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5 years ago Valve released Proton

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Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#51
post #43

It’s been many years since I was current on the state of cross platform gaming. Is it possible that proton could become the de facto target platform? That is, if a developer builds to ensure that their game works correctly under proton, then will it also work correctly under windows? So by just ensuring it works under proton, which seems to be minimal effort, do they get access to the expanded market for “free”? Do a…

> Do any of the consoles support proton, so that the only barrier to releasing a game are the legal agreements?

Steam deck

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#52
post #43

It’s been many years since I was current on the state of cross platform gaming. Is it possible that proton could become the de facto target platform? That is, if a developer builds to ensure that their game works correctly under proton, then will it also work correctly under windows? So by just ensuring it works under proton, which seems to be minimal effort, do they get access to the expanded market for “free”? Do a…

Microsoft definitely wouldn't let that happen.

How will they prevent it?

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#53
post #11

I don't know how common it is, but the AI War developers posted recently about their new game & said Steam recommended they drop their Linux port, saying that just relying on Proton would be better performing & a better use of time. I'm very curious how widespread this advice is. It's a little sad & ironic to me if Proton is now entrenching Windows as the only target platform. I'm hoping this wasn't blanket advice Va…

Sad? A bit. Wrong? Not in the slightest. WinAPI is the stable Linux ABI now, that’s simply the status quo.

Repeating this FUD meme over and over again does not make it true. Yes we get it. You read an upvoted HN comment once that said "Windows API is the stable Linux ABI now" and know you can get upvoted if you just repeat it. But it is simply false.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#54
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.x.org/wiki/Releases/ https://www.gtk.org/docs/installations/linux/ I mean it will probably not be painless and other applications u run might break* but xorg is relativly stable. Liba are out there are free to get. Usually people are arguing that the conveniences isnt there not that its not possible. * if u dont sandbox this a bit with custom lib paths

I didn’t dispute that it isn’t possible. What I am disputing is how this comes off to a game developer; 5 years from now, heck, 2 years from now when their games require library surgery to keep running... that’s just an awful experience. That is not what a developer would consider a stable ABI. They could look into Flatpak - but look at what’s trending on Hacker News today - a rant against Flatpak. Win32 over Proton…

> No game developer is ever going to individually package, and consistently repackage, their game for 20 distributions.

Nor do they. Steam Linux Runtime exists.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#55
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proton almost always runs better than Linux native. Windows is the only stable ABI on Linux, now.

Arguably, WINE has always been the most stable ABI on Linux. Good luck just getting a 5-year-old binary of any desktop file manager running on a modern Linux installation. I’m dead serious. Grab a copy of Nautilus or GNOME Files from Ubuntu 16.04; try running it on Ubuntu 22.04. It isn’t easy. Now imagine a game.

Why would you try to run Nautilus from 16.04 on 22.04? It was distributed in a way designed to be run on 16.04.

Are you under some weird delusion that you are forced on Linux to develop software in one particular way?

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve and others have explained it already why in general terms that apply to all games on the native vs emulated situation, no need to go into the pedantic details of one specific game.

as a framework author and C++ coder, the code base structure is not "excessively concerned with minor details and rules or with displaying academic learning." -- certainly not for you in any case, by your own statement

No need to be snarky and flash your coding street cred to make yourself big and make me look dumb.

I'm not the smartest tool in the shed, but I was not trying to be snarky and undermine your superiority or downplay your question, I was just saying it doesn't matter as the end goal is to get Windows games playable on Linux, and for that Proton emulation is the way that makes sense financially and practically for both developers and gamers, so no need to dive into the codebases and compare them, just to prove a point that's moot from the get-go.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#57

Proton has earned steam my business forever. I haven't booted into Windows in over a year.

Valve have funded some good work on the underlying compatibility code, but their big contribution was really fixing a problem they themselves created. Lots of games expect to be able to call back to the Steam client for a license check, and this used to require running the Windows version of Steam which didn't work well (huge compatibility issues and it really didn't like being run at the same time as the Linux version). One of the big things enabling easy Linux gaming was a Valve-approved way to run Windows games under a compatibility layer and have them still connect to the same Linux client used to run native games.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#58
post #2

Also check out Glorious Eggroll on Gihub for even better performance.

On the topic of GE, anyone try his custom Fedora distro, Nobara[1] and has any feedback on it? Is it daily-drivable on a laptop without any issues, and stable long term without any breakages? Not just for gaming, but for daily entertainment and productivity task of those with one distro for everything? I tried installing it a while back and found the default installer partitioning much more janky and messed up GRUB m…

I have it installed on my gaming PC. It is fine

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#60

One thing that I'd love to see is a Proton version for M1/M2 Apple Silicon... UTM is the only thing that runs x86 VMs and for whatever reason its QEMU guest tool drivers are all completely buggy and everything is dog slow (and of course, Windows refusing to load unsigned drivers on Win7 x64 makes trying out different drivers pretty much impossible).

Wine already supports running 64-bit binaries on Apple Silicon through Rosetta. 32-bit support is being worked on (it's experimental).

So Proton should support it eventually.

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