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Personally, 2019 was finally the year of the Linux Desktop for me. Proton from Valve has totally changed everything for me. It runs AAA titles such as The Witch

Personally, 2019 was finally the year of the Linux Desktop for me. Proton from Valve has totally changed everything for me. It runs AAA titles such as The Witcher 3, Grand Theft Auto V and even Final Fantasy XIV (with a little tweaking) out of the box at 60 FPS! That was my final holdout and it freed me up to just run Manjaro outright :)

brnt 7y ago
Although I've been running Linux on my desktop for a long time, I indeed also kept a Windows install around. I've tried (and succeeded) in using Wine over the years, but it can be tricky to setup, and known good setups from e.g. 2004 at some point stopped working and I kind of gave up on it. Proton changed all that: zero config compatibility for many of my Windows games, even demanding ones like you mention. Simply fantastic. December 31 2018 I removed my Windows partition so in that sense, also for me 2019 is the year of the Linux Desktop.
- throwaway8941 7y ago
  While everyone around me is rejoicing, I am somewhat sad that a single commercial entity managed to do in a year what the whole FOSS community could not do in twenty. They were standing on the shoulders of giants (Wine), which is like 90% of the work, but it seems you still need to involve commercial interests to put the necessary polish to make the product really useful.
  - brnt 7y ago
    An important ingredient to Proton in DXVK, which was a new project and the author of which was quickly funded by Valve as it greatly improved performance, especially AAA+++ titles. Secondly, Valve funds Crossover, the commercial entity already responsible for large parts of Wine. The heart of Proton is thus free and libre software. What sets Proton apart from alternatives like Lutris, which also configure Wine, DXVK, and other components, for you, is that it is zero conf, integrated in a tool (Steam) you probably are already using if you play games. Personally, Proton is the only tool where the autoconfiguration actually always works.

brnt 7y ago

Although I've been running Linux on my desktop for a long time, I indeed also kept a Windows install around. I've tried (and succeeded) in using Wine over the years, but it can be tricky to setup, and known good setups from e.g. 2004 at some point stopped working and I kind of gave up on it. Proton changed all that: zero config compatibility for many of my Windows games, even demanding ones like you mention. Simply fantastic. December 31 2018 I removed my Windows partition so in that sense, also for me 2019 is the year of the Linux Desktop.

throwaway8941 7y ago
While everyone around me is rejoicing, I am somewhat sad that a single commercial entity managed to do in a year what the whole FOSS community could not do in twenty. They were standing on the shoulders of giants (Wine), which is like 90% of the work, but it seems you still need to involve commercial interests to put the necessary polish to make the product really useful.
- brnt 7y ago
  An important ingredient to Proton in DXVK, which was a new project and the author of which was quickly funded by Valve as it greatly improved performance, especially AAA+++ titles. Secondly, Valve funds Crossover, the commercial entity already responsible for large parts of Wine. The heart of Proton is thus free and libre software. What sets Proton apart from alternatives like Lutris, which also configure Wine, DXVK, and other components, for you, is that it is zero conf, integrated in a tool (Steam) you probably are already using if you play games. Personally, Proton is the only tool where the autoconfiguration actually always works.