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You do realise that Proton and similar technologies decrease the incentive for developers to port their game to Linux? Why bother porting it when you can count

You do realise that Proton and similar technologies decrease the incentive for developers to port their game to Linux? Why bother porting it when you can count on someone fixing it for you. As for playing any game under the sun. No it doesn't. A lot of things fail and don't work quite right. Also a lot of mods don't work which is half the reason to play games on PC.

Spivak 7y ago
Look, at this point I’ll take a game that works well under Proton over the half-hearted abandonware ports that we were getting before. There are games that are native and run fantastically on Linux. But they were always the exception.
- saalweachter 7y ago
  This reminds me of the "heightening the contradictions" political arguments.
yyyk 7y ago
It's the other way around. There would be little incentive to port games to Linux without an existing gamer pool which can buy them, and there would be no gamer pool without an initial range of games... The only practical way to break that vicious circle was the emulation option. Linux gamers play on emulation, but appreciate native ports and form the (initial) buyer pool for Linux games. So Proton and co are the only reason there's any viable Linux gaming at all. Without Proton, every Linux gamer would have had a Windows install and play with that alone.
- uncle_j 7y ago
  > There would be little incentive to port games to Linux without an existing gamer pool which can buy them, and there would be no gamer pool without an initial range of games... There isn't much of a gamer pool anyway. This may surprise you the number of people who like to play PC games and really care about Open Source I would wager isn't very many. > So Proton and co are the only reason there's any viable Linux gaming at all. Without Proton, every Linux gamer would have had a Windows install and play with that alone. Anyone I know who plays games and uses Linux Dual boots. Some people have spoken about some GPU pass-through nonsense with a VMWare which just seems like a faff. It just easier to buy a drive, slap Windows on it and Steam and be done with it. Until it is easier and more reliable with my whole catalogue I will be sticking with Windows.
  - yyyk 7y ago
    >There isn't much of a [Linux] gamer pool anyway. This may surprise you the number... It doesn't surprise me at all. That number would have been zero without emulation like wine/Proton though. > Anyone I know who plays games and uses Linux Dual boots. As for myself, I don't play a lot, but a Linux version (native or emulated) plays a big role in deciding which games to buy when I do. It's not due to 'Open Source' reasons though. Dual boot is too much of a mess for me, I have a separate Windows laptop which I barely use otherwise (it does have a few Windows-only games), it's a bit of an hassle too. I don't feel like booting it and discovering it needs to install 10000 updates. I have already had to reinstall Windows 10 once so I can run a game (the game didn't support the old Windows 10 build, and the in-place upgrade crashed). It's much easier when I can just take a break and run a game on the same Linux system I use regularly.
    - uncle_j 7y ago
      > Dual boot is too much of a mess for me, I have a separate Windows laptop which I barely use otherwise (it does have a few Windows-only games), it's a bit of an hassle too. I don't feel like booting it and discovering it needs to install 10000 updates. I have already had to reinstall Windows 10 once so I can run a game (the game didn't support the old Windows 10 build, and the in-place upgrade crashed). It's much easier when I can just take a break and run a game on the same Linux system I use regularly. It is odd. I run Windows at work and the machine rarely gets rebooted. No problems what-so-ever. I run a Windows at home and in my Office (I do a lot of SQL SERVER and .NET dev), I rarely have crashes (once or twice a year). I work in a very large office with many other developers and the machines run fine for years on end. Yet when someone is complaining about Windows on the internet and they like Linux it always has thousands of updates and they need to reinstall the whole OS to play one game. Odd how that comes about. I don't know quite how people manage it. Yet I use the same windows installation for half a decade with almost no problems. It almost sounds like it is operator error.
      - yyyk 7y ago
        I run Windows at $WORK too, and it runs fine (there were minor issues which would probably have been worse on Linux). Also much of my work is with the MS stack, which is pretty fine too. It's just I have little use for it at home, so I run and upgrade it rarely. It turns out upgrading from the nearly oldest Windows 10 build to the latest (at the time) crashed the upgrade process on my setup. This is hardly a regular process - I am sure 99% of people upgrade more regularly, and do not skip as many builds. It's a cycle too, I guess. The less I use Windows the more upgrades the system accurres which makes me dread turning it on more....
Zhyl 7y ago
Under SteamPlay, any game played using proton counts as a Linux sale. Therefore from a developer point of view Linux sales are getting more visibility and it becomes more attractive (or more justifiable) to invest in Linux development and maintenance.
- uncle_j 7y ago
  It like you didn't read my comment. If I could count on customers or Valve just fixing it with a wrapper for me, why bother making a Linux version at all? You wouldn't.
  - Zhyl 7y ago
    I read your comment. I just think that a large number of Linux sales is seen as a large 'pie'. I can't imagine that if there are 20-30% Linux sales that many will be thinking "Well most of those are Proton, we don't have to do anything to keep support up there!". They will be thinking "20-30% of our sales are Linux and we're beholden to the tech debt of one of Valve's vanity projects and the effort of one volunteer who has just burned out and put his project into maintenance mode? We need to take control! We need official Linux support". Comments like yours make me angry. Your whole attitude makes me angry. You're extremely offhand and dismissive of all possible Linux paths. I would accept that a 1% market share isn't an attractive proposition at the current time, that's a fair comment. I would accept that for the time being if Proton is filling a gap that developers currently aren't interested in or can't justify, but I absolutely refuse to accept that a larger player base who are willing to pay for a Linux first platform are going to be blithely brushed aside as not the developer's problem.
    - uncle_j 7y ago
      > I read your comment. I just think that a large number of Linux sales is seen as a large 'pie'. I can't imagine that if there are 20-30% Linux sales that many will be thinking "Well most of those are Proton, we don't have to do anything to keep support up there!". They will be thinking "20-30% of our sales are Linux and we're beholden to the tech debt of one of Valve's vanity projects and the effort of one volunteer who has just burned out and put his project into maintenance mode? We need to take control! We need official Linux support". But there isn't 20%-30% of the sales are Linux. It is a literally a 1%. It is very niche. > Comments like yours make me angry. Your whole attitude makes me angry. You're extremely offhand and dismissive of all possible Linux paths. I am sorry that basic facts make you angry, your feelings are your own responsibility. I've been using Linux now for about 20 years. There was Cedega before proton (remember them?) . While the desktop situation is now okay e.g. I can normally get something serviceable without the headaches of the past. Generally everything is still a mess. Jaron Lanier in his book "You are not a gadget" explains why this will always be the case. Open source anything is very much like herding cats. > I would accept that a 1% market share isn't an attractive proposition at the current time, that's a fair comment. I would accept that for the time being if Proton is filling a gap that developers currently aren't interested in or can't justify, but I absolutely refuse to accept that a larger player base who are willing to pay for a Linux first platform are going to be blithely brushed aside as not the developer's problem. There no evidence that there is a large player base for this Linux first platform. Many companies have tried. A lot of Linux users in the past used (look at older phpBB forums such as JustLinux and LinuxForums) that constantly to boast about "not paying for software".
pjmlp 7y ago
Proton is like the OS/2's Win32 compatibility, it did wonders for OS/2 adoption.
- Fnoord 7y ago
  Or it is like Windows' MSDOS compatibility.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Except that 16 bit Windows was a MS-DOS extender, from the same OS vendor. Ah, Windows gaming only took off after WinG got introduced, until then games were mostly targeting MS-DOS.
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
If the game works without problems and is performant I don't particularly care if it's native or Wine. It would be nice if more games shipped in some type of officially-supported wrapper, but that's basically where Valve is going anyway with Proton. (I just wish it wasn't tied to Steam, because I'm the one person who dislikes using Steam.) This is different than for native applications, where the UI inconsistency Wine introduces can be quite annoying.

Spivak 7y ago

Look, at this point I’ll take a game that works well under Proton over the half-hearted abandonware ports that we were getting before. There are games that are native and run fantastically on Linux. But they were always the exception.

saalweachter 7y ago
This reminds me of the "heightening the contradictions" political arguments.

yyyk 7y ago

It's the other way around. There would be little incentive to port games to Linux without an existing gamer pool which can buy them, and there would be no gamer pool without an initial range of games... The only practical way to break that vicious circle was the emulation option. Linux gamers play on emulation, but appreciate native ports and form the (initial) buyer pool for Linux games. So Proton and co are the only reason there's any viable Linux gaming at all. Without Proton, every Linux gamer would have had a Windows install and play with that alone.

uncle_j 7y ago
> There would be little incentive to port games to Linux without an existing gamer pool which can buy them, and there would be no gamer pool without an initial range of games... There isn't much of a gamer pool anyway. This may surprise you the number of people who like to play PC games and really care about Open Source I would wager isn't very many. > So Proton and co are the only reason there's any viable Linux gaming at all. Without Proton, every Linux gamer would have had a Windows install and play with that alone. Anyone I know who plays games and uses Linux Dual boots. Some people have spoken about some GPU pass-through nonsense with a VMWare which just seems like a faff. It just easier to buy a drive, slap Windows on it and Steam and be done with it. Until it is easier and more reliable with my whole catalogue I will be sticking with Windows.
- yyyk 7y ago
  >There isn't much of a [Linux] gamer pool anyway. This may surprise you the number... It doesn't surprise me at all. That number would have been zero without emulation like wine/Proton though. > Anyone I know who plays games and uses Linux Dual boots. As for myself, I don't play a lot, but a Linux version (native or emulated) plays a big role in deciding which games to buy when I do. It's not due to 'Open Source' reasons though. Dual boot is too much of a mess for me, I have a separate Windows laptop which I barely use otherwise (it does have a few Windows-only games), it's a bit of an hassle too. I don't feel like booting it and discovering it needs to install 10000 updates. I have already had to reinstall Windows 10 once so I can run a game (the game didn't support the old Windows 10 build, and the in-place upgrade crashed). It's much easier when I can just take a break and run a game on the same Linux system I use regularly.
  - uncle_j 7y ago
    > Dual boot is too much of a mess for me, I have a separate Windows laptop which I barely use otherwise (it does have a few Windows-only games), it's a bit of an hassle too. I don't feel like booting it and discovering it needs to install 10000 updates. I have already had to reinstall Windows 10 once so I can run a game (the game didn't support the old Windows 10 build, and the in-place upgrade crashed). It's much easier when I can just take a break and run a game on the same Linux system I use regularly. It is odd. I run Windows at work and the machine rarely gets rebooted. No problems what-so-ever. I run a Windows at home and in my Office (I do a lot of SQL SERVER and .NET dev), I rarely have crashes (once or twice a year). I work in a very large office with many other developers and the machines run fine for years on end. Yet when someone is complaining about Windows on the internet and they like Linux it always has thousands of updates and they need to reinstall the whole OS to play one game. Odd how that comes about. I don't know quite how people manage it. Yet I use the same windows installation for half a decade with almost no problems. It almost sounds like it is operator error.
    - yyyk 7y ago
      I run Windows at $WORK too, and it runs fine (there were minor issues which would probably have been worse on Linux). Also much of my work is with the MS stack, which is pretty fine too. It's just I have little use for it at home, so I run and upgrade it rarely. It turns out upgrading from the nearly oldest Windows 10 build to the latest (at the time) crashed the upgrade process on my setup. This is hardly a regular process - I am sure 99% of people upgrade more regularly, and do not skip as many builds. It's a cycle too, I guess. The less I use Windows the more upgrades the system accurres which makes me dread turning it on more....

Zhyl 7y ago

Under SteamPlay, any game played using proton counts as a Linux sale. Therefore from a developer point of view Linux sales are getting more visibility and it becomes more attractive (or more justifiable) to invest in Linux development and maintenance.

uncle_j 7y ago
It like you didn't read my comment. If I could count on customers or Valve just fixing it with a wrapper for me, why bother making a Linux version at all? You wouldn't.
- Zhyl 7y ago
  I read your comment. I just think that a large number of Linux sales is seen as a large 'pie'. I can't imagine that if there are 20-30% Linux sales that many will be thinking "Well most of those are Proton, we don't have to do anything to keep support up there!". They will be thinking "20-30% of our sales are Linux and we're beholden to the tech debt of one of Valve's vanity projects and the effort of one volunteer who has just burned out and put his project into maintenance mode? We need to take control! We need official Linux support". Comments like yours make me angry. Your whole attitude makes me angry. You're extremely offhand and dismissive of all possible Linux paths. I would accept that a 1% market share isn't an attractive proposition at the current time, that's a fair comment. I would accept that for the time being if Proton is filling a gap that developers currently aren't interested in or can't justify, but I absolutely refuse to accept that a larger player base who are willing to pay for a Linux first platform are going to be blithely brushed aside as not the developer's problem.
  - uncle_j 7y ago
    > I read your comment. I just think that a large number of Linux sales is seen as a large 'pie'. I can't imagine that if there are 20-30% Linux sales that many will be thinking "Well most of those are Proton, we don't have to do anything to keep support up there!". They will be thinking "20-30% of our sales are Linux and we're beholden to the tech debt of one of Valve's vanity projects and the effort of one volunteer who has just burned out and put his project into maintenance mode? We need to take control! We need official Linux support". But there isn't 20%-30% of the sales are Linux. It is a literally a 1%. It is very niche. > Comments like yours make me angry. Your whole attitude makes me angry. You're extremely offhand and dismissive of all possible Linux paths. I am sorry that basic facts make you angry, your feelings are your own responsibility. I've been using Linux now for about 20 years. There was Cedega before proton (remember them?) . While the desktop situation is now okay e.g. I can normally get something serviceable without the headaches of the past. Generally everything is still a mess. Jaron Lanier in his book "You are not a gadget" explains why this will always be the case. Open source anything is very much like herding cats. > I would accept that a 1% market share isn't an attractive proposition at the current time, that's a fair comment. I would accept that for the time being if Proton is filling a gap that developers currently aren't interested in or can't justify, but I absolutely refuse to accept that a larger player base who are willing to pay for a Linux first platform are going to be blithely brushed aside as not the developer's problem. There no evidence that there is a large player base for this Linux first platform. Many companies have tried. A lot of Linux users in the past used (look at older phpBB forums such as JustLinux and LinuxForums) that constantly to boast about "not paying for software".

pjmlp 7y ago

Proton is like the OS/2's Win32 compatibility, it did wonders for OS/2 adoption.

Fnoord 7y ago
Or it is like Windows' MSDOS compatibility.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Except that 16 bit Windows was a MS-DOS extender, from the same OS vendor. Ah, Windows gaming only took off after WinG got introduced, until then games were mostly targeting MS-DOS.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

If the game works without problems and is performant I don't particularly care if it's native or Wine. It would be nice if more games shipped in some type of officially-supported wrapper, but that's basically where Valve is going anyway with Proton. (I just wish it wasn't tied to Steam, because I'm the one person who dislikes using Steam.) This is different than for native applications, where the UI inconsistency Wine introduces can be quite annoying.