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Please yes! ... At least for commercial, closed source stuff. I'm exclusively on Linux, a casual gamer, and native ports suck. They probably can be done bette

Please yes! ... At least for commercial, closed source stuff. I'm exclusively on Linux, a casual gamer, and native ports suck. They probably can be done better, but you still run into the problem that some Linux game released 5 years ago doesn't even launch anymore on current distros. I've tried to play the native port of lis2 only to be greeted with a "hey this game needs an AMD or Nvidia GPU" warning, which I could click past only to have the whole system freeze in the main menu. That was literally the first ever crash of that machine ever (about 14 months old at that point). Luckily steam allows you to force using the windows version of a game even if a native port is available and guess what, no warning about GPU, game worked flawlessly. And it very likely still will a decade from now. How many native games released today will? Morale of the story: win32 is the only stable userspace API on Linux. Develop for win32 and test on Linux, boom you got your multi-platform game.

ireallywantthat 3y ago
You know that Games/Applications can still be developed with Vulkan API targetting win32 and they can be run on Proton/wine in Linux which runs it without the DXVK (dx11->vk)/VKD3D (dx12->vk) translation layer, right? Baldur's Gate 3, Red Dead Redemption 2 are some of popular games which use Vulkan exclusively running on Proton. This way you can evade proprietary DirectX12.
ho_schi 3y ago
You probably should blame the people which made the game? We face the same issue on Windows, too. Low quality ports from console to Windows (e.g. The last of us). So it is more about appropriate ports. Valves native ports of games - CS1, CSS, CSGO, CS2 [sic!], HL1 and HL2 run well on Linux. As the famous titles of id Software? As far as I know you can still run the original executable from Quake3 but it is not a wise decision (missing bugfixes, X86_32 and OSS). But they went the save way and just published the engine sources. And? Proton's own foundation is Linux. And Valve layered a lot of complexity away with it Linux-Runtimes (the most recent is "Sniper 3.x"). I would be just happy if developers accustomed to Windows stop supporting specific (outdated) Linux-Distributions with awkward self made packages. Instead they should merely publishing ELF-Executables, the resources and a list of dependencies - and the maintainers will care. And aside they could ship one Flatpak, made itself. Both things are done by Valve :) I think most of that issues come from "training" from Windows, where just everyone does the task itself and no rules for shipping exist. And when a developer isn't familiar with the target system and porting problems are more likely. Apple does handle this different, they force the developers doing it in the specified way (you don't get a certification if not).
- charcircuit 3y ago
  >Valves native ports of games - CS1, CSS, CSGO, CS2 [sic!], HL1 and HL2 run well on Linu Ironically most of those games use DirectX with a translation layer.
- iforgotpassword 3y ago
  > You probably should blame the people which made the game? No, why, when there is a working alternative available. Why should they waste money and resources on this if they could just make the game better overall instead, or maybe just pour the money saved into wine/proton somehow, which benefits not just their game but every Windows game. > We face the same issue on Windows, too. Low quality ports from console to Windows (e.g. The last of us). So it is more about appropriate ports. Well yes and no. If the windows port sucks too, just use an emulator a few years down the line. And funnily enough, wine is even more future proof for Windows games than Windows itself. You can find a lot of stories about old Windows games from the XP era and earlier that won't run on 10, but work fine with wine on current Linux. Regarding quake 3, I can also still run the windows version of the original release on Linux, and in that case don't even need to care about OSS or anything because wine just does that for me. And sure, I'd rather play a popular modern fork of the original game since as you say, the source code is available, but my point is entirely about closed source games where we'll never see the code. If I'm dealing with a black box binary, I don't see what I'd gain even with a well made Linux port over the game running just as well under proton.

ireallywantthat 3y ago

You know that Games/Applications can still be developed with Vulkan API targetting win32 and they can be run on Proton/wine in Linux which runs it without the DXVK (dx11->vk)/VKD3D (dx12->vk) translation layer, right? Baldur's Gate 3, Red Dead Redemption 2 are some of popular games which use Vulkan exclusively running on Proton. This way you can evade proprietary DirectX12.

ho_schi 3y ago

You probably should blame the people which made the game? We face the same issue on Windows, too. Low quality ports from console to Windows (e.g. The last of us). So it is more about appropriate ports. Valves native ports of games - CS1, CSS, CSGO, CS2 [sic!], HL1 and HL2 run well on Linux. As the famous titles of id Software? As far as I know you can still run the original executable from Quake3 but it is not a wise decision (missing bugfixes, X86_32 and OSS). But they went the save way and just published the engine sources. And? Proton's own foundation is Linux. And Valve layered a lot of complexity away with it Linux-Runtimes (the most recent is "Sniper 3.x"). I would be just happy if developers accustomed to Windows stop supporting specific (outdated) Linux-Distributions with awkward self made packages. Instead they should merely publishing ELF-Executables, the resources and a list of dependencies - and the maintainers will care. And aside they could ship one Flatpak, made itself. Both things are done by Valve :) I think most of that issues come from "training" from Windows, where just everyone does the task itself and no rules for shipping exist. And when a developer isn't familiar with the target system and porting problems are more likely. Apple does handle this different, they force the developers doing it in the specified way (you don't get a certification if not).

charcircuit 3y ago
>Valves native ports of games - CS1, CSS, CSGO, CS2 [sic!], HL1 and HL2 run well on Linu Ironically most of those games use DirectX with a translation layer.
iforgotpassword 3y ago
> You probably should blame the people which made the game? No, why, when there is a working alternative available. Why should they waste money and resources on this if they could just make the game better overall instead, or maybe just pour the money saved into wine/proton somehow, which benefits not just their game but every Windows game. > We face the same issue on Windows, too. Low quality ports from console to Windows (e.g. The last of us). So it is more about appropriate ports. Well yes and no. If the windows port sucks too, just use an emulator a few years down the line. And funnily enough, wine is even more future proof for Windows games than Windows itself. You can find a lot of stories about old Windows games from the XP era and earlier that won't run on 10, but work fine with wine on current Linux. Regarding quake 3, I can also still run the windows version of the original release on Linux, and in that case don't even need to care about OSS or anything because wine just does that for me. And sure, I'd rather play a popular modern fork of the original game since as you say, the source code is available, but my point is entirely about closed source games where we'll never see the code. If I'm dealing with a black box binary, I don't see what I'd gain even with a well made Linux port over the game running just as well under proton.