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Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

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Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#141

Post by lawl »

hutzlibu wrote: post #23
danielscrubs wrote: post #12

The only things these things teach me is that "Platinum - It runs perfectly" is that ProtonDB creators clearly have a different view on perfect. "Doom Eternal runs perfectly - it just have some pink flickering every minute!" "runs perfectly - it just closes when you try to start it." "runs perfectly - multiplayer doesn't work though." Microsoft can change DirectX whenever they want, that goalpost is always going to c…

I share your criticism, but just "Create a standard" is maybe a bit hard to do. Game devs need a market. The linux market is not really the biggest one, neither in numbers, nor in money. It only became a bit relevant, because Valve used linux, to threaten Microsoft, as they tried to get a big cut of game sales, with their own market. So good for linux, yes, but the normal linux game market is still quite uninterestin…

> I share your criticism, but just "Create a standard" is maybe a bit hard to do. The linux market is not really the biggest one, neither in numbers, nor in money.

I know of at least one game that's regularly in the Steam top 10 (Path of Exile) that is doing a port from DirectX to such a standard, Vulkan.

Not to support Linux, but because Vulkan is cross-platform, allowing them to reuse their code base for a mobile game, and also to be able to potentially support things such as Stadia. They also said this will lead to a mac port and may lead to a Linux port.

So there might actually be incentives already for game devs to use cross-platform tech, which could lower the barrier for Linux ports significantly and make it worthwile.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#142

Post by blaser-waffle »

runjake wrote: post #84

Now, the kickers behind the headlines (that nobody told me up front): 1. The majority of the games do not support multiplayer on Linux, due to dependency on Windows-specific anticheat software. 2. Many, many of the games themselves aren't totally stable on Linux. So, expect a crash or two at critical gameplay moments. That said, Proton is a great effort and it's great they're pushing Linux forward.

> 1. The majority of the games do not support multiplayer on Linux, due to dependency on Windows-specific anticheat software.

Not even anti-cheat, just different implementations of things in the Linux and Windows versions. IIRC Paradox games don't have any strong anti-cheat, but Linux and Windows users can't play due to how their systems handle network time synchronization.

> 2. Many, many of the games themselves aren't totally stable on Linux. So, expect a crash or two at critical gameplay moments.

Many, many of the games themselves aren't totally stable on Windows, either. Bethesda games (Fallout, Skyrim) come to mind -- desktop Skyrim had all sorts of bugs and crashes on Windows.

And why would it crash only at critical gameplay moments? Sounds like FUD.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#143

Post by qznc »

BubRoss wrote: post #130
sho_hn wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a chuckle-worthy thought now, but I am willing to bed it will be reality for backward compatibility with historic games in the long run - cf. the use of DOSBox to run old DOS games in modern systems. Countdown to old Windows games delivered in full Linux containers starting now ...

You think people will take games that already run on windows and package them in a linux container that runs them with wine, then require the multi gigabyte widows linux subystem to be installed so they can run through that? You are willing to bet on this? How much would you like to bet and are there any other bets you would like to make? Maybe the cubs winning the super bowl or dial up modems replacing fiber optics?

Place your bets here: https://predictionbook.com/predictions/198711

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#144

Post by dawnerd »

seph-reed wrote: post #126
m-p-3 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly most games nowadays comes with multiplayer as the main product, so that anticheat engines are a necessity to make the game fair for everyone. Those aren't friendly to Wine/Proton, therefore I try to stick to mostly single-player games. With the kids of how life is going faster everyday, I cannot afford to play on long stretches of time, and being unable to pause on a multiplayer game on a whim (which makes sens…

I really miss user server hosting. Stuff like custom maps, or weird custom rules. In a case like this, users couldn't stop cheating, but they could at least triage who is allowed on the server and who is not.

That hasn’t gone away at all - you just can’t expect call of duty or battlefield.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#145

Post by alufers »

pmarreck wrote: post #123
m-p-3 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly most games nowadays comes with multiplayer as the main product, so that anticheat engines are a necessity to make the game fair for everyone. Those aren't friendly to Wine/Proton, therefore I try to stick to mostly single-player games. With the kids of how life is going faster everyday, I cannot afford to play on long stretches of time, and being unable to pause on a multiplayer game on a whim (which makes sens…

Correct me if I'm wrong but anticheat engines, the way I believe they are currently designed, use their proximity to the actual hardware and OS to work, and the layer of abstraction introduced by Vulkan ruins this. What if the anticheat model was changed to one that detects statistically-improbable scoring (basically, a scientific model)? And triggering that would require some sort of skill verification, almost like…

I think you meant Proton instead of Vulkan. Some games run on Vulkan even on Windows. :)

Cheers

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#146

Post by blaser-waffle »

ekianjo wrote: post #16
tgb wrote: post #10

I hadn't heard of Proton before and the article doesn't explain. Here's what the GitHub repo for it says [1]: > Proton is a tool for use with the Steam client which allows games which are exclusive to Windows to run on the Linux operating system. It uses Wine to facilitate this. My question is, what's the "secret sauce"? If this is in fact that much more successful than Wine, what's different? Is Valve putting lots o…

It's Wine + DXVK (including D9VK since they merged together) + ESync with a different Wine environment for each game. Valve also helped Codeweavers developers to implement controllers support thru Wine.

> ESync with a different Wine environment for each game

This is where Proton was a win for me. It's not super hard to make many of the popular games work, but managing the different wineprefix's or making sure some random DLL is or isn't installed was a pain. Proton keeps 'em clean, separate, and up to date.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#148

Post by bozzcl »

chungus wrote: post #28

Amazing, you can buy a triple A title and have it just work out of the box. I'm so happy with Valve's support for linux. And of course the thousands of hours of work that have gone into Wine. It's becoming a more reliable experience to play old windows games using wine than trying to run them on windows 10.

I want to add something to this: and when a newly launched AAA game doesn't work, the community won't stop until it does.

My own personal examples: Halo MCC and Doom Eternal. They wouldn't launch out-of-the-box, but people just wouldn't stop trying. The GitHub issues for these games were enormous, full of information and people trying things. It's pretty encouraging.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#149

Post by sixothree »

BubRoss wrote: post #130
sho_hn wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a chuckle-worthy thought now, but I am willing to bed it will be reality for backward compatibility with historic games in the long run - cf. the use of DOSBox to run old DOS games in modern systems. Countdown to old Windows games delivered in full Linux containers starting now ...

You think people will take games that already run on windows and package them in a linux container that runs them with wine, then require the multi gigabyte widows linux subystem to be installed so they can run through that? You are willing to bet on this? How much would you like to bet and are there any other bets you would like to make? Maybe the cubs winning the super bowl or dial up modems replacing fiber optics?

> take games that already run on windows

I believe this is in reference to games that no longer run on modern versions of Windows.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#150

Post by resplin »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #104
coldpie wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I don't agree. Linux has been "ready" for my usecase for more than a decade. There's pros and cons to each certainly, but I find Linux much more pleasant to use than Windows, and I like actually being in control of and able to modify the software I run. Until I can do that, Windows is not ready for me :)

Right. But the point is the vast, vast (non-HNer) use case is not in favor of Linux. For every 1 Linux-on-the-desktop person, there are what, 1M others?

I hope that I never see the "Have disk" button again. The Linux way of distributing hardware drivers is so much easier.

As for usage, linux on the desktop is between .5% and 2% market share. And there reason to suspect that Linux usage is undercounted.

https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share...

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/268237/global-market-sha...

https://hostingtribunal.com/blog/operating-systems-market-sh...

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