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5 years ago Valve released Proton

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Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#151

Post by becurious »

memefrog wrote: post #42
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Very. Win32 ABI is the most stable and rock solid compared to the messy moving target of the Linux world, so recommending it is not entrench…

>Win32 ABI is the most stable and rock solid compared to the messy moving target of the Linux world, Blatant lie bordering on disinformation. The only reason it is a "stable ABI" is that every dev of every windows program bundles every library with their program. You could do the same thing on Linux and the stability "story" would be exactly the same, or in fact even better on Linux because Win32 isnt actually stable…

No, they don’t. They may bundle additional DLLs but all those DLLs call the win32 APIs.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#152

Post by FirmwareBurner »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #150
erinnh wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>I just hate that so many games I want are exclusive to Epic.

I miss the days when PC games weren't tied to some online webstore but came on a CD and the only DRM was a CD-key, no always online, no proprietary web store, just physical media that you could share with your friends.

Sure, Steam and GoG are probably the best kind of on-line webstore so far, bur I still love my collection of .ISO games that I can mount and play whenever I want without depending on any invasive DRM, accounts or internet connection.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#153

Post by Vt71fcAqt7 »

makomk wrote: post #57
stevepike wrote: post #4

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 versi…

The big problem was directx, not steam_api.dll, which can be solved in many ways.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#154

Post by everdrive »

I've been running solely on Linux since something like 2015. I was primarily on Linux from ~2006 or so, but did switch to Windows for a couple of years to play some Windows games. (this was before Proton really existed)

I'm probably less technically savvy than a lot of the HN crowd, and I just have not ever had a significant problem running linux. For sure, I've avoided some problems by being picky about what PCs I buy. But for the most part it's been pretty pain free. Running Linux full-time has been effortless and easy. And thanks to Valve, gaming on Linux gets better every year. I played Elden Ring on launch, and on launch, it actually played better than PC.

To the extent that HN types have trouble with Linux, I can only imagine it's because they're doing _more_ on their PC than me. ie, they have some software or project that just needs to run a certain way. For sure, Linux isn't always perfect for that.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#156

Post by zeta0134 »

Well this is a topical place to ask this tangent I suppose. My GPU is on the fritz and I'm looking to replace it. Has anyone gotten SteamVR working decently under Linux through Proton? If so, what GPU do you have? It's basically impossible to search for information on this, but I really want to develop for VR, and I'd like to not have to boot into Windows to do it

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#157

Post by jonny_eh »

sph wrote: post #146
stevepike wrote: post #4

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 th…

With the xbox 360 marketplace shutting down next year, will Steam be the longest running digital marketplace? That longevity is what earns my trust.

Update: iTunes Store started in April 2003, Steam started selling third-party titles in late 2005 (around when the 360 launched).

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#158

Post by majewsky »

outcoldman wrote: post #66
stevepike wrote: post #4

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

Are you saying, that it is actually a good experience to run Linux on the gaming laptop instead of Windows with Proton? I already have Steam Deck, and love it. But if I want to play games in better resolution, I might boot my Windows Laptop. Have not tried Linux with Proton. On Linux laptop I have a NVIDIA some kind of 3xxx series card.

> it is actually a good experience to run Linux on the gaming laptop instead of Windows

Not a laptop, but I am livestreaming games from a Linux desktop. In the roughly two years since I've started doing this on a regular basis, I have played 23 games on stream using Steam Proton. My experience matches what Steam Deck owners told me about compatibility. It's not been completely glitchless, but all the problems I ran into were minor graphics glitches. When I buy games, I check protondb.com in advance, and it's always either Platinum or Gold for me these days.

I will note though that all the games I played were either single-player or cooperative multi-player. With competitive multi-player, there is an entire can of worms because of anti-cheat software. Valve's own anti-cheat should be fine, but if the game developer is using a different anti-cheat, it usually relies on Windows kernel drivers or some other shenanigans that conflicts with Wine in a major way.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#159

Post by brigade »

memefrog wrote: post #61
brigade wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you mean is: the only stable ABI in Linux is the Linux kernel’s itself. Windows is the opposite: the only stable ABI is the dynamically linked user space ABI. So yes, it’s perfectly possible to have a stable dynamic ABI across a dynamically linked boundary.

>Windows is the opposite: the only stable ABI is the dynamically linked user space ABI. ... to the kernel. So not the opposite at all. In fact exactly the same.

No. The userspace/kernel boundary is explicitly not stable on Windows, and binaries that try to use that interface have broken when it changed.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#160

Post by sph »

MBCook wrote: post #90
stetrain wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, if Apple could get over their stubbornness and work with Valve on this it would be fantastic for customers of both companies. Apple has done some work with their game porting toolkit to support certain flavors of DirectX games with a combo of Wine and Rosetta. But this isn’t officially pitched as tool for end users to run Windows games.

> if Apple could get over their stubbornness and work with Valve Maybe Value should give more an 10% of a thought to the Mac and make Steam not be terrible on the Mac first. They don’t care about the Mac. They only care about Linux because it lets them ship the Steam Deck and have a hedge against MS. The Mac is worse than an afterthought.

They did care about Linux, which was an even smaller market that doesn't like to spend money and doesn't like closed source and DRM. Yet now everybody is singing their praises.

It stands to reason that Steam on Mac is bad in comparison because of Apple.

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