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Gaming is pretty great on Linux now. I just finished a little Elden ring session and it still blows my mind that when I close the game my Linux desktop is there

by WD-42 2y ago

Gaming is pretty great on Linux now. I just finished a little Elden ring session and it still blows my mind that when I close the game my Linux desktop is there behind it. No more dual booting, hopefully will never need windows for anything ever again.

pjmlp 2y ago
You mean translating Windows and DirectX APIs is great, there is hardly a Linux gaming ecosystem. Proton is the acknowledgment of Valve's failure to entice game studios, already targeting Vulkan/OpenGL ES/OpenSL on Android NDK, Switch (which has OpenGL 4.6/Vulkan support), or on PlayStation (Orbis OS being a FreeBSD fork) to target GNU/Linux. I rather have the real deal, not translations.
- ubercow13 2y ago
  When I was gaming on Linux, every game with a native version worked better using the Windows version in proton. I think the only exception was Factorio.
- WD-42 2y ago
  Strange take. Proton is an acknowledgment that the windows apis are the de facto for gaming. Not sure why the runtime matters. Some games ever run better. Not sure why that’s not the ”real deal” but whatever I’m glad you’re happy with your spyware gaming OS.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Not really, I rather play on the platform they were designed for in first place.
    - nottorp 2y ago
      Do you own a Playstation? :) If you're playing the likes of Fromsoft/Resident Evil/Kojima games on a PC, be it Windows or Linux, you're not playing on the platform those games were designed for.
      - pjmlp 2y ago
        The problem with your reasoning is that Windows/PC doesn't need to emulate Orbit OS and LibGNM, Sony also supports Direct X and Win32 directly on their engines.
        nottorp 2y ago
        "supports" as in I see articles in the PC gaming press about technical problems with From/Kojima games a year after I've finished said games on console with zero issues.
        pjmlp 2y ago
        Where is Windows Proton like for Playstation APIs? "Technical issues" has many meanings.
        nottorp 2y ago
        The point is, "the platform those games were designed for" is the Playstation API for some titles. So you'll get the best experience on there. Unless you play benchmarks instead of games, and care about 8k/1200 fps of course.
        pjmlp 2y ago
        The point is, the game uses the platfrom APIs on the target OS, and doesn't need to emulate API from 3rd party platforms.
- dijit 2y ago
  As an actual dyed in the wool game developer. There’s no such thing as “native”, all the things you’re talking about are translation layers for hardware instructions themselves, and the overhead for doing software based translation is significantly less than hardware accelerated virtual machines- and we as an industry love those. The reason for this is because the translations are very cache friendly and happen in userland, so the performance impact is negligible, and the scheduler on Windows is so poor compared to Linux ones that it’s even common for games to perform better on Linux than on Windows.. Which is crazy when you consider the difference in quality of the GPU drivers. I understand that you want it to “just work”, but that tends to be the experience anyway. You can do what you want, it’s your life, but this is not a terribly good excuse. Valves “failure” is essentially rectified. I will add though, that it’s actually Stadia that made linux gaming the most feasible, many game engines (all of the ones I worked on) were ported to Linux to run Stadia, those ports changed essential elements of the engine that would have been slow or difficult to translate; so when Proton came around quite a lot of heavy lifting had gone away. I only say this because Valve gets some credit for a lot of work our Engine programmers did to make Linux viable.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    So how many of those ported game engines are actually making a different on GNU/Linux gaming today? There is certainly such thing as native, one thing is the platform where the APIs were originally designed for and battled tested, and the other is other platform emulating / translating them, by reverse engineering their behaviours with various degrees of success. Valve's luck is that so far Microsoft/XBox Gaming has decided to close an eye on Proton, and it will run out when Microsoft decides it has gone long enough.
    - dijit 2y ago
      > So how many of those ported game engines are actually making a different on GNU/Linux gaming today? Not sure, Unreal Engine is pretty popular though and Snowdrop is increasingly common for Ubisoft titles. https://www.protondb.com/app/2842040 https://www.protondb.com/app/2842040 https://www.protondb.com/app/2840770/ https://www.protondb.com/app/2840770/ https://www.protondb.com/app/365590 https://www.protondb.com/app/365590
- sph 2y ago
  I'd rather use Linux and game with an imperfect translation layer, than put up with Windows. Proton is a lesser implementation of Windows API, sure, but Windows itself is a lesser implementation of an operating system for power users.
- boudin 2y ago
  It's not really a failure. Linux distribution and diverse ecosystem brings a level of complexity. The only way to support it long term is to either having your team continuously update and release builds of the game to cater for that which is an impossible task to ask for a lot of studios. The initial approach of runtimes did help but it's still has its limitation. If now a studio just need to test their game under a runtime+proton the same way they would test a version of Windows to ensure it's working under Linux it's a win/win situation. Proton becomes the abstraction of the complex and diverse ecosystem of Linux which is both its strength and weakness. Another solution would have been everybody using the exact same distribution which would have been way worse in my opinion. And who knows, maybe one day Proton/Wine would be the Windows userland reference and Windows would just be an implementation of it :D
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    So it is not really a failure when the solution is to adopt Windows and Direct X translation API? I thought only Apple had a distortion field.
    - troupo 2y ago
      It's a complete failure across the board to create any compelling graphics APIs for desktop platforms (both Linux and Mac) beyond DirectX.
      - octopoc 2y ago
        That’s not the goal though. The goal is to play games on Linux. If Valve’s goal was to end up with a Linux-specific graphics api for most games that run on Linux then they provably would have tried to do so.
    - nottorp 2y ago
      Is it a failure when everyone writes javascript/html/css instead of doing native applications for non gaming? Most of HN seems to think using a web browser as a translation layer is a good idea, yet they complain when games use a translation layer.

by WD-42 2y ago

pjmlp 2y ago

You mean translating Windows and DirectX APIs is great, there is hardly a Linux gaming ecosystem. Proton is the acknowledgment of Valve's failure to entice game studios, already targeting Vulkan/OpenGL ES/OpenSL on Android NDK, Switch (which has OpenGL 4.6/Vulkan support), or on PlayStation (Orbis OS being a FreeBSD fork) to target GNU/Linux. I rather have the real deal, not translations.

ubercow13 2y ago
When I was gaming on Linux, every game with a native version worked better using the Windows version in proton. I think the only exception was Factorio.
WD-42 2y ago
Strange take. Proton is an acknowledgment that the windows apis are the de facto for gaming. Not sure why the runtime matters. Some games ever run better. Not sure why that’s not the ”real deal” but whatever I’m glad you’re happy with your spyware gaming OS.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Not really, I rather play on the platform they were designed for in first place.
  - nottorp 2y ago
    Do you own a Playstation? :) If you're playing the likes of Fromsoft/Resident Evil/Kojima games on a PC, be it Windows or Linux, you're not playing on the platform those games were designed for.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      The problem with your reasoning is that Windows/PC doesn't need to emulate Orbit OS and LibGNM, Sony also supports Direct X and Win32 directly on their engines.
      - nottorp 2y ago
        "supports" as in I see articles in the PC gaming press about technical problems with From/Kojima games a year after I've finished said games on console with zero issues.
        pjmlp 2y ago
        Where is Windows Proton like for Playstation APIs? "Technical issues" has many meanings.
        nottorp 2y ago
        The point is, "the platform those games were designed for" is the Playstation API for some titles. So you'll get the best experience on there. Unless you play benchmarks instead of games, and care about 8k/1200 fps of course.
        pjmlp 2y ago
        The point is, the game uses the platfrom APIs on the target OS, and doesn't need to emulate API from 3rd party platforms.
dijit 2y ago
As an actual dyed in the wool game developer. There’s no such thing as “native”, all the things you’re talking about are translation layers for hardware instructions themselves, and the overhead for doing software based translation is significantly less than hardware accelerated virtual machines- and we as an industry love those. The reason for this is because the translations are very cache friendly and happen in userland, so the performance impact is negligible, and the scheduler on Windows is so poor compared to Linux ones that it’s even common for games to perform better on Linux than on Windows.. Which is crazy when you consider the difference in quality of the GPU drivers. I understand that you want it to “just work”, but that tends to be the experience anyway. You can do what you want, it’s your life, but this is not a terribly good excuse. Valves “failure” is essentially rectified. I will add though, that it’s actually Stadia that made linux gaming the most feasible, many game engines (all of the ones I worked on) were ported to Linux to run Stadia, those ports changed essential elements of the engine that would have been slow or difficult to translate; so when Proton came around quite a lot of heavy lifting had gone away. I only say this because Valve gets some credit for a lot of work our Engine programmers did to make Linux viable.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  So how many of those ported game engines are actually making a different on GNU/Linux gaming today? There is certainly such thing as native, one thing is the platform where the APIs were originally designed for and battled tested, and the other is other platform emulating / translating them, by reverse engineering their behaviours with various degrees of success. Valve's luck is that so far Microsoft/XBox Gaming has decided to close an eye on Proton, and it will run out when Microsoft decides it has gone long enough.
  - dijit 2y ago
    > So how many of those ported game engines are actually making a different on GNU/Linux gaming today? Not sure, Unreal Engine is pretty popular though and Snowdrop is increasingly common for Ubisoft titles. https://www.protondb.com/app/2842040 https://www.protondb.com/app/2842040 https://www.protondb.com/app/2840770/ https://www.protondb.com/app/2840770/ https://www.protondb.com/app/365590 https://www.protondb.com/app/365590
sph 2y ago
I'd rather use Linux and game with an imperfect translation layer, than put up with Windows. Proton is a lesser implementation of Windows API, sure, but Windows itself is a lesser implementation of an operating system for power users.
boudin 2y ago
It's not really a failure. Linux distribution and diverse ecosystem brings a level of complexity. The only way to support it long term is to either having your team continuously update and release builds of the game to cater for that which is an impossible task to ask for a lot of studios. The initial approach of runtimes did help but it's still has its limitation. If now a studio just need to test their game under a runtime+proton the same way they would test a version of Windows to ensure it's working under Linux it's a win/win situation. Proton becomes the abstraction of the complex and diverse ecosystem of Linux which is both its strength and weakness. Another solution would have been everybody using the exact same distribution which would have been way worse in my opinion. And who knows, maybe one day Proton/Wine would be the Windows userland reference and Windows would just be an implementation of it :D
- pjmlp 2y ago
  So it is not really a failure when the solution is to adopt Windows and Direct X translation API? I thought only Apple had a distortion field.
  - troupo 2y ago
    It's a complete failure across the board to create any compelling graphics APIs for desktop platforms (both Linux and Mac) beyond DirectX.
    - octopoc 2y ago
      That’s not the goal though. The goal is to play games on Linux. If Valve’s goal was to end up with a Linux-specific graphics api for most games that run on Linux then they provably would have tried to do so.
  - nottorp 2y ago
    Is it a failure when everyone writes javascript/html/css instead of doing native applications for non gaming? Most of HN seems to think using a web browser as a translation layer is a good idea, yet they complain when games use a translation layer.