Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

5 years ago Valve released Proton

gamingonlinux.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 260 posts

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#211

Post by sph »

seabrookmx wrote: post #68
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…

The other technical solution to this problem is flatpak (and the others in this space). They vendor the libs (including libc) so you avoid the linking issues. In the gaming world where steam installs apps itself and you need the Windows version for commercial viability anyways, it does make sense to push them to win32. Outside of gaming though, I don't really see this being the case. You random desktop apps are bette…

Proton btw uses the same technology as flatpak for its sandboxing capabilities. And Flatpak Steam has been working great for a while.

It's all Linux containers/namespaces after all.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#212

Post by brigade »

memefrog wrote: post #208
brigade wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That is completely irrelevant to the discussion. The point is that both systems have very stable ABIs. Windows has a somewhat higher-level stable ABI, but as a result it is a much wider surface to keep compatible, it breaks much more often, it requires a lot more hacks to keep it stable over time (program-specific hacks kept around for decades), etc. This is the point of difference: the layer at which each is stable.…

The nature of stability literally is the discussion; I replied to a post that blamed the lack of a Linux equivalent to Win32 on dynamic linking. That the stable ABI you get on Linux requires you to bundle literally every dependency you have as if distros don't exist... And then still have issues because the kernel ABIs for graphics are entirely GPU dependent...

The two approaches are definitively not the same (as you claim), and the significant shortcomings of Linux's approach are why Win32 is becoming the ABI devs target even on Linux.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#214

Post by dcgudeman »

mmercedes wrote: post #165
dcgudeman wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

not a productive comment to call someone deluded without at least explaining why. The UX does seem like a significant hurdle to maintream adoption to me.

Does it really require an explanation? All you have to do is observe that literally everyone besides a few free software zealots use "non-free" operating systems. What company is developing consumer linux computers for retail sale? If someone even wanted to buy one they would have to really look. There are many unknowns about what programs will run on linux. Will a buyer encounter a situation where they are literally blocked from doing what they need to do because they are using a fringe operating system? There are a million services that have integrations into these operating systems that would go out the window with linux. And this doesn't even begin touch the entire ecosystem of enterprise device management. But yeah maybe it's the UX. Just a couple more polished features in GNOME and then Walmart will roll out an entire fleet of new linux computers for their financial department! And grandma will finally switch over to that sweet FOSS laptop! And genz will drop their nice macbook pros and get on a nice fedora laptop! Just one more UX release.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#215

Post by kayg04 »

swozey wrote: post #134
gumballindie wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not switch to linux though? You know there's some real cool hardware available out there that looks and feels way better than a mac, and battery aside, can do a lot more, is upgradeable and not locked in. Just a thought.

This is hilariously biased. This is HN, you're not talking to people who don't know what Linux is. Hell, a huge portion of us are linux engineers of various sorts. You're also in a thread literally about a linux app. Anyway. 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. OSX GUI applications absolutely blow everything that Linux has out…

[dead]

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#216

Post by rossy »

stevepike wrote: post #4

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

I love Steam, Valve and Proton, and what they've done for Linux gaming, but nothing will make me compromise on DRM. To me, ending DRM is just as important as supporting free operating systems, so unfortunately no amount of good will gives Valve a free pass in my eyes.

So I've started buying games from DRM-free platforms like GoG and adding them to Steam as non-Steam games. Same compatibility and no need to use an external tool to maintain Wine/Proton prefixes. With the boatloads of money Valve makes from Steam, they probably won't miss me too much.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#217

Post by neurostimulant »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #198
sph wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When they buy out any game exclusivity (so the games are only sold on Epic store on pc), they would make the game drop linux support even when the games previously can run on linux natively (e.g. rocket league, payday 2, etc). That's a huge negative in my book, enough to make me never consider using Epic store.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#218

Post by mschuster91 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #201
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.

I mean, they made an entirely new architecture just to keep their vertical integration running. Stubborness is basically in the DNA of the company. They still have enough draw that they can get away with it, so I guess they were pulling off "Valves" before Valve got popular (minus the whole "open source" moniker of course. but then again, Valve didn't exactly care about FOSS per se; just a smart move for independence…

> I mean, they made an entirely new architecture just to keep their vertical integration running.

No, they went for running with their own silicon because Intel couldn't be arsed to provide them with actually power-efficient, performant and new CPUs and they were locked in to AMD for GPUs (because that is something Apple doesn't like).

It speaks volumes about just how badly Intel (and AMD) were stuck in the past when Apple blew them to pieces with the M1 performance.

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#219

Post by kruczek »

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.

I switched to Ubuntu for my gaming PC over a year ago and from my Steam library of hundreds of games so far I only found maybe 1 or 2 that did not work on Linux, but worked on Windows. All the others work flawlessly*

* there is one caveat to that though - if you have a VR headset, then there are many people reporting performance issues on Linux with those headsets. And personally I also find VR performance subpar on Linux (although it still improved in the last year).

Re: 5 years ago Valve released Proton

#220

Post by troad »

hanniabu wrote: post #62

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

I direct newbies to Kubuntu; I've never had anyone struggle with using it - modern KDE is an incredibly intuitive experience - and any tech support is easy as they're pretty much on stock Ubuntu.

Honestly I think a lot of newbie gripes about "Linux" are just gripes about Gnome, sometimes quite justified ones.

Post reply on HN