With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux

#281

Post by fishtacos » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 11:45 PM UTC

randmeerkat wrote: post #121

technofiend wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Stadia strike you as an alternative? It works on anything (AFAIK) that runs Chrome.

I tried GeForce Now with a high speed internet connection (Comcast) with Counter-Strike and I found the game to be unplayable from the lag. I double checked my speed test and router settings, it should’ve been fine. Ultimately I believe these services represent the future of gaming, but without net neutrality or alternative ISPs it’s going to be awhile before that future is realized.

My experience with GFN has been MUCH better than I expected. I've also come across similar sentiments as yours, which leads me to think it's a proximity to the DC issue.

E.g., my RTT to my ISP's gateway, on average, fluctuates between 8-11 ms (currently ~14 according to pfSense) and a ping to google's closest response is usually about the same. I'm sure others have it better, but I am quite impressed, given a little bit of this latency would probably be eliminated by not having a virtualized router as is the case with my setup.

Twitchy MP shooters and twitchy platformers are the 2 subgenres that aren't suited for this arrangement. Most everything else is perfectly fine (under the aforementioned ideal conditions).

Re: With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux

#282

Post by hombre_fatal » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 11:47 PM UTC

adambyrtek wrote: post #249

m-p-3 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but at some point you have to decide if the tradeoff between the freedom to run whatever you want is worth the invasiveness of having an anticheat software analysing your system in-depth for cheating softwares is worth it. In a way, it's true that it's none of their business which softwares you use, but it's also their business to make sure the multiplayer experience is fair for the entire userbase. I guess…

Maybe that trade-off should be more flexible and dependent on the "league" a given player wants to play in. The criteria could be more strict for the "pros" where cheating can lead to significant gains, like professional athletes who have to pass regular anti-doping tests, but you wouldn't expect the same invasive checks from (for example) people participating in a charity run.

The problem with your idea is that nobody wants to play with cheaters.

Everything that makes the game fun is defeated by a single cheater.

So people are just going to choose between playing with 0 cheaters or go play a different game.

Re: With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux

#283

Post by rational_indian » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 11:48 PM UTC

idiot900 wrote: post #221

izacus wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern anticheats are basically kernel rootkits which go even to the point of trying to checksum your drivers and inspect how they work. They're basically as invasive as they get. They obviously can't hook into Linux kernel so they react by just banning the player.

This is why I have a separate Windows PC for gaming, that I do not ever put personal information into, or use even to sign into my personal, non-gaming accounts (e.g. Gmail). Perhaps not a good solution for everyone, but I think that's what the world has come to.

I have installed Windows in a dual boot configuration with Linux. I now have a better time separating work and play, win-win!

Re: With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux

#284

Post by deadbunny » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 11:48 PM UTC

Zardoz84 wrote: post #228

deadbunny wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nvidia has always had great Linux drivers, the main problem with them being that they are dkim based so every now and then things get a bit screwey when upgrading your kernel. Thankfully this doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to. While I can't speak first hand for AMD as I've not owned an AMD/ATI card in decades I do know that AMD and Valve have dedicated Linux driver deveopers directly contributing them to t…

actually AMD drivers are open source and works better that NVIDA proprietary blob.

You seem to be conflating open source and functionality. The proprietary Nvidia drivers are perfectly functional and maintain feature parity across Windows and Linux (minus HDR but that's not Nvidia's fault as HDR barely exists on Linux).

AMD drivers are open source but that alone doesn't make them "work better" than the Nvidia drivers.

Re: With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux

#285

Post by ThatPlayer » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 11:49 PM UTC

Cloudef wrote: post #274

invokestatic wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I'm biased because I'm an anti-cheat developer, but I really can't see how checking the integrity of your installed kernel device drivers is at all invasive.

https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/g3yqxd/comment/fn... when the anti-cheat developers dictate what you can install and run on your computer, i would argue thats invasive. Running kernel level rootkit for this purpose is also insane. These things are very easy for cheaters to bypass anyways, and only cause problems to the honest players ironically , in addition to blocking out players using wine. The best way…

Players have a hard time telling if someone is cheating or not. Especially in game when you're not spectating. Did they see you through a wall, or is it just good game sense? Did they use an aimbot, or is their aim that good, or they did they get lucky?

Re: With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux

#286

Post by p1necone » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 11:49 PM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #267

p1necone wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally electron apps bother me on linux because they don't use my carefully selected GTK/QT/Openbox theming like most native apps do (whereas on windows I don't care because I don't have the ability to make anything look how I want). But I expect games to be fullscreen and have their own bespoke UI look and feel anyway, so it's not really an issue with them.

Do you have consistency between GTK/Qt, or only within each? I've never really bothered to set it up (just installed some theme I pulled a name from Arch wiki for, so buttons look like they're from this century) because I assumed I could go to a load of effort and still notice which is used for each program I use. And then find myself caring which I install if I have the option, or not wanting to if it's only availab…

You can set up QT to use GTK themes (seems like this is the default in KDE Plasma): https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Uniform_look_for_Qt_and...

I currently just don't have any QT based apps on my Arch system though I don't think.

Re: With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux

#287

Post by deadbunny » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 11:51 PM UTC

1_player wrote: post #179

deadbunny wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean CDPR staff did get death threats, let's not forget that in this story.

While there's no reason to send death threats because a game company pulled support for $OS, there's no reason to pull support for $OS because of death threats either. There's always someone really, incredibly angry on the Internet.

I agree but painting the CDPR tream as "having a tantrum" without context is disingenuous.

Re: With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux

#288

Post by Cloudef » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 11:53 PM UTC

ThatPlayer wrote: post #285

Cloudef wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/g3yqxd/comment/fn... when the anti-cheat developers dictate what you can install and run on your computer, i would argue thats invasive. Running kernel level rootkit for this purpose is also insane. These things are very easy for cheaters to bypass anyways, and only cause problems to the honest players ironically , in addition to blocking out players using wine. The best way…

Players have a hard time telling if someone is cheating or not. Especially in game when you're not spectating. Did they see you through a wall, or is it just good game sense? Did they use an aimbot, or is their aim that good, or they did they get lucky?

Has worked well ages for games that had replay and spectating capabilities. MMOs are usually slower paced than fps games so in those server-side checks alone are enough. (Most asian mmos are lazy though and just trust the client and hope their shitty anti-cheat keeps cheaters away, of course it doesnt)

Games for some reason today want single central server, instead of dedicated servers with user maintained communities is part of the problem. (E.g. cs:go vs older cs)

Re: With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux

#289

Post by invokestatic » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 11:54 PM UTC

Thaxll wrote: post #279

invokestatic wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the same reason that I have decided to have our CI build and test on ARMv8, even though hardly any (PC) games are on that architecture. I try to be forward thinking, even if it may be a longshot. Apple's M1 may just bring an era of even further segmentation of desktop platforms. I want to be prepared for that.

I work in AAA studios and I worked on online anti cheat, you won't be able to sell your anti cheat if you advertise it as working on Linux, studios don't want there game running on Linux / virtualization because of cheating.

If they don’t want it on Linux it’s up to them. I’m just providing the tools to do it if they decide to be on that platform.

Re: With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux

#290

Post by andrewzah » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 11:55 PM UTC

29athrowaway wrote: post #227

mdoms wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The game may be unpolished and unstable but I can still boot it up and play it with my friends, which is more than I can say about Linux gamers.

It is not that Linux is not a viable gaming platform. It is just developers not publishing games for Linux. Why? because: 1. Windows comes preinstalled on many computers. 2. People do not install Linux because they cannot play games on it. 3. Game developers won't publish on Linux because there are not enough users. Is 3 the real problem, or is it 2? 2 is the real problem. If everyone committed to use Linux, game dev…

"If you use Windows only for gaming then just buy a console, it is cheaper."

It's cheaper to spend money on a console, controllers, games, and a yearly online subscription than to use my existing pc? I find that hard to believe. Especially with games routinely going on sale and overall costing less on pc. Even on my Switch, games are more expensive on average.

I game as much as I can on linux (debian bullseye) but dualbooting to windows for specific games is rather easy. Unrelated, but I would not recommend debian for gaming purposes. Steam didn't even start correctly due to some static dependencies until about a month ago.