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5 years ago Valve released Proton

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Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#141
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had luck running CoD on a VM with GPU passtrough. It is not necessarily less cumbersome than dual booting though.

That is my next goal right right after I master NixOS! The learning curve is steep for nix itself and I know vfio is no walk in the park. I want to make sure if I'm doing complicated stuff like that, I can at least roll things back to a clean state if they break.

I followed this path too; it all worked, but the magic vfio incantations can change kernel to kernel, so there was always a fair bit of maintenance involved. I'd use Proton for 95% of my games, so whenever I had to fall back to vfio/Windows for a game for a while, everything would've changed. NixOS made this manageable, but it was never pleasant.

Have fun with the project; I'd be curious to know if (like me) you end up (sadly!) continuing to dual-boot for Windows only games. VFIO seemed like the dream end goal, and maybe it's gotten better since 2021, but for me at least, it got in the way more often than not.

I have rigged up a non-VFIO VM that boots off the same Windows partition though, so that I can log into it and run Windows updates once in a while without needing to do a full reboot.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#142
post #141
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is my next goal right right after I master NixOS! The learning curve is steep for nix itself and I know vfio is no walk in the park. I want to make sure if I'm doing complicated stuff like that, I can at least roll things back to a clean state if they break.

I followed this path too; it all worked, but the magic vfio incantations can change kernel to kernel, so there was always a fair bit of maintenance involved. I'd use Proton for 95% of my games, so whenever I had to fall back to vfio/Windows for a game for a while, everything would've changed. NixOS made this manageable, but it was never pleasant. Have fun with the project; I'd be curious to know if (like me) you end…

I'll let you know. My priorities as far as "difficult things i desperately need to do" include better note-taking (org mode/roam) and learning enough about AI to put it to use. VFIO is definitely a dream but with dual booting it's also at the bottom of my list.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#143
post #112
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UWP is dead.

Is it? Not really up to date on Windows stuff, but isn’t Microsoft only using UWP for all their (new) stuff? Xbox launcher and all games on it are UWP, aren’t they?

UWP is dead, and a lot of the people who were pushing that weirdly locked in platform have been pushed out of the company.

All future stuff is moving to WinUI 3.x (which belongs to the same family of C# XAML UI libraries, and Visual Studio has a wizard to help you turn your UWP app into a real C# app) and the Microsoft Store is no longer locked to UWP apps only and WinUI 3.x is officially supported on other non-CLR langs (such as calling it from C++ or Rust) and WinUI 3.x is coming to non-Windows platforms (such as Linux).

Microsoft isn't going to transform all their own apps overnight (for simple apps, updating a UWP app to a C# WinUI 3.x app buys you nothing), but will happen over time as WinUI 3.x-only features are added to those apps.

Microsoft set themselves on this path starting uh, like 5 years ago? They publicly announced it about 3 years ago.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#144
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would never, ever use Linux as a desktop environment over OSX after the experiences I've had with it over the last 20+ years. You probably had enough of it. I’d be sick of it after 20 years even if it were the shiniest option out there.

lol You're 100% right. I don't enjoy fixing linux at all after work. I used to do the VFIO GPU gaming desktop w/ linux + windows passthrough but I finally got over it and just installed windows on my desktop.

And there’s not a single problem with that. Though these days you dont need to hack much for gaming.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#145
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found that Elden Ring ran better on Proton on Linux than on native Windows on the same device. Loaded faster and ran more smoothly. I do not know why.

I wonder if that has to do with anticheating mechanisms having to do a lot less work on a wine-based windows system than a full blown windows install.

In the case of Elden Ring, not really, it was due to DXVK (whose developer is sponsored by Valve) having custom patches to workaround the weird DirectX streaming logic of the game that caused constant frame hiccups.

So, on day 3 or something of release, Linux was the best platform to play the newest AAA game.

The year of Linux gaming has been here for a while.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#146

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

I hate DRM, I hate monopolies, I welcome competition, but if one builds a massive empire by just creating a bonafide good platform, single-handedly making open source desktop better, with good customer support and treating users with respect, they deserve the money honestly.

If one day I manage to build a billion dollar empire, my sole inspiration on how to conduct business is Gabe Newell. [1]

Which is exactly the thing Epic can't compete on. They can give away all the free games they want, but Steam and Valve have done much more than offering games on sale.

(I got a 13 year old account on Steam, more than 500 games bought, almost $10k spent on the platform. No Windows partition for the past 3 years)

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1: I honestly couldn't name anybody else that has kept their company private, grown it to such heights and stayed true to their founding principles, without selling out to shareholders and advertisers for an easy buck.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#147

I really wish the linux community would polish off the UX for ubuntu so it's more attractive and usable for mainstream

If you think that UX polish is the reason why "mainstream" people use microsoft/apple products over linux you are really deluding yourself.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#148

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

I haven't booted into Windows since 2009, thanks to Wine. Proton certainly expands its compatibility and support though, and I'll support any company that supports Linux, and Valve is one of the best ones.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only heard good things about it, but i see no reason to use it. making fedora do what it does is easy enough.

"Easy enough" sure, you keep up with all those patches, manually, on your own system, then say it. This site literally can't not be pretentious

most of those things other than the codecs and steam from rpmfusion just aren't necessary for most folks is all.

I'm not trying to shame folks from using an easy route. You read my comment extremely uncharitably.

I do think one should be careful of relying on a project with a bus factor of 1 for your OS.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#150
post #64

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

Absolutely agree. I was starting to diversify my store fronts before Valve came out with the Deck. But the release of it and the message it sent (that they take this seriously), made me reverse course and now I always buy my games on Steam, even if it costs 10 euro more.

Same. I just hate that so many games I want are exclusive to Epic. It's like they're trying to make that store unpleasant to use.
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