3 ms·

> I was the creator & lead dev on Proton for its first 5 years (2016-2021), Wow, than k you. I know it takes a village, and it’s always a team effort, but stil

> I was the creator & lead dev on Proton for its first 5 years (2016-2021), Wow, than k you. I know it takes a village, and it’s always a team effort, but still thank you. My windows PC is gathering dust now. I only use my Linux laptop and steam deck now. If a game doesn’t run on Linux, I just won’t play it anymore. That’s a huge change, and I really appreciate it. Thanks to everyone who contributed.

coldpie 3y ago
Thanks, it was quite a ride! Definitely a team effort, not only developers, but also a fantastic QA team that puts a ton of work into polishing every single release. Also don't forget that Proton was built on top of 20 years of hard work on Wine before Valve even entered the picture. I know I'm not the only (ex-)Wine/Proton dev who posts here on HN :)
- yomlica8 3y ago
  It bothers me a bit when I see the narrative on here that the introduction of the Steam Deck changed everything for linux gaming, but really it is a culmination of steady ongoing work that didn't even start with Valve. I've been primary linux gaming since probably about 2014. When Steam machines fizzled out Valve just quietly brushed it off and continued investing in the general concept.
  - xethos 3y ago
    > When Steam machines fizzled out Valve just quietly brushed it off and continued investing in the general concept. I remember being really disappointed when they did - I assumed gaming on Linux would be following the same path, because what the fuck kind of company breaks down a wall by repeatedly bashing their forehead into it? Steam machines did not do well, and instead of Valve saying "Maybe this is a money pit we should abandon", they just shoveled money into it until it was mostly full.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - entuno 3y ago
    There was a huge amount of work by WINE (and others), but it really was a huge leap in how accessible Linux gaming was to people. Going back a few years, my experience was that you had to do some research to see if a game was likely to work, install it through wine, and then usually faff around with a load of winetricks/configurations/packages/etc to get a game that mostly worked (often with some weird bugs, performance issues, etc). Now there's a whole library of games that you can just right click -> install and they work perfectly well on Linux. And of course that wouldn't have been possible without the years of work building up to it - but it was a massive improvement when Valve threw their weight behind it and built it directly into the Steam client.

coldpie 3y ago

Thanks, it was quite a ride! Definitely a team effort, not only developers, but also a fantastic QA team that puts a ton of work into polishing every single release. Also don't forget that Proton was built on top of 20 years of hard work on Wine before Valve even entered the picture. I know I'm not the only (ex-)Wine/Proton dev who posts here on HN :)

yomlica8 3y ago
It bothers me a bit when I see the narrative on here that the introduction of the Steam Deck changed everything for linux gaming, but really it is a culmination of steady ongoing work that didn't even start with Valve. I've been primary linux gaming since probably about 2014. When Steam machines fizzled out Valve just quietly brushed it off and continued investing in the general concept.
- xethos 3y ago
  > When Steam machines fizzled out Valve just quietly brushed it off and continued investing in the general concept. I remember being really disappointed when they did - I assumed gaming on Linux would be following the same path, because what the fuck kind of company breaks down a wall by repeatedly bashing their forehead into it? Steam machines did not do well, and instead of Valve saying "Maybe this is a money pit we should abandon", they just shoveled money into it until it was mostly full.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- entuno 3y ago
  There was a huge amount of work by WINE (and others), but it really was a huge leap in how accessible Linux gaming was to people. Going back a few years, my experience was that you had to do some research to see if a game was likely to work, install it through wine, and then usually faff around with a load of winetricks/configurations/packages/etc to get a game that mostly worked (often with some weird bugs, performance issues, etc). Now there's a whole library of games that you can just right click -> install and they work perfectly well on Linux. And of course that wouldn't have been possible without the years of work building up to it - but it was a massive improvement when Valve threw their weight behind it and built it directly into the Steam client.