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I had to go figure out what Proton is: "Proton is a tool for use with the Steam client which allows games which are exclusive to Windows to run on the Linux op
by jasonpeacock 4y ago
I had to go figure out what Proton is:
"Proton is a tool for use with the Steam client which allows games which are exclusive to Windows to run on the Linux operating system. It uses Wine to facilitate this."
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton
- johnxie 4y agoIt has come a long way. When running through Proton, the game and all its middleware are supported seamlessly. Take a look at https://www.protondb.com https://www.protondb.com
- psychphysic 4y agoIt's witchcraft is what it is.
- skywal_l 4y agoYou can learn some of the spells here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33156727 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33156727.
- SkyMarshal 4y agoIt's Steam's downstream fork of Wine, which is not an emulator.
- musicale 4y ago1. An emulator is a system which implements another system's functionality so as to serve as a usable replacement. Examples include in-circuit emulators for hardware components, or software emulators for game system hardware. In each case, the emulator is a usable replacement for the original system. 2. WINE reimplements the functionality of Windows, as exposed by the Windows ABI, as software running on Linux. 3. The combination of WINE and Linux is in fact a usable replacement for Windows. 4. Which means that WINE running on Linux conforms to the above definition of an emulator for the Windows system. 5. Therefore, WINE running on Linux certainly is an emulator for the Windows system. QED
- xcdzvyn 4y ago#1 defines a compatibility later, rather than an emulator, in my mind. Emulators typically perform some form of translation from the original (completely unsupported) code to something the host can understand. Wine implements PE binary support natively in Linux.
- alasdair_ 4y agoQuick, do "GNU is not Unix" next!
- Asooka 4y agoWine is not an emulator, therefore if your definition of an emulator brands Wine as an emulator, your definition is wrong. :)
- giraffe_lady 4y agoIt may not be an emulator in a highly specific & technical sense used by and useful to a small group of experts. It is an emulator in the general and widely-recognized sense of "software that runs software originally intended for a different, incompatible system." You see this all the time when a jargon word enters the general non-specialist vocabulary. It doesn't make either usage wrong, though it can be confusing sometimes if the contexts can be difficult to distinguish. In this case that's unlikely so just give it up please. Honestly the quirk where that is its name could be a really useful entry point for educating non-specialist readers on the different technical approaches used to solve this problem! I never see that though, this is only ever used as a wellackshully on internet forums. It sucks.
- chii 4y agoWine is not an emulator the same way that [this is not a pipe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images)
- klodolph 4y agoHonestly I don’t even understand the narrow sense in which you could say WINE is not an emulator. There was supposedly a naming discussion in 1993 which resulted in “WINE is not an emulator”. Maybe this was to remind people that you still needed an x86 processor (WINE is not an x86 emulator), or maybe it was born from the idea that WINE does not emulate Windows—maybe it “provides a compatibility layer” or “reimplements the Windows interfaces”. The Windows APIs are not so well-specified that a mere reimplementation of them would run so much software as WINE does.