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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 no

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.
  - tracker1 4y ago
    I think flatpak/appimage/snap are good for similar reasons... If you're developing commercially supported applications and want to support Linux as well as Windows and Mac, it's a pretty natural target. Less (although not none) issues with the host OS depending on what your application does. Yeah, it means a lot of duplicate libraries, but it also means things will work... and aside from games, not aware of many that install more than a couple one-off applications to work with.
  - account42 4y ago
    > name one native Linux port that works just fine on Fedora 37 when it was built for Ubuntu 16.04. That really depends on what you mean by "built for Ubuntu 16.04". If you mean compiled on Ubuntu 16.04 with the default toolchain and just the resulting binary dumped on Steam then sure, that might not work today (but even then, the Steam runtime might be old enough). If you mean released when Ubuntu 16.04 but using best practices (bundle what you use except base system libs, statically link what you can including the C++ stdlib, don't export symbols you don't need) then I can go find many such games. > For an example of this, read Mike Rose about the game Defenders. Linux was 0.8% of sales, but over 50% of technical complaints. Complaints or bug reports? Because the culture about reporting bugs is very different between Linux and Windows. Personally I prefer people telling me about problems with my software. And if your problem is that this creates too much work to track the bugs then do what valve did: Create a public community-curated bug tracker. > 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. And if it does break then the Linux players are left without recourse unless the game is big enough that Valve makes it a priority. As a user I am going to keep rewarding those developers that at least pretend that they will give a shit if their update breaks the game for me. > 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. There were many native ports during the Steam Machine gold rush. And many ports being done by a single person in not too much time. I remain unconvinced that the lack of ports is really about technical issues (even if I agree that there is room for improvement) but rather about lack of business interest due to the tiny market share. Don't tell me that you can squeeze your port into the limited hardware and arbitrary restrictions of a handheld console but can't manage to wrangle library dependencies. It's about incentives, not the size of the problems.
- mattbee 4y ago
  I'm sure there are lots of working Linux ports! I was just saying that when I _did_ have a problem with a game on my Deck, disabling the Linux port fixed it. Where are the compromises for a developer in using Proton? There's one binary for them to ship (and update), they get to use industry-standard tools, and Valve makes sure it works on other platforms for free. Surely the result is more games you can run on a Linux system? Or rather - nobody cares when Windows leans on layers of backwards-compatibility to run a binary perfectly, why does anyone care when Linux does the same?
- account42 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure we are already getting fewer native ports than we would have without Proton. It's hard to say for sure because ports were already getting rarer when the Steam Machine hype died but there hasn't really been a noticeable uptick with the Deck and that seems to be doing much better than Plan A ever did. > I have heard some old ports were actually just shipping their game with wine For straight up Wine wrappers there are/were only a handful. But many ports use some kind of wrapper for at least the graphics parts instead of reengineering their renderer and Proton has a chance of performing better there. There are also a lot of Unity Linux exports where the game devs probably don't even have any setup to test the Linux version or ability to deal with Linux bug reports. And even for ports from those who should know what they are doing (e.g. Feral) things do get abandoned and port issues never fixed (e.g. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided just crashes for me before getting to the menu). So I can somewhat see why people don't want to bother when Proton works quite well most of the time but still I don't think its good for the long term future of Linux gaming to depend on being able to run Windows games. Anti-cheat is already a problem for Multiplayer and you can bet that these kind of invasive technologies will be used more and more at least by big publishers. Pushing the Linux platform forward also requires interest from developers targetting it. We saw some positive effects here with e.g. Feral reporting bugs and even submitting patches to Mesa for in-progress ports. Currently Valve pours a lot of resources into doing the needed work (at least in some areas) but we can't rely on them remaining interested forever.
ip26 4y ago
What a mirror world this is, where Win32 (via Proton) is the best & most stable Linux ABI.

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.
- tracker1 4y ago
  I think flatpak/appimage/snap are good for similar reasons... If you're developing commercially supported applications and want to support Linux as well as Windows and Mac, it's a pretty natural target. Less (although not none) issues with the host OS depending on what your application does. Yeah, it means a lot of duplicate libraries, but it also means things will work... and aside from games, not aware of many that install more than a couple one-off applications to work with.
- account42 4y ago
  > name one native Linux port that works just fine on Fedora 37 when it was built for Ubuntu 16.04. That really depends on what you mean by "built for Ubuntu 16.04". If you mean compiled on Ubuntu 16.04 with the default toolchain and just the resulting binary dumped on Steam then sure, that might not work today (but even then, the Steam runtime might be old enough). If you mean released when Ubuntu 16.04 but using best practices (bundle what you use except base system libs, statically link what you can including the C++ stdlib, don't export symbols you don't need) then I can go find many such games. > For an example of this, read Mike Rose about the game Defenders. Linux was 0.8% of sales, but over 50% of technical complaints. Complaints or bug reports? Because the culture about reporting bugs is very different between Linux and Windows. Personally I prefer people telling me about problems with my software. And if your problem is that this creates too much work to track the bugs then do what valve did: Create a public community-curated bug tracker. > 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. And if it does break then the Linux players are left without recourse unless the game is big enough that Valve makes it a priority. As a user I am going to keep rewarding those developers that at least pretend that they will give a shit if their update breaks the game for me. > 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. There were many native ports during the Steam Machine gold rush. And many ports being done by a single person in not too much time. I remain unconvinced that the lack of ports is really about technical issues (even if I agree that there is room for improvement) but rather about lack of business interest due to the tiny market share. Don't tell me that you can squeeze your port into the limited hardware and arbitrary restrictions of a handheld console but can't manage to wrangle library dependencies. It's about incentives, not the size of the problems.
mattbee 4y ago
I'm sure there are lots of working Linux ports! I was just saying that when I _did_ have a problem with a game on my Deck, disabling the Linux port fixed it. Where are the compromises for a developer in using Proton? There's one binary for them to ship (and update), they get to use industry-standard tools, and Valve makes sure it works on other platforms for free. Surely the result is more games you can run on a Linux system? Or rather - nobody cares when Windows leans on layers of backwards-compatibility to run a binary perfectly, why does anyone care when Linux does the same?
account42 4y ago
I'm pretty sure we are already getting fewer native ports than we would have without Proton. It's hard to say for sure because ports were already getting rarer when the Steam Machine hype died but there hasn't really been a noticeable uptick with the Deck and that seems to be doing much better than Plan A ever did. > I have heard some old ports were actually just shipping their game with wine For straight up Wine wrappers there are/were only a handful. But many ports use some kind of wrapper for at least the graphics parts instead of reengineering their renderer and Proton has a chance of performing better there. There are also a lot of Unity Linux exports where the game devs probably don't even have any setup to test the Linux version or ability to deal with Linux bug reports. And even for ports from those who should know what they are doing (e.g. Feral) things do get abandoned and port issues never fixed (e.g. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided just crashes for me before getting to the menu). So I can somewhat see why people don't want to bother when Proton works quite well most of the time but still I don't think its good for the long term future of Linux gaming to depend on being able to run Windows games. Anti-cheat is already a problem for Multiplayer and you can bet that these kind of invasive technologies will be used more and more at least by big publishers. Pushing the Linux platform forward also requires interest from developers targetting it. We saw some positive effects here with e.g. Feral reporting bugs and even submitting patches to Mesa for in-progress ports. Currently Valve pours a lot of resources into doing the needed work (at least in some areas) but we can't rely on them remaining interested forever.

ip26 4y ago

What a mirror world this is, where Win32 (via Proton) is the best & most stable Linux ABI.