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I suspect a co-evolution in games is at play. In a way that the game developers are nudged by Steam to prefer using compatible features and Steam works together

I suspect a co-evolution in games is at play. In a way that the game developers are nudged by Steam to prefer using compatible features and Steam works together with game engine developers.

DaoVeles 2y ago
Absolutely. Nowadays it feels like the best development tools for Linux is the Win32 tool chain. No need for native ports if proton can be the glue between the systems.
MindSpunk 2y ago
It’s just that games are easier to run on wine because they touch a comparatively small portion of the Windows API. Windowing, controller input, file system, networking, audio and directx covers the overwhelming majority of Windows API endpoints that need to be translated by wine. Their interaction with these APIs is relatively simple, open a window, read a few files, open a udp socket. Directx is hard, but the tools have gotten scary good lately (dxvk, vkd3d-proton). Compared to a complex tool like Photoshop which will be touching many more system APIs that need to behave correctly (file locking, codecs, COM). Arguably a Windows PE executable using Vulkan and run in Proton is a better way to ship a game to run on Linux than building a native Linux executable. It’s actually more portable because the Windows API and environment is more stable and consistent than some arbitrary Linux user space. No glibc versioning BS or dynamic linker path BS or any other number of strange things users can do. Just stable Win32. Valve actually recommends this over a native Linux build currently.
- thriftwy 2y ago
  I don't buy Photoshop as a heavy exotic APIs user. In many ways it's about pure computations involving images represented as data structures. Perhaps there used to be some USB to talk to cameras but that's it. I believe their Mac version has no COM so why Windows version has to rely on it? I wonder why Adobe does not make some effort to support Wine, such as testing for this platform.
  - Wowfunhappy 2y ago
    > I don't buy Photoshop as a heavy exotic APIs user. Based on TFA, it sounds like Photoshop works fine in Wine. It's the Creative Cloud app that has issues.

I suspect a co-evolution in games is at play. In a way that the game developers are nudged by Steam to prefer using compatible features and Steam works together with game engine developers.

DaoVeles 2y ago

Absolutely. Nowadays it feels like the best development tools for Linux is the Win32 tool chain. No need for native ports if proton can be the glue between the systems.

MindSpunk 2y ago

It’s just that games are easier to run on wine because they touch a comparatively small portion of the Windows API. Windowing, controller input, file system, networking, audio and directx covers the overwhelming majority of Windows API endpoints that need to be translated by wine. Their interaction with these APIs is relatively simple, open a window, read a few files, open a udp socket. Directx is hard, but the tools have gotten scary good lately (dxvk, vkd3d-proton). Compared to a complex tool like Photoshop which will be touching many more system APIs that need to behave correctly (file locking, codecs, COM). Arguably a Windows PE executable using Vulkan and run in Proton is a better way to ship a game to run on Linux than building a native Linux executable. It’s actually more portable because the Windows API and environment is more stable and consistent than some arbitrary Linux user space. No glibc versioning BS or dynamic linker path BS or any other number of strange things users can do. Just stable Win32. Valve actually recommends this over a native Linux build currently.

thriftwy 2y ago
I don't buy Photoshop as a heavy exotic APIs user. In many ways it's about pure computations involving images represented as data structures. Perhaps there used to be some USB to talk to cameras but that's it. I believe their Mac version has no COM so why Windows version has to rely on it? I wonder why Adobe does not make some effort to support Wine, such as testing for this platform.
- Wowfunhappy 2y ago
  > I don't buy Photoshop as a heavy exotic APIs user. Based on TFA, it sounds like Photoshop works fine in Wine. It's the Creative Cloud app that has issues.