3 ms·

I remember a number of years back when Steam started Proton thing, it didn't look very promising. Since then it evolved into an actual OS, it would be amazing i

I remember a number of years back when Steam started Proton thing, it didn't look very promising. Since then it evolved into an actual OS, it would be amazing if Valve could pull this off and expand Linux gaming into mainstream devices and maybe even PCs.

jsheard 2y ago
> Since then it evolved into an actual OS Funnily enough Valve tried to make Steam OS happen before Proton was a thing, for some reason they just expected game developers to port their games to Linux on their own dime. Thankfully they realized that was never going to happen at scale, so Proton was born instead.
- Gormo 2y ago
  > Funnily enough Valve tried to make Steam OS happen before Proton was a thing, for some reason they just expected games developers to port their games to Linux on their own dime. Proton is just a fork of Wine. Wine had already been around for decades, and there were other commercially-supported versions of Wine, like Cedega, long before Proton was around. On top of that, the increasing dominance of off-the-shelf game engines was already making it trivial to "port" games to Linux -- in Unity, for example, it's often just a few extra mouse clicks to produce a Linux build in parallel to your Windows build. So lots of game developers did start releasing native Linux versions, and continue to do so.
  - jsheard 2y ago
    Yes WINE already existed, but SteamOS v1 didn't have it integrated as a core feature like it does today. It was very much intended to only run native Linux titles. WINE also wasn't nearly as seamless for gaming until Valve threw their weight and money behind polishing it, which came after the original SteamOS flopped.
- mapcars 2y ago
  Interesting, I guess I missed that
Gormo 2y ago
SteamOS is a Linux distro that originally came out in 2013. Proton is a custom version of Wine that came out later -- Proton has some added features for integration with Steam, but Wine has been around and has been working well for Windows gaming on Linux for decades.
- dralley 2y ago
  SteamOS today bears no resemblance to the version put out in 2013. It's literally based on a different distribution, and lots of things have been customized since then.

jsheard 2y ago

> Since then it evolved into an actual OS Funnily enough Valve tried to make Steam OS happen before Proton was a thing, for some reason they just expected game developers to port their games to Linux on their own dime. Thankfully they realized that was never going to happen at scale, so Proton was born instead.

Gormo 2y ago
> Funnily enough Valve tried to make Steam OS happen before Proton was a thing, for some reason they just expected games developers to port their games to Linux on their own dime. Proton is just a fork of Wine. Wine had already been around for decades, and there were other commercially-supported versions of Wine, like Cedega, long before Proton was around. On top of that, the increasing dominance of off-the-shelf game engines was already making it trivial to "port" games to Linux -- in Unity, for example, it's often just a few extra mouse clicks to produce a Linux build in parallel to your Windows build. So lots of game developers did start releasing native Linux versions, and continue to do so.
- jsheard 2y ago
  Yes WINE already existed, but SteamOS v1 didn't have it integrated as a core feature like it does today. It was very much intended to only run native Linux titles. WINE also wasn't nearly as seamless for gaming until Valve threw their weight and money behind polishing it, which came after the original SteamOS flopped.
mapcars 2y ago
Interesting, I guess I missed that

Gormo 2y ago

SteamOS is a Linux distro that originally came out in 2013. Proton is a custom version of Wine that came out later -- Proton has some added features for integration with Steam, but Wine has been around and has been working well for Windows gaming on Linux for decades.

dralley 2y ago
SteamOS today bears no resemblance to the version put out in 2013. It's literally based on a different distribution, and lots of things have been customized since then.