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Yeah, my understanding is that the key element that makes Proton games run so well is running the graphics through DXVK instead of Wine's WineD3D solution. Wine

Yeah, my understanding is that the key element that makes Proton games run so well is running the graphics through DXVK instead of Wine's WineD3D solution. Wine is excellent at the Win32 API but its D3D solution never advanced enough to support many complex applications like games. DXVK is extremely good at that. Valve pays DXVK devs, and I think CodeWeavers, with their long history of commercial Wine support, has also been getting paid by Valve to improve Wine in the specific ways required.

ammo1662 2y ago
Yes, and it also creates a more active community. I played some old games with wine about 12 years ago. Like you said about WineD3D, it was not a good experience, just usable. And wine does not implement all the APIs. If you do not submit requests or report bugs, the community will not fix it. So the source code contains a lot of "fixme" and stubs. Some APIs are implemented without the support of some flags. In this case an active and sustainable community is very helpful. Not only for the business of Valve and CodeWeavers, but also the whole "running Windows apps on Linux" thing.
- ACS_Solver 2y ago
  How relevant is the part about running Windows applications through Wine now? I'm under the impression it's less relevant than it used to be, due to web apps now having replaced a lot of native programs, and many native programs are just disguised webapps, like VS Code.
  - ammo1662 2y ago
    For example, you cannot get a copy of Windows 95/98/ME legally right now. So if a customer is asking you for a copy of your very old software product, maybe a copy running on wine is a good option. It is known that some systems in the world are still using floppy now. In that kind of case, wine with Linux can be seen as an alternative way of using that old illegal copies of Windows. For modern applications, you do not need to do that. Even though it cannot run on Linux natively, you can always find some alternatives.
    - account42 2y ago
      > For example, you cannot get a copy of Windows 95/98/ME legally right now. The first sale doctrine and other countries' equivalent laws still applies.
ThatPlayer 2y ago
Wine's Vkd3d translator is still used for DX12. DXVK does not support DX12. I believe WineD3D has gotten better, but it is also based around OpenGL rather than Vulkan like DXVK and Vkd3d are. I was playing around with a Snapdragon 845 handheld running Linux like 2 years ago, and running older games like DMC4 using WineD3D fine. Using an additional translation layer of box86 to run x86 proton on ARM.

ammo1662 2y ago

Yes, and it also creates a more active community. I played some old games with wine about 12 years ago. Like you said about WineD3D, it was not a good experience, just usable. And wine does not implement all the APIs. If you do not submit requests or report bugs, the community will not fix it. So the source code contains a lot of "fixme" and stubs. Some APIs are implemented without the support of some flags. In this case an active and sustainable community is very helpful. Not only for the business of Valve and CodeWeavers, but also the whole "running Windows apps on Linux" thing.

ACS_Solver 2y ago
How relevant is the part about running Windows applications through Wine now? I'm under the impression it's less relevant than it used to be, due to web apps now having replaced a lot of native programs, and many native programs are just disguised webapps, like VS Code.
- ammo1662 2y ago
  For example, you cannot get a copy of Windows 95/98/ME legally right now. So if a customer is asking you for a copy of your very old software product, maybe a copy running on wine is a good option. It is known that some systems in the world are still using floppy now. In that kind of case, wine with Linux can be seen as an alternative way of using that old illegal copies of Windows. For modern applications, you do not need to do that. Even though it cannot run on Linux natively, you can always find some alternatives.
  - account42 2y ago
    > For example, you cannot get a copy of Windows 95/98/ME legally right now. The first sale doctrine and other countries' equivalent laws still applies.

ThatPlayer 2y ago

Wine's Vkd3d translator is still used for DX12. DXVK does not support DX12. I believe WineD3D has gotten better, but it is also based around OpenGL rather than Vulkan like DXVK and Vkd3d are. I was playing around with a Snapdragon 845 handheld running Linux like 2 years ago, and running older games like DMC4 using WineD3D fine. Using an additional translation layer of box86 to run x86 proton on ARM.