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Valve's Proton Has Enabled 7000 Windows Games on Linux

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Re: Valve's Proton Has Enabled 7000 Windows Games on Linux

#32
post #4

Proton is the reason I moved from a Windows + MacOS machine to GNU/Linux full time. I understand the concern that some hardcore enthusiasts might have about it making devs lazy when it comes to developing native ports but to be honest I don't care. I am just glad to have a simple method of gaming on GNU/Linux. Proton plus Lutris and the slew other tools that have come out in recent years has made the transition to GN…

> making devs lazy when it comes to developing native ports Is this first order thinking? Whereas second order thinking might be "with Proton enabling an order of magnitude more users that enjoy PC gaming to move to Linux, studios might consider improving the PC gaming experience further with more native ports/testing directly on Linux?" I don't know if that's how things could play out, but it seems logical to me.

The problem is always market share. Unfortunately Linux has and most likely will always be a niche desktop product. For that reason when devs are developing a game, the question is always "should we spend X amount of time for 0.5% of the userbase" and often times the value proposition just isn't there.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Enabled 7000 Windows Games on Linux

#33
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah nice. But I didn't mean proton.

What did you mean? Because Proton is pretty much what this news is about so I'm a bit confused.

Perhaps OP means the games themselves are not open-source?

Re: Valve's Proton Has Enabled 7000 Windows Games on Linux

#34
For anyone looking for a basic set of steps to migrate away from Windows via dual-booting, the following is working flawlessly:

1. Partition HDD, create Pop_OS live Linux usb (or desired Linux distribution, just remember to include Nvidia/AMD graphics driver).

2. Install OS, with separate /boot partition than Windows.

3. Return to Windows (can do this as step 1 actually) and install rEFInd boot loader on Windows EFI partition and replace bootx64.efi or whichever default boot file for your BIOS with rEFInd.efi.

REFInd should automatically locate both installs next time you boot.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Enabled 7000 Windows Games on Linux

#35
post #17
post #15

EAC (Easy Anti-Cheat) is the main reason why I've not switched from Windows to a full-time Linux desktop. While EAC does include support for Linux[1], it's up to the developer/publisher to enable it. 1. https://www.easy.ac/en-us/support/game/guides/os/ edit: Included EACs unabbreviated form as well as a link to supported operating systems.

What is EAC? Exact Audio Copy? Some sort of protection?

> Exact Audio Copy

Someone knows his plextor

Re: Valve's Proton Has Enabled 7000 Windows Games on Linux

#36
Proton is a very impressive project and works with many titles that I've tried. For anyone not well acquainted with it and wanting to try games not part of Steams official compatibility list, look at https://www.protondb.com/, think of it as similar to Wine DB. For unsupported games, I usually use GloriousEggroll's custom build: https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom. This "fixes" many games, especially if they use videos in cutscenes and many other things.

There are some features that I was never able to get working correctly, e.g. remote Steam Play with Streets of Rage 4 where my friends stream would not load up or controllers would not map, but for single player gaming, this would not be an issue.

Performance is (to be expected) less than Windows and games can exhibit graphical artifacts or crashes but it is not bad enough really complain about given how amazing it is that this exists in the first place. I will often put up with these (imo) minor defects than boot to my Windows install. Steam cloud sync even works correctly for keeping your save data between OS'!

One thing to be aware of that I don't see people mention (maybe because it's a niche setup and game dependent), is that using fractional scaling can completely mess up some games display, I believe due to how fractional scaling uses a framebuffer larger than your real resolution. Make sure to set your scaling to 100% before launching games which have this behaviour, e.g. Tekken 7.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Enabled 7000 Windows Games on Linux

#37
post #28

Proton is neat for sure, but unfortunately modern anti-cheat solutions expect Windows and will not allow Linux clients to connect. There's also a few games that I expected to work but simply won't launch for me, like Elder Scrolls Online. I'm a fan of the Linux desktop, but for me the easiest solution is to have a dedicated Linux PC (right now an XPS 13 Developer) and a Windows machine for playing video games. I don'…

From a very personal point of view, I'm happy with anti-cheats not working on linux. Some of them are flat out rootkits, see valorant's anti-cheat.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Enabled 7000 Windows Games on Linux

#38

Proton is a very impressive project and works with many titles that I've tried. For anyone not well acquainted with it and wanting to try games not part of Steams official compatibility list, look at https://www.protondb.com/ , think of it as similar to Wine DB. For unsupported games, I usually use GloriousEggroll's custom build: https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom . This "fixes" many games, especiall…

I've had issues getting controllers to show up for Remote Play on Windows too, so I'm not sure that's a Proton problem.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Enabled 7000 Windows Games on Linux

#39

I installed it recently on a newly built pc specifically for gaming. I'm quite shocked at how good it works! The only thing holding me back from switching completely is there's some nonsense getting the xbox controller to bind to the pc vis bluetooth. If I can get that resolved I don't think there's anything else holding me back. What an amazing accomplishment!

Firstly, you need an official wireless adapter, bluetooth is much slower and also trigger buttons won't work. Even with the adapter, the pairing might be awful, but there is a little known fact that you need to plug in the controller via usb for a moment, unplug, and it will just work (for the same machine). Also install x360ce for older games.

With these in place, the controllers work 100% great for any controller game.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Enabled 7000 Windows Games on Linux

#40
post #4

Proton is the reason I moved from a Windows + MacOS machine to GNU/Linux full time. I understand the concern that some hardcore enthusiasts might have about it making devs lazy when it comes to developing native ports but to be honest I don't care. I am just glad to have a simple method of gaming on GNU/Linux. Proton plus Lutris and the slew other tools that have come out in recent years has made the transition to GN…

> making devs lazy when it comes to developing native ports Is this first order thinking? Whereas second order thinking might be "with Proton enabling an order of magnitude more users that enjoy PC gaming to move to Linux, studios might consider improving the PC gaming experience further with more native ports/testing directly on Linux?" I don't know if that's how things could play out, but it seems logical to me.

This seems like right approach, although I'm not a purist anyways. I have a personal policy not to buy games unless they have Linux support, however I have decided that games that officially support Proton are good enough. At the end of the day I just expect that it works, if the performance or something is terrible I can always refund it.

I don't really care what tools/APIs the devs use as long as it works well. If they target Windows APIs but use Wine that is fine with me as long as they test it and make sure it works.

And as you said, if this allows more people to game on Linux it makes the Linux experience more important to the game developers. If they decide at some point that Wine is holding them back they will make that switch when the investment makes sense. I think that the most important thing to the long-term success of Linux gaming is ensuring that companies think they can make money there. If they think they can make money then they will continue to make games and put effort into making sure that the games work well.

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