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From a performance and technical perspective this is incredible. Well done! It will never happen, but my dream is for the Asahi devs, Valve, and Apple to all g

From a performance and technical perspective this is incredible. Well done! It will never happen, but my dream is for the Asahi devs, Valve, and Apple to all get together to build out a cross-platform Proton to emulate and play games built for Windows on both x86 and ARM hardware running Linux. A Steam Deck with the performance and power efficiency of an M-series ARM chip and the entire library of games that run on Proton is just...dreamy.

tapoxi 2y ago
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2465907/arm-version-of-steam-decks-proton-layer-spotted-in-testing.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/2465907/arm-version-of-steam...
- dcchambers 2y ago
  That's awesome news!
- sweeter 2y ago
  A lot of stuff like this shows up, they also have a fork of waydroid and box64. I think a lot of them are projects and a lot of them are just devs with a lot of agency who share the dream
  - scheeseman486 2y ago
    Steam Deck was made possible by their ongoing efforts to enable the play of most of their games catalog on any hardware platform that is computationally capable of running them, regardless of OS or architecture. The end game for Valve isn't Steam Deck 2 or 3 (which is statistically impossible for Valve to produce), but for Steam to be on everything.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      Steam Deck was made possible by the plethora of the Windows games developer market and Proton. Most of the studios that own those games, and target POSIX like OSes on mobile phones and game consoles, are yet to bother with GNU/Linux versions for SteamOS.
      - scheeseman486 2y ago
        Wine and DXVK are already running on Android and they play Windows games with the rendering and computational complexity of Fallout 4 at playable framerates on many of the latest smartphone SoCs. It's still WIP, but it's already gone beyond proof of concept, people are using them. Valve don't need the developers to be on-board in order to run their games on anything else, that's why Proton exists. What Valve want is the dissolution between platform/architecture and store. By my eye, it's the driving force of their efforts, more so than them selling hardware or being the open source good guys. Not to undervalue their work in helping make Linux a first class citizen for gaming, but the core of their business model is getting people to engage with their store, full stop, and being able to sell their games on Android (and elsewhere) would massively extend their reach. This may go both ways too, there's also been indications that Valve have been tinkering with Waydroid, meaning Steam could also become a store for Android-native games.
        pjmlp 2y ago
        It looks more like how to avoid paying Windows licenses for the SteamDeck to me.
        wtetzner 2y ago
        I'd guess SteamOS is more about control than licensing costs. I don't think Valve wants to be at the mercy of Microsoft and their policy & technical decisions.
        kbolino 2y ago
        That's a small part of it, I think. They've almost certainly spent a lot more on pouring time and effort into Linux than they ever would have saved on license fees. It seems like Valve doesn't want to be beholden to Microsoft in any way. They support Windows because that's where the users and the games are, but they don't want Microsoft to be able to rug-pull them either.
        pjmlp 2y ago
    - reassembled 2y ago
      Everything except Windows 7 and XP that is.
      - jchw 2y ago
        I believe Valve dropped official Windows 7 support in Steam because Chromium did and they weren't going to fork it. I empathize if you don't like any version of Windows newer than 7 or XP, but it's time to let the dream of running them forever go. It's not weird when software doesn't support the 2009 version of an operating system anymore in 2024. If they never dropped support, it would be difficult to take advantage of improvements that occurred in the last 10 years, because we'd forever be stuck in baggage. Of course when it's feasible everybody loves software that really never does drop support, like 7-zip, which I think happily still works on Win9x without KernelEx... but I'd rather 7-zip stopped having serious security issues than continued to work on old Windows versions.
      - kbolino 2y ago
        Windows 7 was great and I'd love to go back. If I really had my druthers, Windows 2000 was peak and XP was just a vulgarized version of 2000. However, it is Microsoft more than anyone else that has decided to stop supporting those operating systems. Windows XP does not have support for any modern version of TLS (only TLS 1.0). There's no good way to support a browser-based app like Steam on a platform that cannot natively provide a secure connection to a modern web server. There is not such a hard reason to drop Windows 7 support (again, except that Microsoft no longer supports it) but there are security-relevant APIs that are only available starting in Windows 10 which means special patches would have to be maintained just for Steam on Windows 7 to continue working securely.
    - lucasban 2y ago
      What do you mean Steam Deck 2 or 3 would be impossible?
      - vundercind 2y ago
        Steamdeck 3 being statistically impossible is a joke about Valve having an aversion to releasing a #3 of anything. Half life 1, 2… hm. Ok we’ll make three HL2 episodes to follow that up. Ep I. Ep II. Uhhhh… and let’s stop there, just like forever I guess. Portal 1. Portal 2. Left4dead. L4D2. Team Fortress. TF2. Counterstrike. CS2. Oh shit we’re releasing a third one, we might have to use the number three finally, oh no… I’ve got it: CS:Go!
        jakogut 2y ago
        Also, the successor to CS:Go is...Counter-Strike 2.
        vundercind 2y ago
        Oh damn I got the order on those mixed up. Was probably thinking of CS Source. Regardless, point stands: they hate the number 3.
        echoangle 2y ago
        They’re probably doing it on purpose as a joke at this point.
        jakogut 2y ago
        It would have to be, CS2 is the fourth major installment in the Counter-Strike franchise. Then again, all kinds of companies take liberties with naming including numbers. Look at Windows 7 (12th major release), Windows 10 (successor to Windows 8), the game Battlefield 2 (third in the series), Battlefield 3 (three games after BF2), Battlefield 1 (after the release of BF4), etc.
      - 2y ago
rowanG077 2y ago
I'm not sure if you know. But Alyssa, the person who basically wrote almost the entire userspace opengl and vulkan driver, works at valve.
- dcchambers 2y ago
  Wow! I wasn't aware, but that actually gives me a ton of confidence that Valve isn't ignoring ARM with all of their Linux + Proton work. Her output is incredible.
  - inputError 2y ago
    Alyssa rules. We all love Alyssa.
    - 1-more 2y ago
      I see cats writing software _with hardly any documentation_ like this and my brain melts. Power level strictly monotonic, possibly exponential, and very very large. Bravissima!
  - adastra22 2y ago
    I hope they don’t ignore macOS. They could port proton to run on Metal + Rosetta and then Steam would support all running windows titles on macOS and Linux. I recognize it’s a hell of an ask, but I think Alyssa could pull it off.
    - pmarreck 2y ago
      I'm a huge macOS fan but even I have to admit that gaming deserves to have a home on an open-source OS controlled by no one (which would be Linux in this case) and that Steam devoting effort to bring first-class gaming from Windows to macOS is like working to escape from the frying pan into the fire.
    - satvikpendem 2y ago
      I use whisky which is WINE underneath to play games on macOS. https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky
bmicraft 2y ago
An ARM CPU only emulating x86 isn't going to be more efficient than straight x86. ARM is barely more efficient as it is at those performance levels. The real reason Apple is ahead is because they're paying for more expensive more advanced nodes for their CPUs. I you compare CPUs on similar node sizes, you'll see that AMD and Intel are basically caught up architecturally in perf/W metrics.
- aurareturn 2y ago
  This is definitely not true. M3 is 2x - 3x more efficient than Lunar Lake on the same N3B node.
  - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
    I don't think that's true. M3 has much better idle/near-idle power draw, but actual performance per watt when doing things is pretty close.
    - aurareturn 2y ago
      No, it’s the other way around. Intel has generally caught up in idle power draw but is still severely behind in performance per watt. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Lunar-Lake-CPU-analysis-The-Core-Ultra-7-258V-s-multi-core-performance-is-disappointing-but-its-everyday-efficiency-is-good.893405.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Lunar-Lake-CPU-analysis-... https://youtu.be/ymoiWv9BF7Q https://youtu.be/ymoiWv9BF7Q
      - hedora 2y ago
        The last I checked, there low wattage AMD and high wattage Apple had similar performance and wattage, so AMD was the right choice for raw performance, and Apple won for portable devices. Intel was losing badly to one or the other at all TDPs. I don’t get the impression that’s changed much. (Even if it has, I can’t remember the last time I encountered a non-xeon intel machine with working hardware and drivers (for any OS, and I tried Windows, Linux and macs).
alexr243 2y ago
You can play windows game with this release in Asahi Linux! So it is possible now
shmerl 2y ago
You don't need Apple for that.
log_e 2y ago
If you want it to happen, ask them for it every day. You are their constituent.
WD-42 2y ago
Apple is going to do the same thing they did with BSD, WebKit, etc. They will wait until proton is mature enough, fork it, then release it as their own. Why put in the effort this early on?
- WWLink 2y ago
  I think it's still hilarious and crazy that safari/chrome/webkit/blink exploded out of the cute little KHMTL browser called Konqueror in KDE from back in the day. And the root of the whole browser wars thing was microsoft making an absolute dog of a browser for Mac OS X when it came out and then refusing to support it. lmao.
  - pjerem 2y ago
    Haaa Konqueror. It was THE shit back in the day. I loved this software. It really was at the core of the KDE experience. Too bad it disappeared, I miss it. (well it’s not technically dead but it’s not moving either)
    - pxc 2y ago
      I came here to say this! Konqueror may have served a small community but it was excellent. It was the file manager as well as the browser and it was incredibly capable. By far the most advanced GUI file manager of its time. And a pretty fast and pleasant browser, although the compatibility was hit and miss. (Those were Flash and IE-dominated days as I recall them.) A lot of what I loved about Konqueror is captured in Dolphin. I don't think I need my web browser to be a file manager... maybe that concept was just a 90s fever dream. But I miss Rekonq. Maybe I should revisit Konqueror.
      - kombine 2y ago
        Yes and I believe Dolphin is the best conventional file manager on the market - superior to the Windows Explorer and the file browser in in Mac OS.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
that's ideally what Vulkan was for. Build for one common open source standard, and then Apple/Microsoft/Google/Linux can all build an API to support that. But I guess there was never a time when an open graphics standard stood as the leader. Maybe during a brief stint in the Windows Vista era at best.
- jorvi 2y ago
  During the Unreal Tournament 99 / Quake 3 era a lot of games ran a lot better on Nvidia with OpenGL rather than DirectX.
tonyhart7 2y ago
or you know, just release a game on native linux build
- pmarreck 2y ago
  The reason why this isn't more prevalent is twofold 1) everything standardized, like it or not (note: I do not), on the Windows API, and it has remained relatively stable, which is important because 2) Linux-native games I've had, have become un-executable over time without semi-regular maintenance, and Windows games running on whatever version of Proton they best work with do not have that drawback
gchamonlive 2y ago
It's more likely it'll be Qualcomm instead of apple and eventually an arm based steam deck. These chips just make a lot of sense for handheld devices.
- KeplerBoy 2y ago
  Are the chips really fundamentally better than their AMD and Intel counterparts made on the same node? Sure it's a great design, but I believe x86-64 will catch up once again now with everyone using TSMC.
  - psd1 2y ago
    Arm has had a performance-to-power edge over x86 since inception. AIUI, if you want the most flops per die, you'll buy x86 - probably the 128-core Xeon for enterprise money. But that's not what's best for hand-held gaming. AAA titles are typically GPU-bound anyway. More CPU flops may not offer much benefit.
    - talldayo 2y ago
      > AAA titles are typically GPU-bound anyway. More CPU flops may not offer much benefit. Yes, but actually no. The Steam Deck is playing at extremely low resolutions. Rendering at 720p and 30fps is (on paper) 8x less demanding on the GPU than rendering a native 1440p60 experience. You can fully get by without having a powerful dGPU, which is why the Steam Deck is really able to play so many titles on a weak iGPU. The problem is translation. Cyberpunk 2077 runs fine on a 25 watt mobile chip that uses x86, which is why the Deck even costs less than $1000 in the first place. If you try to put a mobile ARM CPU in that same position and wattage, it's not going to translate game code fast enough unless you have custom silicon speeding it up. There's really no reason for Valve to charge extra for a custom ARM design when COTS x86 chips like AMD's would outperform it. For x86 PC games (which pretty much all games are, today), ARM is at a substantial disadvantage, period. The IPC and efficiency advantages are entirely lost when you have to spend extra CPU cycles emulating AVX with NEON constantly. If there were ARM-native games on Windows then things might be different, but for today's landscape I just don't see how ISA translation is better than native.

tapoxi 2y ago

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2465907/arm-version-of-steam-decks-proton-layer-spotted-in-testing.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/2465907/arm-version-of-steam...

dcchambers 2y ago
That's awesome news!
sweeter 2y ago
A lot of stuff like this shows up, they also have a fork of waydroid and box64. I think a lot of them are projects and a lot of them are just devs with a lot of agency who share the dream
- scheeseman486 2y ago
  Steam Deck was made possible by their ongoing efforts to enable the play of most of their games catalog on any hardware platform that is computationally capable of running them, regardless of OS or architecture. The end game for Valve isn't Steam Deck 2 or 3 (which is statistically impossible for Valve to produce), but for Steam to be on everything.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Steam Deck was made possible by the plethora of the Windows games developer market and Proton. Most of the studios that own those games, and target POSIX like OSes on mobile phones and game consoles, are yet to bother with GNU/Linux versions for SteamOS.
    - scheeseman486 2y ago
      Wine and DXVK are already running on Android and they play Windows games with the rendering and computational complexity of Fallout 4 at playable framerates on many of the latest smartphone SoCs. It's still WIP, but it's already gone beyond proof of concept, people are using them. Valve don't need the developers to be on-board in order to run their games on anything else, that's why Proton exists. What Valve want is the dissolution between platform/architecture and store. By my eye, it's the driving force of their efforts, more so than them selling hardware or being the open source good guys. Not to undervalue their work in helping make Linux a first class citizen for gaming, but the core of their business model is getting people to engage with their store, full stop, and being able to sell their games on Android (and elsewhere) would massively extend their reach. This may go both ways too, there's also been indications that Valve have been tinkering with Waydroid, meaning Steam could also become a store for Android-native games.
      - pjmlp 2y ago
        It looks more like how to avoid paying Windows licenses for the SteamDeck to me.
        wtetzner 2y ago
        I'd guess SteamOS is more about control than licensing costs. I don't think Valve wants to be at the mercy of Microsoft and their policy & technical decisions.
        kbolino 2y ago
        That's a small part of it, I think. They've almost certainly spent a lot more on pouring time and effort into Linux than they ever would have saved on license fees. It seems like Valve doesn't want to be beholden to Microsoft in any way. They support Windows because that's where the users and the games are, but they don't want Microsoft to be able to rug-pull them either.
        pjmlp 2y ago
  - reassembled 2y ago
    Everything except Windows 7 and XP that is.
    - jchw 2y ago
      I believe Valve dropped official Windows 7 support in Steam because Chromium did and they weren't going to fork it. I empathize if you don't like any version of Windows newer than 7 or XP, but it's time to let the dream of running them forever go. It's not weird when software doesn't support the 2009 version of an operating system anymore in 2024. If they never dropped support, it would be difficult to take advantage of improvements that occurred in the last 10 years, because we'd forever be stuck in baggage. Of course when it's feasible everybody loves software that really never does drop support, like 7-zip, which I think happily still works on Win9x without KernelEx... but I'd rather 7-zip stopped having serious security issues than continued to work on old Windows versions.
    - kbolino 2y ago
      Windows 7 was great and I'd love to go back. If I really had my druthers, Windows 2000 was peak and XP was just a vulgarized version of 2000. However, it is Microsoft more than anyone else that has decided to stop supporting those operating systems. Windows XP does not have support for any modern version of TLS (only TLS 1.0). There's no good way to support a browser-based app like Steam on a platform that cannot natively provide a secure connection to a modern web server. There is not such a hard reason to drop Windows 7 support (again, except that Microsoft no longer supports it) but there are security-relevant APIs that are only available starting in Windows 10 which means special patches would have to be maintained just for Steam on Windows 7 to continue working securely.
  - lucasban 2y ago
    What do you mean Steam Deck 2 or 3 would be impossible?
    - vundercind 2y ago
      Steamdeck 3 being statistically impossible is a joke about Valve having an aversion to releasing a #3 of anything. Half life 1, 2… hm. Ok we’ll make three HL2 episodes to follow that up. Ep I. Ep II. Uhhhh… and let’s stop there, just like forever I guess. Portal 1. Portal 2. Left4dead. L4D2. Team Fortress. TF2. Counterstrike. CS2. Oh shit we’re releasing a third one, we might have to use the number three finally, oh no… I’ve got it: CS:Go!
      - jakogut 2y ago
        Also, the successor to CS:Go is...Counter-Strike 2.
        vundercind 2y ago
        Oh damn I got the order on those mixed up. Was probably thinking of CS Source. Regardless, point stands: they hate the number 3.
        echoangle 2y ago
        They’re probably doing it on purpose as a joke at this point.
        jakogut 2y ago
        It would have to be, CS2 is the fourth major installment in the Counter-Strike franchise. Then again, all kinds of companies take liberties with naming including numbers. Look at Windows 7 (12th major release), Windows 10 (successor to Windows 8), the game Battlefield 2 (third in the series), Battlefield 3 (three games after BF2), Battlefield 1 (after the release of BF4), etc.
    - 2y ago

rowanG077 2y ago

I'm not sure if you know. But Alyssa, the person who basically wrote almost the entire userspace opengl and vulkan driver, works at valve.

dcchambers 2y ago
Wow! I wasn't aware, but that actually gives me a ton of confidence that Valve isn't ignoring ARM with all of their Linux + Proton work. Her output is incredible.
- inputError 2y ago
  Alyssa rules. We all love Alyssa.
  - 1-more 2y ago
    I see cats writing software _with hardly any documentation_ like this and my brain melts. Power level strictly monotonic, possibly exponential, and very very large. Bravissima!
- adastra22 2y ago
  I hope they don’t ignore macOS. They could port proton to run on Metal + Rosetta and then Steam would support all running windows titles on macOS and Linux. I recognize it’s a hell of an ask, but I think Alyssa could pull it off.
  - pmarreck 2y ago
    I'm a huge macOS fan but even I have to admit that gaming deserves to have a home on an open-source OS controlled by no one (which would be Linux in this case) and that Steam devoting effort to bring first-class gaming from Windows to macOS is like working to escape from the frying pan into the fire.
  - satvikpendem 2y ago
    I use whisky which is WINE underneath to play games on macOS. https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky

bmicraft 2y ago

An ARM CPU only emulating x86 isn't going to be more efficient than straight x86. ARM is barely more efficient as it is at those performance levels. The real reason Apple is ahead is because they're paying for more expensive more advanced nodes for their CPUs. I you compare CPUs on similar node sizes, you'll see that AMD and Intel are basically caught up architecturally in perf/W metrics.

aurareturn 2y ago
This is definitely not true. M3 is 2x - 3x more efficient than Lunar Lake on the same N3B node.
- adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
  I don't think that's true. M3 has much better idle/near-idle power draw, but actual performance per watt when doing things is pretty close.
  - aurareturn 2y ago
    No, it’s the other way around. Intel has generally caught up in idle power draw but is still severely behind in performance per watt. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Lunar-Lake-CPU-analysis-The-Core-Ultra-7-258V-s-multi-core-performance-is-disappointing-but-its-everyday-efficiency-is-good.893405.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Lunar-Lake-CPU-analysis-... https://youtu.be/ymoiWv9BF7Q https://youtu.be/ymoiWv9BF7Q
    - hedora 2y ago
      The last I checked, there low wattage AMD and high wattage Apple had similar performance and wattage, so AMD was the right choice for raw performance, and Apple won for portable devices. Intel was losing badly to one or the other at all TDPs. I don’t get the impression that’s changed much. (Even if it has, I can’t remember the last time I encountered a non-xeon intel machine with working hardware and drivers (for any OS, and I tried Windows, Linux and macs).

alexr243 2y ago

You can play windows game with this release in Asahi Linux! So it is possible now

shmerl 2y ago

You don't need Apple for that.

log_e 2y ago

If you want it to happen, ask them for it every day. You are their constituent.

WD-42 2y ago

Apple is going to do the same thing they did with BSD, WebKit, etc. They will wait until proton is mature enough, fork it, then release it as their own. Why put in the effort this early on?

WWLink 2y ago
I think it's still hilarious and crazy that safari/chrome/webkit/blink exploded out of the cute little KHMTL browser called Konqueror in KDE from back in the day. And the root of the whole browser wars thing was microsoft making an absolute dog of a browser for Mac OS X when it came out and then refusing to support it. lmao.
- pjerem 2y ago
  Haaa Konqueror. It was THE shit back in the day. I loved this software. It really was at the core of the KDE experience. Too bad it disappeared, I miss it. (well it’s not technically dead but it’s not moving either)
  - pxc 2y ago
    I came here to say this! Konqueror may have served a small community but it was excellent. It was the file manager as well as the browser and it was incredibly capable. By far the most advanced GUI file manager of its time. And a pretty fast and pleasant browser, although the compatibility was hit and miss. (Those were Flash and IE-dominated days as I recall them.) A lot of what I loved about Konqueror is captured in Dolphin. I don't think I need my web browser to be a file manager... maybe that concept was just a 90s fever dream. But I miss Rekonq. Maybe I should revisit Konqueror.
    - kombine 2y ago
      Yes and I believe Dolphin is the best conventional file manager on the market - superior to the Windows Explorer and the file browser in in Mac OS.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

that's ideally what Vulkan was for. Build for one common open source standard, and then Apple/Microsoft/Google/Linux can all build an API to support that. But I guess there was never a time when an open graphics standard stood as the leader. Maybe during a brief stint in the Windows Vista era at best.

jorvi 2y ago
During the Unreal Tournament 99 / Quake 3 era a lot of games ran a lot better on Nvidia with OpenGL rather than DirectX.

tonyhart7 2y ago

or you know, just release a game on native linux build

pmarreck 2y ago
The reason why this isn't more prevalent is twofold 1) everything standardized, like it or not (note: I do not), on the Windows API, and it has remained relatively stable, which is important because 2) Linux-native games I've had, have become un-executable over time without semi-regular maintenance, and Windows games running on whatever version of Proton they best work with do not have that drawback

gchamonlive 2y ago

It's more likely it'll be Qualcomm instead of apple and eventually an arm based steam deck. These chips just make a lot of sense for handheld devices.

KeplerBoy 2y ago
Are the chips really fundamentally better than their AMD and Intel counterparts made on the same node? Sure it's a great design, but I believe x86-64 will catch up once again now with everyone using TSMC.
- psd1 2y ago
  Arm has had a performance-to-power edge over x86 since inception. AIUI, if you want the most flops per die, you'll buy x86 - probably the 128-core Xeon for enterprise money. But that's not what's best for hand-held gaming. AAA titles are typically GPU-bound anyway. More CPU flops may not offer much benefit.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    > AAA titles are typically GPU-bound anyway. More CPU flops may not offer much benefit. Yes, but actually no. The Steam Deck is playing at extremely low resolutions. Rendering at 720p and 30fps is (on paper) 8x less demanding on the GPU than rendering a native 1440p60 experience. You can fully get by without having a powerful dGPU, which is why the Steam Deck is really able to play so many titles on a weak iGPU. The problem is translation. Cyberpunk 2077 runs fine on a 25 watt mobile chip that uses x86, which is why the Deck even costs less than $1000 in the first place. If you try to put a mobile ARM CPU in that same position and wattage, it's not going to translate game code fast enough unless you have custom silicon speeding it up. There's really no reason for Valve to charge extra for a custom ARM design when COTS x86 chips like AMD's would outperform it. For x86 PC games (which pretty much all games are, today), ARM is at a substantial disadvantage, period. The IPC and efficiency advantages are entirely lost when you have to spend extra CPU cycles emulating AVX with NEON constantly. If there were ARM-native games on Windows then things might be different, but for today's landscape I just don't see how ISA translation is better than native.