messing with some traffic sniffing stuff on this system like a year before that, and it decided to crash without any warning or error... Cheaters suck in games, and they can ruin it for many others, but there has to be another way other than forcing your paying users to jump through this many hoops. And if there isn't, then i'm happy to be doomed to playing against/with hackers and cheaters rather than not being able to play at all. And I know it's kind of co opting the purpose of Proton, but if they refused to accommodate these anti-cheat systems, then maybe either the game developer or the anti-cheat vendor themselves will see some of the potential paying customers they are excluding and will significantly retool their systems to work.

Waterluvian 8y ago

Admittedly rather reductionist, but I'd love it if there was some single number representing how close to Windows performance each title gets. The main issue I have is that I'm not about to bother with any titles when I consistently find that titles "work" but don't really work well enough.

fabricexpert 8y ago
it's at the bottom Current Game Rating Distribution Tier Rated Highest Report Highest Report (But Pending) Platinum 286 2356 1467 Gold 372 399 232 Silver 319 472 367 Bronze 178 195 158 Borked 245 1162 960 each game has this rating in winedb
- Hello71 8y ago
  ╔══════════╦═══════╦════════════════╦══════════════════════════════╗ ║ Tier ║ Rated ║ Highest Report ║ Highest Report (But Pending) ║ ╠══════════╬═══════╬════════════════╬══════════════════════════════╣ ║ Platinum ║ 286 ║ 2356 ║ 1467 ║ ║ Gold ║ 372 ║ 399 ║ 232 ║ ║ Silver ║ 319 ║ 472 ║ 367 ║ ║ Bronze ║ 178 ║ 195 ║ 158 ║ ║ Borked ║ 245 ║ 1162 ║ 960 ║ ╚══════════╩═══════╩════════════════╩══════════════════════════════╝
  - ByThyGrace 8y ago
    Nice, it's been quite a while since I've seen such tidy use of ASCII in a forum message.
    - zeptomu 8y ago
      Nit-picky, but these are Unicode box-drawing characters which are not part of ASCII: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box-drawing_character https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box-drawing_character

AdmiralAsshat 8y ago

I enabled it on my Fedora laptop and tried a handful of games. About half a dozen of them bombed out immediately. So, very glad to see improvement, but we're still a ways off from being able to chuck my last Windows 7 machine. I find myself more often just biting the bullet and re-buying some old classics when they get "Enhanced" editions (ala Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, etc)--even though I still have the original CD's kicking around--just so I get native Linux support.

jedimastert 8y ago
>I find myself more often just biting the bullet and re-buying some old classics when they get "Enhanced" editions (ala Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, etc)--even though I still have the original CD's kicking around--just so I get native Linux support. I think it's a good thing to do anyways. It shows that there's a solid market interest in gaming on Linux.
- kungtotte 8y ago
  That's another hidden feature of Steam/Proton: Whichever platform you play a new game on the most during the initial two weeks after getting it will be registered as the platform you bought it for. E.g. play a Windows-only game for two weeks using Proton and both Steam and the gamedev will see it as a Linux purchase in their stats. Meaning they get actual numbers how big their Linux demographic is.
  - jedimastert 8y ago
    Really? Wow. That's awesome. Of course, that's kind of unfortunate for games that don't work with Proton right now. Does that remove the Windows purchase too? That could be seen as 2 purchases for the same game.
    - kungtotte 8y ago
      AFAIK it's only for new purchases. So if you've played a game for some time under Windows it won't change the stats for that game.

nurino 8y ago

Can you install and run this without Steam? I already use wine-d3d9 which is very good for WoW but as its name says it doesn't run DX11/12 games.

shmerl 8y ago
You don't need Proton without Steam (since it has various Steam specific stuff), but yes, you can. See here for example: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/adamhms_linux_wine_wrappers_news_faq_discussion https://www.gog.com/forum/general/adamhms_linux_wine_wrapper... However, you can simply use upstream Wine with add-ons like dxvk[1] (which is used in Proton). Using esync[2] (also utilized by Proton) requires special branch of Wine, since it's not going to be upstreamed and it's not as simple as installing dll overrides. 1. https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk 2. https://github.com/zfigura/wine/blob/esync-rebased/README.esync https://github.com/zfigura/wine/blob/esync-rebased/README.es...
folknor 8y ago
Do yourself a favor and check out https://lutris.net/games/world-of-warcraft/ https://lutris.net/games/world-of-warcraft/ Lutris is excellent for getting many games up and running, and WoW runs much better with dx11+dxvk than wine-d3d9.

lostgame 8y ago

Kinda disappointed this seems to be yet another WINE wrapper with some extra stuff piled on, though I'm not sure what else I could've expected it to be. I long ago lost interest in PC gaming, both from the lack of cross-platform compatibility, and due to the fact that a great graphics card alone easily costs as much as a console these days. I've never played a WINE-wrapped video game or application that did not feel like a half-baked version of it's native application. It's usually things like fonts and strange aliasing that are a complete and dead giveaway. Small aesthetic issues like that completely ruin an otherwise immersive experience for me. I'm glad WINE exists, but I honestly sort of wish they'd just stick to supporting applications more, and pretty much just forget the gaming side. It's never going to get to an equivalent level, because Windows' gaming technology keeps moving forward. Two people start running a race. One of them starts when the gun fires. The other one sits and waits, decides it wants to follow the first runner every step of the way, and starts several minutes (or years, in this metaphor) behind the first. Even if this second runner (WINE) could run as fast as the first (Windows), it would never catch up. And that's assuming it could run as fast as a multi-billion-dollar company. WINE can, simply, never reach a point of compatibility that even most major console emulators have. Because, unlike consoles, Windows keeps on moving. Let's face it. None of us are running *nix or MacOS for the sake of gaming. If you want to run a desktop OS for gaming, there is one. Yes, it's not free, but neither are games. Windows is, at this point, just part of the initial cost of PC gaming, just like a couple extra controllers might be for a console.

elcomet 8y ago
> None of us are running *nix or MacOS for the sake of gaming This is true, but also irrelevant. A lot of people are using Linux as their daily driver, and dual boot is not convenient. So wine is very welcome, and I think proton is amazing, you should try it again (i didn't encounter any strange fonts or aliasing like you're describing on games ran with proton via steam). I've been gaming on Linux for the past year and i'm impressed by steam's work here.
- lostgame 8y ago
  Hey, I mean, let me say, I'm happy to hear this, but again, I feel like it's irrelevant to myself personally that this even exists. Without 100% compatibility, I'm not really interested in something that may run half, or even 75% of my games. I play games to relax. I make games for a living. So all I want, personally, is to pop any disc in my console or hit a shortcut on my desktop and just have it work, every time, out of the box. I know this isn't everyone, but it does hopefully explain a little better why WINE will always be 'irrelevant' to myself. Personally, I think it's the graphics card cost that really prevents me from considering it at all, especially as if I was bothered with PC gaming again, I'd be getting a Vive, also for development's sake.

arcosdev 8y ago

Can they make this work for the Adobe Creative Suite too?

jhasse 8y ago
They're just using WINE with some additions for games. So if it doesn't work with WINE yet, there's nothing from Proton that would help.
c487bd62 8y ago
Maybe this could work for you? https://github.com/corbindavenport/creative-cloud-linux https://github.com/corbindavenport/creative-cloud-linux I suggest making your own script instead of using PoL (abandoned, check Phoenicis).

edoo 8y ago

I wonder if we can get Steve Carell to do a "Goodbye Windows" song. Been dual booting for many years now only for steam.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

nullifidian 8y ago

Microsoft can sue them in the same way Oracle sued Google, and win, right? Because you can't reimplement the Windows APIs without the reimplementation containing 'derivative work', I think.

CodeArtisan 8y ago
Microsoft did the same with Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux
- nullifidian 8y ago
  Will the court consider it? I understand that suing Valve would be hypocritical for Microsoft, but, I think, legally speaking it's a separate issue. Will the Linux Foundation file a retaliatory counter suit against Microsoft because of its attack on Valve? I doubt it.
  - shmerl 8y ago
    After buying Github, it will be a pretty shortsighted move for MS to do it. Everyone remembers their position on API copyrightability in Oracle vs Google case. It's the reason many projects left Github after they bought it. If MS will attack projects like Wine based on that junk, a lot more will ditch Github for good.
    - nullifidian 8y ago
      The issue here is that games and commercial productivity software are the two main reasons people(power users) still use Windows. If Proton/wine begin to seriously threaten the market share of Windows (say loss of 5-10%), they'll have to do it, I think.
      - shmerl 8y ago
        They'll lose gaming lock-in, that's already inevitable. Their only remaining leverage now is Xbox, and even there translation layers can undermine their API lock-in grip. However attacking FOSS projects using such copyright trolling will backfire and very strongly. In doing that, MS will admit their hypocrisy and all this "MS has changed" will be proven completely wrong. I'm not saying it's not possible for them to do such attack. But it will basically completely ruin the image they are trying to build now.

btreecat 8y ago

Something interesting to me is how many people are using either Debian family or Arch family of distros. Debian, Ubuntu, and Mint are over half, and Arch & gang are about a 1/4

bdefore 8y ago
Some context may be helpful, but the short of it is that I wouldn't look too far into those numbers. 1. Officially, Proton is only supported on Ubuntu. It doesn't stop you from trying though and many Arch-based OS reports are just as successful. 2. Reports people submit includes pasting Steam system info, which for some Arch installations reports as 'Linux 4.x' unless they install additional an additional library. If you're feeling generous, count the 'Unknown' category as Arch-based.

illiac_1962 8y ago

Why does anyone care about this? I know steam cares cause this would finally let them market a console with thier name on it. Then they could ship a proprietary closed source product built on Linux.

esotericn 8y ago

I've been using GPU passthrough for Windows gaming on and off for a while now. I think it's fundamentally a better solution. edit: (for desktops). Why is it better than dual booting? Well, it's faster, and you can use whatever backing store you like (e.g. ZFS volumes for snapshots, LUKS encryption, ...), run services in the background, etc. Why is it better than WINE? Far more compatible. Setting it up can be a hassle, but once you get it working it's (as far as I can tell) identical to a native boot. Better sandboxing (VM's aren't perfect and GPU passthrough likely introduces more holes, but that's better than running proprietary code on your main system). That said, it's a power user thing and probably always will be. But then, isn't that the PC gaming market anyway?

TeMPOraL 8y ago
> Why is it better than dual booting? Well, it's faster, and you can use whatever backing store you like (e.g. ZFS volumes for snapshots, LUKS encryption, ...), run services in the background, etc. Any way to avoid dual-booting is also good because if you do your work on Linux, you don't lose state. After a day of work, I sometimes want to play games, and I like it when I don't have to shut down my editor and the image of the program I am working on. In fact, having to reboot is a quite effective deterrent for me.
- Hello71 8y ago
  Hibernation?
  - Avamander 8y ago
    Is quite wonky on Linux. Causes quite a bit of software to misbehave and in general instability after resume is an issue - at least in my experience over the last ten years.
  - esotericn 8y ago
    Not really viable if you want services running in the background. Passthrough allows me to have one beefy machine that does everything. It's just another VM. That said, I game very rarely anyway, but sometimes you just want to blow things up, y'know?

shmerl 8y ago

I'm not using Proton, but using regular Wine+dxvk (for DX11 games). dxvk[1] is an amazing project (it's translating D3D11 → Vulkan). With Vulkan finally landing VK_EXT_transform_feedback[2] and Wine and dxvk using it (Mesa has it in master for radv, and there are patches for anv; Nvidia blob has it in beta), games like The Witcher 3 can be played on Linux perfectly, without graphics distortions. 1. https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk 2. http://jason-blog.jlekstrand.net/2018/10/transform-feedback-is-terrible-so-why.html http://jason-blog.jlekstrand.net/2018/10/transform-feedback-...

beilabs 8y ago

I'm rather impressed with Proton. I was using wine quite obsessively well over a decade ago, wine tricks, fiddling with settings for one game, change them for another. Proton removed all of that for me. I'm not at the forefront of gaming, though i have a nice card, CPU and a heap of RAM (Perks of the job. Skyrim is my jam lately, I'm spending an insane amount of time in game at ultra settings. Played some Batman - Arkham Asylum, also a windows game, both run well. I'm happy!

akiselev 8y ago
If you get your hands on a VR headset, try out Skyrim VR. It works almost perfectly on Proton (you just have to do some stuff to get dialog/music working) and is by far the best VR experience with the most replayability I've tried so far. I stopped playing the original Skyrim after only one (heavily modded) playthrough because I was just burned out on TES games but Skyrim VR brought back a sense of wonder I can only remember from my Morrowind days. Every dragon battle, every scenic backdrop is an order of magnitude more impressive and I can even tolerate a large part of the dialog without skipping through. The only downside is how much time you have to waste getting the game configured and modded just right (afaik vast majority of major Skyrim mods work out of the box or were updated for Skyrim VR) and the cost. Bethesda has really been milking Skyrim.
- mlevental 8y ago
  which headset? Oculus works through proton?
  - edaemon 8y ago
    I haven't tried it myself, but Proton works with SteamVR so it should be compatible with any headset supported by SteamVR.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
Twirrim 8y ago
If you're up for it, there are some really good high quality texture packs available on Nexus Mods that have really improved the visual experience in the game. https://www.dsogaming.com/news/skyrim-high-quality-textures-pack-2018-available-for-download-improves-numerous-textures/ https://www.dsogaming.com/news/skyrim-high-quality-textures-...

CodeArtisan 8y ago

If the user has played more on Proton than on Windows in the first two weeks, it will count as a linux sale, not a Windows sale.

jniedrauer 8y ago
This is really good to know. On a related note, I finally got a hardware survey on one of my Linux machines! Was even running SteamVR at the time.
BeefySwain 8y ago
Do you have a source for this?
- tokai 8y ago
  >Update #1: I spoke to Valve earlier, about how buying Windows games to play with this system counts, they said this: >Hey Liam, the normal algorithm is in effect, so if at the end of the two weeks you have more playtime on Linux, it'll be a Linux sale. Proton counts as Linux. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/valve-officially-confirm-a-new-version-of-steam-play-which-includes-a-modified-version-of-wine.12400 https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/valve-officially-conf...

88e282102ae2e5b 8y ago

I've been happy just dual-booting Windows and Linux. Windows 10 is free as long as you don't care about personalizing it, which I definitely don't, since it's just for games. I look forward to having a Linux-only machine but I'm not in any hurry.

gnulinux 8y ago
It's not about money though, at least for me. I can afford Win 10 just fine, and would also be paying for archlinux and/or Debian if they actually cost anything. But here I am using a free-as-in-beer OS because of other factors. If all games could run in my OS things would just be more practical, regardless of their cost.

tomc1985 8y ago

Just noticed Deus Ex: Human Revolution on that list. I'm pretty sure there's a native linux port for that one already out, I was playing it about a year ago. (Unless that was proton and I didn't know it?)

cosarara 8y ago
There's a port for deus ex: mankind divided. HR has not been ported AFAIK.

foxhop 8y ago

I've been out of the WINE scene for a long time, is Steam submitting patches to the upstream project?

wjoe 8y ago
Yes, for the most part. All of their work on Proton (their fork of Wine) is open source, they're working with Codeweavers (the largest contributors to Wine) closely, and contributing as much as they can back to upstream Wine. Part of what makes SteamPlay work so well is actually outside of Wine though - a lone developer started a project called DXVK a year or so ago, which is a separate translation layer for converting DX11 to Vulkan, and runs alongside Wine. Valve hired this developer and sponsored a few similar projects, and integrated them into SteamPlay. It also seems like Wine is slow and quite opinionated on merging in changes. For a while now, most people who used Wine for gaming would use forks and patches to improve performance. Some of it got merged into upstream Wine eventually, some things get rejected as it works differently to the usual Wine way of doing things. So Steam has used some of these patches and their own work for Proton, but some of it may not be suitable to be merged into mainline Wine.

jandrese 8y ago

Personal anecdote: Since SteamPlay dropped I have not rebooted into Windows once. I've been pretty impressed at its ability to handle the games in my catalog. That said I'm pretty sure I've just been lucky thus far. The only problem I have is when a game has a broken Linux port there doesn't appear to be a way to tell Steam to use the Windows version instead. An example of this is Eador, which has horrible graphics problems and is effectively unplayable on Linux due to it being a very slipshod port. I'm willing to bet that using SteamPlay on the Windows version would work much better if Valve would give me the option.

bdefore 8y ago
Issue here: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/5638 https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/5638 Haven't tried this myself but may be of help: https://github.com/Holston5/Native2Proton https://github.com/Holston5/Native2Proton
Jach 8y ago
What broke my uptime was when I decided to try and play Gothic... Not that it "just works" on windows, there's a series of patches etc. you have to install, but with Proton I kept getting a dreaded access violation error about a minute into the game that I couldn't work around. I too hope they make an option to run a so-called Linux compatible game using Windows instead. I've got a little category "failed in linux" for those. I bet you could do it manually by downloading the game using Steam running in wine and then using Steam's wine binary to run the exe...
atomc19 8y ago
they do give you the option to use Steam Play over native Linux client. Under the steam play menu in the preferences, select 'enable for all titles' along with 'use this tool instead of game-specific selections'.
- jandrese 8y ago
  Doesn't seem to work for Eador. Even with both of those options checked it installs the Linux version and doesn't seem to have an option for anything else. I was hoping there would be a dropdown by the install button asking which version I wanted, but it was just a regular install button and it gave me the broken Linux version.

nuguy 8y ago

As soon as cs:go worked on Linux, I uninstalled windows. I never looked back.

amingilani 8y ago

If you're having trouble reading this on mobile, the Chrome Simplified Reading View will help. Visit `chrome://flags` and set Reader Mode Triggering to Always. The prompt is a minor inconvenience but I use it so much.

russianbandit 8y ago

Any Mac love on this?

c487bd62 8y ago
https://steamcommunity.com/games/221410/announcements/detail/1696055855739350561 https://steamcommunity.com/games/221410/announcements/detail... Q: Any plans for macOS support? While Wine and Proton work on macOS, there are no plans to support the new Steam Play functionality on macOS at the moment. -------------------- https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/06/28/why-macos-mojave-requires-metal----and-deprecates-opengl https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/06/28/why-macos-mojave-... https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK

nyghtly 8y ago

I've recently converted my primary operating system to linux and--although Proton is very good--I still find myself unable to unlatch from Windows. My solution was to install Windows 7 on a separate hard drive for those games that are still unplayable. Among those games are Final Fantasy X/X-2 Remastered and The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth. Although I'd like to kick Windows to the curb for good, it's hard to believe that some legacy titles (like BfME) with nontrivial minimum specs will ever run on linux. My other big concern with SteamPlay in particular is save game compatibility. It depends on the game, but a lot of the time your save games just won't be compatible across operating systems, which is quite a difficult problem to solve.

loa-in-backup 8y ago
I wonder what ever would make savegames incompatible between systems. Endianness? That should be handled by wine. Different path separator? I would think it's up to wine as well. So... unreported bugs in wine, or is there something fundamentally different about game state?
- nyghtly 8y ago
  I'm guessing most saves--besides some really old games--are probably fine on a fundamental level. But even if a save technically works, the effort it takes to find that save in your old windows filesystem, then place it in the new location in your linux filesystem is actual quite substantial, especially when you imagine doing that for an entire catalog of games that you've played over the years. And if you're relying on steam cloud saves to keep track of it then you can expect to lose the saves for many of your games when changing OS. If you're looking to retain saves, its far from a simple migration. Which is another reason why I have trouble making the switch entirely.
  - gpderetta 8y ago
    That reminds me: a few years ago I got bored of playing Skyrim on my Xbox 360 and I wanted to play with mods on the PC. I didn't want to build a new character, but turns out that there are tools to extract Skyrim save games from the Xbox and are perfectly compatible with the PC version. In fact, not having a Windows installation at home I managed to play them with Skyrim on wine under linux. Everything worked pretty much flawlessly, mods included.

andrepd 8y ago

How does this compare with PlayOnLinux? It seems to be a very similar concept: coordinate Wine+other tools, package configurations and game-specific tweaks in a script that can be one-click ran by users, aggregate user reports on compatibility. What's new?

c487bd62 8y ago
https://steamcommunity.com/games/221410/announcements/detail/1696055855739350561 https://steamcommunity.com/games/221410/announcements/detail...

f4stjack 8y ago

This is actually mind blowing. Because in the last six months (I think) there are more developments in this front compared to last six years. Sure, there are little warts and niggles as of now but with this development speed I think we'll have a proper linux systems which can play non-linux games with negligible performance loss. In addition to proton and steam play one has to add Lutris as well. It makes the emulation of games in wine really easy.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

tofflos 8y ago

> The Linux desktop experience has improved by leaps and bounds in the last year or two. Does anyone know which improvements they are referring to?

jplayer01 8y ago
Not sure what he means tbh. The Linux desktop has been improving steadily for years. It's in a good spot now, Proton makes it even more viable, but it's still not perfect. I'd say the biggest barrier is if you require Windows-only programs that don't work with Wine (of which there are a lot).

cuddlecake 8y ago

Two days ago, I read an article on why kids should not interact with screens too much in their early life and I reflected on how that affected me. I also found that I have no fun in playing games lately. It feels like a chore, a heroin-like distraction, an addiction basically. So yesterday I decided to ditch my PC in favor of my Linux-only GPU-lacking work notebook. And now this. Me 0:1 Irony

aerovistae 8y ago
I feel the same way but I can’t stop. When I do other things I get bored and find myself thinking about video games. It’s pretty frustrating. I feel pretty shitty about it.
- cuddlecake 8y ago
  Same. I just kind of reached the climax of boredom in gaming. To be fair, I mainly played CS:GO, LoL, and WoW. Basically games where I could also watch YouTube videos or do other stuff during downtimes in-game (such as death, queueing, wipes) I am quite safe with still having a gmaing console, since they are much more immersive in a sense that distractions will actually hinder the enjoyment. If I can only either do something productive or play a game, I usually try to be productive. What's your poison?

candeira 8y ago

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I still can't play Windows-only HL2 mods.

candeira 8y ago
Oh, I had missed a step in the configuration. I can now announce that Windows-only HL2 mods play beautifully. _Minerva_ rocks.

azernik 8y ago

A note for people who want to go faster than Steam/Proton certification - in Steam settings you can turn on Proton for all Windows games, not just the ones that are certified by Valve. So far I haven't run into any problems running non-certified Windows games under Proton.

Paraesthetic 8y ago

Is this an advert for Proton? Why would you not just use windows 10, the platform that games were made to work on.

pathseeker 8y ago

So does anyone have a good recommendation for a gaming laptop that is good with linux?

ivankelly 8y ago
Consider getting a laptop with TB3 and using an eGPU. I don't know how eGPUs work with linux though.

stevefan1999 8y ago

Isn't this just WineHQ but for games?

paulhilbert 8y ago

Too bad Linux still has no proper mouse support... I would be glad if even the games that are Linux native would be playable...

ivankelly 8y ago

It's at the point now where the intro logos and stuff for games take longer than a reboot, so now I just reboot into windows.

then 8y ago

So...WINE with 'fancy' UI design?