5 ms·

It is incredible how well proton works on the steam deck.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
As one of my buddies put it, 'it is basically magic'. I agree. Compared to manual fiddling, it is amazing. For the proton work alone, Steam got a lot of goodwill from me.
- Shared404 4y ago
  Same here. I almost went to GOG, but Proton pulled me back to Steam very quickly.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    GOG has a place in my heart. I still try to throw them money every so often, but I will admit that at this point Steam won when it comes to a platform as a whole. GOG can still manage, but they will need to secure non-DRM for popular games, which may be a taller order. Divinity was great, but it is such a rarity these days.
irusensei 4y ago
Also works very well on a full AMD laptop I own. Running Fedora. I often play FFXIV with it. Not verified. It’s ironic that the game runs perfectly on Proton but the main source of problems and incompatibilities is the launcher which uses MSHTML for wathever reason. Proton GE seems to have fixed the issue with the launcher but game patches sometimes break it.
mattbee 4y ago
It really is. And I noticed quite early on: the Steam games which had problems were the ones with native Linux ports - wonky display settings, or controller not recognised or something like that. The fix is always to tell it to "force" a version of Proton, which caused Steam to go and download the Win32 build instead.
- opan 4y ago
  I get the feeling people hit a bad game or two and stopped checking, so I just want to say native ports actually work fine in my experience, both before and after Proton's birth. Terraria, Garry's Mod, Valve's own titles, and Starbound should all work fine to name a few. I fear we'll get fewer proper native ports because of Proton, so it's hard for me to get excited about it. Especially with how it seems to be on by default and work sort of invisibly, it's like they want to hide from people if they're playing a native game or not. I don't even think it's a malicious move, more like the common sin of trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator at the cost of the older advanced users. I have heard some old ports were actually just shipping their game with wine, so for those Proton is probably an improvement, but some games (indie especially) actually made proper ports years ago and I think we ought to use them and recognize their efforts.
  - gjsman-1000 4y ago
    Looking over the Linux ecosystem, I would say that Linux itself has far more blame for the lack of native ports than the developers do. Developing for Linux is complicated, requires constant intervention, has frequent compatibility gotchas, has little "best practices" established, among other issues. Games are complicated things - name one native Linux port that works just fine on Fedora 37 when it was built for Ubuntu 16.04. Unless it got recently updated or is only a simple 2D Game, odds are not in your favor. For an example of this, read Mike Rose about the game Defenders. Linux was 0.8% of sales, but over 50% of technical complaints. Whereas, if they dumped it for a Proton build, the onus is no longer on them for a working Linux build or for compatibility issues on Linux - its way easier to just say YMMV. Blaming developers for the lack of native games is like the pot calling the kettle black. Until Linux becomes a decent platform to build for, developers aren't interested in rewriting major parts of their games every time the Linux community has a new idea. The lack of native games, I would argue, is more a failure of Linux than a failure of game developers. Whether we like it or not, this lack of stability in Linux and the ability to just fork every time you don't like something, has led to Win32 becoming the common API for Linux. You build for Windows and Vulkan, and specifically test your game against Proton, and you can run on almost any Linux distribution that supports Proton without banging your head into a wall, or doing frequent patching every year.

As one of my buddies put it, 'it is basically magic'. I agree. Compared to manual fiddling, it is amazing. For the proton work alone, Steam got a lot of goodwill from me.

Shared404 4y ago
Same here. I almost went to GOG, but Proton pulled me back to Steam very quickly.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  GOG has a place in my heart. I still try to throw them money every so often, but I will admit that at this point Steam won when it comes to a platform as a whole. GOG can still manage, but they will need to secure non-DRM for popular games, which may be a taller order. Divinity was great, but it is such a rarity these days.

irusensei 4y ago

Also works very well on a full AMD laptop I own. Running Fedora. I often play FFXIV with it. Not verified. It’s ironic that the game runs perfectly on Proton but the main source of problems and incompatibilities is the launcher which uses MSHTML for wathever reason. Proton GE seems to have fixed the issue with the launcher but game patches sometimes break it.

mattbee 4y ago

It really is. And I noticed quite early on: the Steam games which had problems were the ones with native Linux ports - wonky display settings, or controller not recognised or something like that. The fix is always to tell it to "force" a version of Proton, which caused Steam to go and download the Win32 build instead.

opan 4y ago
I get the feeling people hit a bad game or two and stopped checking, so I just want to say native ports actually work fine in my experience, both before and after Proton's birth. Terraria, Garry's Mod, Valve's own titles, and Starbound should all work fine to name a few. I fear we'll get fewer proper native ports because of Proton, so it's hard for me to get excited about it. Especially with how it seems to be on by default and work sort of invisibly, it's like they want to hide from people if they're playing a native game or not. I don't even think it's a malicious move, more like the common sin of trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator at the cost of the older advanced users. I have heard some old ports were actually just shipping their game with wine, so for those Proton is probably an improvement, but some games (indie especially) actually made proper ports years ago and I think we ought to use them and recognize their efforts.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  Looking over the Linux ecosystem, I would say that Linux itself has far more blame for the lack of native ports than the developers do. Developing for Linux is complicated, requires constant intervention, has frequent compatibility gotchas, has little "best practices" established, among other issues. Games are complicated things - name one native Linux port that works just fine on Fedora 37 when it was built for Ubuntu 16.04. Unless it got recently updated or is only a simple 2D Game, odds are not in your favor. For an example of this, read Mike Rose about the game Defenders. Linux was 0.8% of sales, but over 50% of technical complaints. Whereas, if they dumped it for a Proton build, the onus is no longer on them for a working Linux build or for compatibility issues on Linux - its way easier to just say YMMV. Blaming developers for the lack of native games is like the pot calling the kettle black. Until Linux becomes a decent platform to build for, developers aren't interested in rewriting major parts of their games every time the Linux community has a new idea. The lack of native games, I would argue, is more a failure of Linux than a failure of game developers. Whether we like it or not, this lack of stability in Linux and the ability to just fork every time you don't like something, has led to Win32 becoming the common API for Linux. You build for Windows and Vulkan, and specifically test your game against Proton, and you can run on almost any Linux distribution that supports Proton without banging your head into a wall, or doing frequent patching every year.