13 ms·

Amazing, you can buy a triple A title and have it just work out of the box. I'm so happy with Valve's support for linux. And of course the thousands of hours of

Amazing, you can buy a triple A title and have it just work out of the box. I'm so happy with Valve's support for linux. And of course the thousands of hours of work that have gone into Wine. It's becoming a more reliable experience to play old windows games using wine than trying to run them on windows 10.

carlio 6y ago
I wonder if you can install Wine under WSL? :evil laugh:
- mmm_grayons 6y ago
  Better still, use VcXsrv or similar to run proton.
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    You want mobaxterm here - vcxsrv is amazingly slow with GLX workloads.
    - semi-extrinsic 6y ago
      Does it work with VNC and VirtualGL? If yes, this is my new favourite Windows thing.
      - beernutz 6y ago
        It does work with VNC. Not sure about VirtualGL though. It IS very comlete however, so it has a high likelihood I think.
- phonon 6y ago
  https://reddragdiva.dreamwidth.org/607714.html https://reddragdiva.dreamwidth.org/607714.html
- recursive 6y ago
  I don't believe WSL has any graphical capability whatsoever.
  - 0xTJ 6y ago
    By itself no. But you can run an X Server just like you have on Linux machines, and start graphical applications that use it.
  - nikeee 6y ago
    You can start an X server on Windows and let WSL use it. I've used some GUI programs via Xming in the past. It's fairly simple: https://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2017/02/08/graphical-programs-on-windows-subsystem-on-linux.aspx?m=1 https://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2017/02/08/graphic...
  - xnyan 6y ago
    I’m not sure where that belief came from because it absolutely does. Software compositing, so you’re limited to what is practical but that’s very useful for a lot of things.
    - recursive 6y ago
      > I’m not sure where that belief came from I vaguely recall (possibly correctly) that I once read it on Scott Hanselman's blog.
- sho_hn 6y ago
  It's a chuckle-worthy thought now, but I am willing to bed it will be reality for backward compatibility with historic games in the long run - cf. the use of DOSBox to run old DOS games in modern systems. Countdown to old Windows games delivered in full Linux containers starting now ...
  - BubRoss 6y ago
    You think people will take games that already run on windows and package them in a linux container that runs them with wine, then require the multi gigabyte widows linux subystem to be installed so they can run through that? You are willing to bet on this? How much would you like to bet and are there any other bets you would like to make? Maybe the cubs winning the super bowl or dial up modems replacing fiber optics?
    - qznc 6y ago
      Place your bets here: https://predictionbook.com/predictions/198711 https://predictionbook.com/predictions/198711
    - sixothree 6y ago
      > take games that already run on windows I believe this is in reference to games that no longer run on modern versions of Windows.
    - chupasaurus 6y ago
      > require the multi gigabyte widows linux subystem to be installed It's Hyper-V, so you could just run Linux VM without the sugar coating.
    - sho_hn 6y ago
      The example I gave was old DOS games that no longer run on modern versions of Windows and are easier to ship with a bundled emulator - and that emulator is a free software reimplementation of the original thing. I think it's very likely to happen again in future iterations of the same principle, yes.
lloeki 6y ago
I wish Proton (with an hypothetical DXMetal) would help solve this conundrum on macOS, especially now that 32-bit native code has been dropped.
- coldpie 6y ago
  The plan is basically to use these translation layers on top of MoltenVK[1], so the stack goes like [Game -> DX11 -> Vulkan -> Metal]. The other option is for Apple to pull their heads out of their asses and support the cross-platform graphics API that everyone else does. But we can all guess how that will go. If you want a platform for gaming, stay far, far away from macOS. [1] https://moltengl.com/moltenvk/ https://moltengl.com/moltenvk/
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    >The other option is for Apple to pull their heads out of their asses A non-option is not an option.
bno1 6y ago
Also DXVK [1], an implementation of DirectX over Vulkan that allows (most) games to run on Linux with native or even better performance. Some people are using DXVK even on Windows to circumvent bugs or simply because it's faster for some DX9 games. [1] https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk
- wlesieutre 6y ago
  A friend of mine recently got a workstation with a threadripper processor, and apparently some games have so much trouble with the core count (lookin' at you, Far Cry) that you have to reboot into "game mode" with a substantial number of cores disabled. But some other enterprising threadripper user worked around that by stuffing the game in a Linux VM to avoid the rebooting. Crazy to think that a Windows game would perform better in a Linux VM under Windows than running on Windows natively, even if the reason is that it's effectively presenting the game with worse hardware that it understands how to use more effectively.
  - Miraste 6y ago
    Funny, but not very fair: presumably a Windows VM with the lower core count would work as well.
    - cferr 6y ago
      It may, but then you would need to purchase two Windows licenses if you want to keep the host OS Windows.
    - depressedpanda 6y ago
      Wouldn't that entail having an extra Windows license in order to be able to run the VM after the activation grace period has passed?
      - vernie 6y ago
        I believe that they got rid of the grace period in Windows 10. Now you can run Windows without a license key indefinitely, albeit with certain personalization features (e.g. color scheme, wallpaper) locked.
m-p-3 6y ago
Sadly most games nowadays comes with multiplayer as the main product, so that anticheat engines are a necessity to make the game fair for everyone. Those aren't friendly to Wine/Proton, therefore I try to stick to mostly single-player games. With the kids of how life is going faster everyday, I cannot afford to play on long stretches of time, and being unable to pause on a multiplayer game on a whim (which makes sense) makes it logical to go with a single-player game, as I can simply pause the game and pick it right up when I can, on my own schedule. I'm glad that Valve is doing that kind of work, it benefits everyone.
- 0xdeadbeee 6y ago
  Supposedly Valve is working on this, but the lack of recent news is not promising: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/apparently-valve-are-working-with-easy-anti-cheat-to-get-support-in-steam-play.13573 https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/apparently-valve-are-...
  - himinlomax 6y ago
    The main company working on anti-cheat software was bough by Epic, and they dropped their Linux efforts as a result.
    - tvb12 6y ago
      Epic is kind of a thorn in the side for me when gaming (on a Linux distribution). There are a few Epic exclusive games that I'd like to play (Arise: a simple story, Journey, etc.), but they don't even have entries in protondb. That's probably due to Epic not having a launcher for Linux. A few months ago(?), I read it had become possible to run the launcher through Wine, but I don't think that's changed anything on the porting side. I worry that games which are released as Epic exclusives may fall by the wayside when/if they eventually become nonexclusive.
      - ekianjo 6y ago
        You can run the epic games store on Linux and so far it worls well for indie titles I tried there. Not sure about AAA titles.
bozzcl 6y ago
I want to add something to this: and when a newly launched AAA game doesn't work, the community won't stop until it does. My own personal examples: Halo MCC and Doom Eternal. They wouldn't launch out-of-the-box, but people just wouldn't stop trying. The GitHub issues for these games were enormous, full of information and people trying things. It's pretty encouraging.
- pkaye 6y ago
  Where on GitHub is this discussion?
  - bo0tzz 6y ago
    Presumably over at https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues
  - mikeyouse 6y ago
    Looks like there's tons of game-specific discussion on the Issues page for Proton itself: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues
  - tvb12 6y ago
    If you go to protondb.com and search for the game, there's a link under the title for "GitHub Issue Search". I suspect that's where you'll find the discussions. Here's the issue for MCC. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/2907 https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/2907
  - bozzcl 6y ago
    What others said, it's in the issues section of the Proton repo in GitHub. Sorry about that, I was on my phone and in a hurry so I couldn't add the links.
- Bombthecat 6y ago
  Doom is not native?
Thaxll 6y ago
None of the recent AAA games work. By none I mean not 99.9%. Proton is not a relyable solution to play games on Linux, it workish on old games and even the one that work have really annoying issues that you woudn't have a on Windows. On top of that you add the bad stability / performance of graphic drivers on Linux vs Windows. Edit: Since I'm being downvoted show me recent games that work without issues / tweaking etc ... ?
- simion314 6y ago
  I am not playing that many games and I avoid using Steam but for me any recent Unreal or Unity game works with DXVK . You are right that too many times you need to tweak stuff or install some missing 32bit library for a game but I think your 99% number is wrong.
  - onli 6y ago
    Number is completely wrong. Most of them work. Just go through the release list and look at their protondb entry. Doom Eternal, Wolcen, Resident Evil 3 - the three newest games on Steam Computerbase looked at and they all work.
babuskov 6y ago
It sure is amazing currently, but I fear in the long run nobody would even bother to make native Linux versions anymore. It's such an easy out for developers. Why bother when people will make it work on Proton somehow and you don't have to promise anything nor do Linux support.
- m463 6y ago
  Having tried to write interesting applications for linux, I should ask -- what does "native linux" mean? This is a serious question, and I don't know if it has an answer. For example, it was easier for me to use pygame, which is based on SDL (simple directmedia layer), which is based on porting windows code.
  - nwallin 6y ago
    > which is based on SDL (simple directmedia layer), which is based on porting windows code. Huh? Building on top of SDL is probably the easiest way to make a game native on all platforms. There's nothing Windows specific about it.
    - m463 6y ago
      My "based on porting windows" comment was based on my understanding that SDL started with windows. Wikipedia says: "Sam Lantinga created the library, first releasing it in early 1998, while working for Loki Software. He got the idea while porting a Windows application to Macintosh." Even the naming of directmedia suggests microsoft roots to me: direct3d directplay directx, etc. But my larger point was that I don't know how you would create a "native linux" game - I think high-functioning games on linux use cross-platform toolkits of one type or another. I don't know maybe you could cobble something together part wayland, part mesa, part pulseaudio, part v4l, part /dev/input...
      - account42 6y ago
        At the end of the day anything that runs on Linux without needing additional compatibility tools is native. You could make a distinction for Windows/whatever games bundled together without Wine/eON/whatever and depending what want to determine that might make sense but at that point you probably also want to exclude things like Unity that don't really do a great job at integreating into the Linux environment. SDL can be used for porting games (ie, making them native) and that's what it was originally created for but it's not really comparable to bundling a Windows .exe with Wine, which would add a lot more complexity.

carlio 6y ago

I wonder if you can install Wine under WSL? :evil laugh:

mmm_grayons 6y ago
Better still, use VcXsrv or similar to run proton.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  You want mobaxterm here - vcxsrv is amazingly slow with GLX workloads.
  - semi-extrinsic 6y ago
    Does it work with VNC and VirtualGL? If yes, this is my new favourite Windows thing.
    - beernutz 6y ago
      It does work with VNC. Not sure about VirtualGL though. It IS very comlete however, so it has a high likelihood I think.
phonon 6y ago
https://reddragdiva.dreamwidth.org/607714.html https://reddragdiva.dreamwidth.org/607714.html
recursive 6y ago
I don't believe WSL has any graphical capability whatsoever.
- 0xTJ 6y ago
  By itself no. But you can run an X Server just like you have on Linux machines, and start graphical applications that use it.
- nikeee 6y ago
  You can start an X server on Windows and let WSL use it. I've used some GUI programs via Xming in the past. It's fairly simple: https://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2017/02/08/graphical-programs-on-windows-subsystem-on-linux.aspx?m=1 https://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2017/02/08/graphic...
- xnyan 6y ago
  I’m not sure where that belief came from because it absolutely does. Software compositing, so you’re limited to what is practical but that’s very useful for a lot of things.
  - recursive 6y ago
    > I’m not sure where that belief came from I vaguely recall (possibly correctly) that I once read it on Scott Hanselman's blog.
sho_hn 6y ago
It's a chuckle-worthy thought now, but I am willing to bed it will be reality for backward compatibility with historic games in the long run - cf. the use of DOSBox to run old DOS games in modern systems. Countdown to old Windows games delivered in full Linux containers starting now ...
- BubRoss 6y ago
  You think people will take games that already run on windows and package them in a linux container that runs them with wine, then require the multi gigabyte widows linux subystem to be installed so they can run through that? You are willing to bet on this? How much would you like to bet and are there any other bets you would like to make? Maybe the cubs winning the super bowl or dial up modems replacing fiber optics?
  - qznc 6y ago
    Place your bets here: https://predictionbook.com/predictions/198711 https://predictionbook.com/predictions/198711
  - sixothree 6y ago
    > take games that already run on windows I believe this is in reference to games that no longer run on modern versions of Windows.
  - chupasaurus 6y ago
    > require the multi gigabyte widows linux subystem to be installed It's Hyper-V, so you could just run Linux VM without the sugar coating.
  - sho_hn 6y ago
    The example I gave was old DOS games that no longer run on modern versions of Windows and are easier to ship with a bundled emulator - and that emulator is a free software reimplementation of the original thing. I think it's very likely to happen again in future iterations of the same principle, yes.

lloeki 6y ago

I wish Proton (with an hypothetical DXMetal) would help solve this conundrum on macOS, especially now that 32-bit native code has been dropped.

coldpie 6y ago
The plan is basically to use these translation layers on top of MoltenVK[1], so the stack goes like [Game -> DX11 -> Vulkan -> Metal]. The other option is for Apple to pull their heads out of their asses and support the cross-platform graphics API that everyone else does. But we can all guess how that will go. If you want a platform for gaming, stay far, far away from macOS. [1] https://moltengl.com/moltenvk/ https://moltengl.com/moltenvk/
- Hamuko 6y ago
  >The other option is for Apple to pull their heads out of their asses A non-option is not an option.

bno1 6y ago

Also DXVK [1], an implementation of DirectX over Vulkan that allows (most) games to run on Linux with native or even better performance. Some people are using DXVK even on Windows to circumvent bugs or simply because it's faster for some DX9 games. [1] https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk

wlesieutre 6y ago
A friend of mine recently got a workstation with a threadripper processor, and apparently some games have so much trouble with the core count (lookin' at you, Far Cry) that you have to reboot into "game mode" with a substantial number of cores disabled. But some other enterprising threadripper user worked around that by stuffing the game in a Linux VM to avoid the rebooting. Crazy to think that a Windows game would perform better in a Linux VM under Windows than running on Windows natively, even if the reason is that it's effectively presenting the game with worse hardware that it understands how to use more effectively.
- Miraste 6y ago
  Funny, but not very fair: presumably a Windows VM with the lower core count would work as well.
  - cferr 6y ago
    It may, but then you would need to purchase two Windows licenses if you want to keep the host OS Windows.
  - depressedpanda 6y ago
    Wouldn't that entail having an extra Windows license in order to be able to run the VM after the activation grace period has passed?
    - vernie 6y ago
      I believe that they got rid of the grace period in Windows 10. Now you can run Windows without a license key indefinitely, albeit with certain personalization features (e.g. color scheme, wallpaper) locked.

m-p-3 6y ago

Sadly most games nowadays comes with multiplayer as the main product, so that anticheat engines are a necessity to make the game fair for everyone. Those aren't friendly to Wine/Proton, therefore I try to stick to mostly single-player games. With the kids of how life is going faster everyday, I cannot afford to play on long stretches of time, and being unable to pause on a multiplayer game on a whim (which makes sense) makes it logical to go with a single-player game, as I can simply pause the game and pick it right up when I can, on my own schedule. I'm glad that Valve is doing that kind of work, it benefits everyone.

0xdeadbeee 6y ago
Supposedly Valve is working on this, but the lack of recent news is not promising: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/apparently-valve-are-working-with-easy-anti-cheat-to-get-support-in-steam-play.13573 https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/apparently-valve-are-...
- himinlomax 6y ago
  The main company working on anti-cheat software was bough by Epic, and they dropped their Linux efforts as a result.
  - tvb12 6y ago
    Epic is kind of a thorn in the side for me when gaming (on a Linux distribution). There are a few Epic exclusive games that I'd like to play (Arise: a simple story, Journey, etc.), but they don't even have entries in protondb. That's probably due to Epic not having a launcher for Linux. A few months ago(?), I read it had become possible to run the launcher through Wine, but I don't think that's changed anything on the porting side. I worry that games which are released as Epic exclusives may fall by the wayside when/if they eventually become nonexclusive.
    - ekianjo 6y ago
      You can run the epic games store on Linux and so far it worls well for indie titles I tried there. Not sure about AAA titles.

bozzcl 6y ago

I want to add something to this: and when a newly launched AAA game doesn't work, the community won't stop until it does. My own personal examples: Halo MCC and Doom Eternal. They wouldn't launch out-of-the-box, but people just wouldn't stop trying. The GitHub issues for these games were enormous, full of information and people trying things. It's pretty encouraging.

pkaye 6y ago
Where on GitHub is this discussion?
- bo0tzz 6y ago
  Presumably over at https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues
- mikeyouse 6y ago
  Looks like there's tons of game-specific discussion on the Issues page for Proton itself: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues
- tvb12 6y ago
  If you go to protondb.com and search for the game, there's a link under the title for "GitHub Issue Search". I suspect that's where you'll find the discussions. Here's the issue for MCC. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/2907 https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/2907
- bozzcl 6y ago
  What others said, it's in the issues section of the Proton repo in GitHub. Sorry about that, I was on my phone and in a hurry so I couldn't add the links.
Bombthecat 6y ago
Doom is not native?

Thaxll 6y ago

None of the recent AAA games work. By none I mean not 99.9%. Proton is not a relyable solution to play games on Linux, it workish on old games and even the one that work have really annoying issues that you woudn't have a on Windows. On top of that you add the bad stability / performance of graphic drivers on Linux vs Windows. Edit: Since I'm being downvoted show me recent games that work without issues / tweaking etc ... ?

simion314 6y ago
I am not playing that many games and I avoid using Steam but for me any recent Unreal or Unity game works with DXVK . You are right that too many times you need to tweak stuff or install some missing 32bit library for a game but I think your 99% number is wrong.
- onli 6y ago
  Number is completely wrong. Most of them work. Just go through the release list and look at their protondb entry. Doom Eternal, Wolcen, Resident Evil 3 - the three newest games on Steam Computerbase looked at and they all work.

babuskov 6y ago

It sure is amazing currently, but I fear in the long run nobody would even bother to make native Linux versions anymore. It's such an easy out for developers. Why bother when people will make it work on Proton somehow and you don't have to promise anything nor do Linux support.

m463 6y ago
Having tried to write interesting applications for linux, I should ask -- what does "native linux" mean? This is a serious question, and I don't know if it has an answer. For example, it was easier for me to use pygame, which is based on SDL (simple directmedia layer), which is based on porting windows code.
- nwallin 6y ago
  > which is based on SDL (simple directmedia layer), which is based on porting windows code. Huh? Building on top of SDL is probably the easiest way to make a game native on all platforms. There's nothing Windows specific about it.
  - m463 6y ago
    My "based on porting windows" comment was based on my understanding that SDL started with windows. Wikipedia says: "Sam Lantinga created the library, first releasing it in early 1998, while working for Loki Software. He got the idea while porting a Windows application to Macintosh." Even the naming of directmedia suggests microsoft roots to me: direct3d directplay directx, etc. But my larger point was that I don't know how you would create a "native linux" game - I think high-functioning games on linux use cross-platform toolkits of one type or another. I don't know maybe you could cobble something together part wayland, part mesa, part pulseaudio, part v4l, part /dev/input...
    - account42 6y ago
      At the end of the day anything that runs on Linux without needing additional compatibility tools is native. You could make a distinction for Windows/whatever games bundled together without Wine/eON/whatever and depending what want to determine that might make sense but at that point you probably also want to exclude things like Unity that don't really do a great job at integreating into the Linux environment. SDL can be used for porting games (ie, making them native) and that's what it was originally created for but it's not really comparable to bundling a Windows .exe with Wine, which would add a lot more complexity.