Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

boilingsteam.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 319 posts

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

#171

Post by blihp »

jannes wrote: post #107
coldpie wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be blunt, funding. No one is paying to improve Adobe CC in Wine.

Exactly. And to be fair, I doubt Valve is making a lot of money off of Proton on Linux. I consider it more of a philantropy project from Gabe Newell.

While I do appreciate Valve's support of Linux, it's hardly altruism: it gives them some room to negotiate with/pressure Microsoft. (i.e. while it would be painful to push even a fraction of their users over to it, it is an option Valve has) Compare that to the situation app developers on mobile platforms find themselves in these days. So it's smart strategically even if it doesn't translate into big $$$ currently.

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

#172

Post by babuskov »

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.

It sure is amazing currently, but I fear in the long run nobody would even bother to make native Linux versions anymore.

It's such an easy out for developers. Why bother when people will make it work on Proton somehow and you don't have to promise anything nor do Linux support.

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

#173

Post by wtetzner »

na85 wrote: post #159
syshum wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my biggest frustrations with modern gaming is the lack of single payer games, everyone focuses on Multiplayer, I have zero interest in playing with others, I play games to escape from people.... People suck, I do not want them in my games

Conversely, I can't fathom how people can enjoy long stretches of singleplayer. I occasionally play a bit of Cities Skylines every few months, but if there isn't another human involved, games just can't hold my interest. Where's the satisfaction/fun come from if you're just beating some silly algorithm?

Not all games are about "beating" something.

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

#175

Post by m463 »

babuskov wrote: post #172
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.

It sure is amazing currently, but I fear in the long run nobody would even bother to make native Linux versions anymore. It's such an easy out for developers. Why bother when people will make it work on Proton somehow and you don't have to promise anything nor do Linux support.

Having tried to write interesting applications for linux, I should ask -- what does "native linux" mean?

This is a serious question, and I don't know if it has an answer.

For example, it was easier for me to use pygame, which is based on SDL (simple directmedia layer), which is based on porting windows code.

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

#176

Post by wlesieutre »

bno1 wrote: post #101
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.

Also DXVK [1], an implementation of DirectX over Vulkan that allows (most) games to run on Linux with native or even better performance. Some people are using DXVK even on Windows to circumvent bugs or simply because it's faster for some DX9 games. [1] https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk

A friend of mine recently got a workstation with a threadripper processor, and apparently some games have so much trouble with the core count (lookin' at you, Far Cry) that you have to reboot into "game mode" with a substantial number of cores disabled.

But some other enterprising threadripper user worked around that by stuffing the game in a Linux VM to avoid the rebooting.

Crazy to think that a Windows game would perform better in a Linux VM under Windows than running on Windows natively, even if the reason is that it's effectively presenting the game with worse hardware that it understands how to use more effectively.

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

#177

Post by jfkebwjsbx »

coldpie wrote: post #70
elteto wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implication from the comment was that Wine is better at running old Windows games than Windows itself. I’m not sure where this Linux vs. Windows comparison is coming from.

No, you mis-read. chaorace said that Windows EXEs running in Proton gives them better results than running the Linux binary that the game developer ships ("native"). AnIdiotOnTheNet stated that Windows APIs are more stable and better documented than Linux APIs. As a long-time Linux dev (see my profile), I have also found this to be true. Linux userland APIs are unstable and change all the time. Some transitions that…

For software like games, all that pain is abstracted away by SDL. No need to deal with userspace libraries!

And, of course, the syscall layer is stable in Linux, so no issues there either.

However, companies claim Linux is still a pain for other reasons, so I guess it is mostly about testing/support cost and perhaps OpenGL driver issues?

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

#178

Post by na85 »

wtetzner wrote: post #173
na85 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, I can't fathom how people can enjoy long stretches of singleplayer. I occasionally play a bit of Cities Skylines every few months, but if there isn't another human involved, games just can't hold my interest. Where's the satisfaction/fun come from if you're just beating some silly algorithm?

Not all games are about "beating" something.

Can you name one game, electronic or otherwise, that doesn't involve "beating" something, whether it's the other player, the rules, or even just random chance (dice rolls)?

I honestly can't think of any. If there are no goals (and goals imply obstacles to be overcome in pursuit of them) then you've got a toy, not a game.

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

#179

Post by Miraste »

wlesieutre wrote: post #176
bno1 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also DXVK [1], an implementation of DirectX over Vulkan that allows (most) games to run on Linux with native or even better performance. Some people are using DXVK even on Windows to circumvent bugs or simply because it's faster for some DX9 games. [1] https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk

A friend of mine recently got a workstation with a threadripper processor, and apparently some games have so much trouble with the core count (lookin' at you, Far Cry) that you have to reboot into "game mode" with a substantial number of cores disabled. But some other enterprising threadripper user worked around that by stuffing the game in a Linux VM to avoid the rebooting. Crazy to think that a Windows game would p…

Funny, but not very fair: presumably a Windows VM with the lower core count would work as well.

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

#180

Post by jfkebwjsbx »

vetinari wrote: post #118
eximius wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Graphics is not the primary problem. The DirectX family of APIs also supports audio, input, networking, and other useful things that are in many ways far more difficult to make work across all platforms, at least historically. So in some sense, DirectX's existence changes the economic equation, which does make it part of the problem.

> The DirectX family of APIs also supports audio, input, networking, These APIs were deprecated for more than a decade. DirectSound since cca 2008, DirectInput since 2002, DirectPlay since 2004. The APIs that are left under DirectX umbrella are Direct2D, Direct3D, DXCore (adapter enumeration), DirectWrite (font rendering) and DirectXMath.

Yes and no, there are new APIs to support the same use cases, and none are standard/cross platform. Whether they are part of DirectX formally or not is not important.
Post reply on HN