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5 years ago Valve released Proton

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Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#191

Post by tiberious726 »

swozey wrote: post #168
augusto-moura wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reply is also biased, maybe we had some bad experience in the past, but the example you made, Pipewire, is one of the things I was stunned that worked out of the box. It is relatively recent but it is already installed by default on most modern distros, and no "configuration hell" required. Linux applications might not be as good-looking as most of Apple store ones, but most of them sure work. I'm not saying tha…

Of course it comes installed so you can listen to audio. That isn't what Soundsource does - you CAN make Pipewire work like soundsource, though. Of course my post is biased. I gave my opinion as someone who uses both vs someone who only uses linux and doesn't know osx. Any Linux user telling me that "Linux does more than OSX" is getting my biased reply. Per app audio redirection, per app effects, per app volume contr…

You sure you aren't thinking of pulseaudio? Pipewire really hasn't even been out "a long time", and does do everything you listed kinda shockingly (to me) easily.

To be fair, I was a fan of pulseaudio even in the early days: being able to set up my desktop, with its decent speakers as just another audio sink for my laptop with its horrible speakers was like magic to me back in the day.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#192

Post by tiberious726 »

swozey wrote: post #178
domdabgnad wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you would name a feature that SoundSource does that Pavucontrol doesn't. But you don't actually know what you're talking about. For all the talk, it should be trivial for you to make me look foolish right now. Like, so easy, right?

Show me the UI for telling a specific application to redirect its audio output to a specific device automatically. Show me the UI where I plug in a specific device it switches a specific applications (not all) default automatically to the new device. Show me it's headphone EQ. Show me per-app headphone EQ. Show me per app EQ settings. Show me the built in 3D/spatial audio for headphones Then show me the config file y…

I think the application you're looking for is easy effects, which absolutely does profile autoloading.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#193

Post by joveian »

stonogo wrote: post #94
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #3

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…

Seems a pretty obvious way to preserve value-add in the face of competing game services. GOG and so forth don't have Proton, so the simplest moat to build is to curtail native Linux development and protect Proton's status as the "default" approach to getting games running there.

Unfortunately, GOG seems to have mostly given up on Linux and often doesn't provide available Linux builds (I think there may have been one main employee who pushed for better Linux support who left years ago). There is at least one "Proton without Steam" build that I haven't tried:

https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/wine-ge-custom

Personally, I've been using Windows fully offline with GOG games, although I'd like to some day try putting together a Linux based offline game console (or maybe NetBSD based if Wine is sufficient).

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#194

Post by MBCook »

grug_htmx_dev wrote: post #118
MBCook wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Mac is just another tightly closed platform, Valve could get squeezed from by Apple at any time. There's just no reason to invest in it. If you can afford a Mac, you can afford a Steam Deck.

> just another tightly closed platform

No it’s not. You can download and install anything you want from the web. Just like Windows.

The Mac App Store isn’t required. Largely NO ONE uses it.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#195

Post by MBCook »

sph wrote: post #160
MBCook wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

How? It’s software like any other. There’s TONS of great software on the Mac made by 3rd parties. It can be nice. It can run fast. MS does it. Adobe does it. Indie developers do it. So why is it Apple’s fault?

The story tends that gets passed around is that no one at Valve (more or less) works in it.

I’m not talking about the games Steam sells. I’m talking about the Steam client.

If they rewrote it in Electron (instead of whatever custom thing it uses) they could do a terrible job and it would still be faster.

I’m not even asking for it to be “Mac like”, just act like showing a store page isn’t a Herculean effort.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#196

Post by MBCook »

adhamsalama wrote: post #117
MBCook wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Why would Valve do this for a trillion-dollar walled-garden?

Also, since I can’t edit my other reply, the Mac is not a walled garden.

You can use any tool to make apps and sell them online without having to get them approved in the Mac App Store (which almost no one buys from).

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#197

Post by MBCook »

augusto-moura wrote: post #96
MBCook wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Valve already had Wine on Linux to work with. Although we have Wine on Mac now, it is a subpar experience. Aside from that, Vulkan on MacOS never received official support from Apple I would say Valve stand on the shoulder of giants with Wine and Vulkan, they just had tl connect the dots between the two. If Apple itself would respect its gamer users it could spend sometime on these open projects, but knowing Apple, i…

None of that explains why the Steam client on Mac is so terrible and has been for a very long time.

Games have their own issues (you mentioned some). But the client is inexcusable.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#198

Post by johnnyanmac »

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…

>Which is exactly the thing Epic can't compete on.

I mean, with these criteria is Epic really that far behind? They made desktop a better experience for devs, have decent enough customer support, and they don't exactly shit talk their users like other parts of the industry. The only arguable part is good platform, but it depends on what you need out of the platform. Does a platform have to offer a way to play windows games on linux to be "good"?

>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.

hard to find platforms like that, but there are certainly creators that stayed small and humble despite growing huge in influence and pull.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#199

Post by johnnyanmac »

imtringued wrote: post #70
outcoldman wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People still use windows?

Proton has to pull from somewhere.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#200

Post by johnnyanmac »

henryfjordan wrote: post #72
makomk wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Valve may have contributed to the issue initially, but can you blame them? There wasn't exactly an abundance of Linux Support before Valve came along either. Why would they support a Linux Steam client and the whole compatibility layer when the demand just didn't exist. Valve becoming big enough to break into the hardware market (first Steam Machines and then the Steam Deck) was the first time they had any incentive…

>but can you blame them?

Sure I can. They decided ultimately to make an indirect dependence on Windows instead of encouraging devs to make good native linux ports. They more or less made the deal with Windows without having to get their hands dirty.

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