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Valve is paying open-source developers to work on Proton, Mesa, and more

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Re: Valve is paying open-source developers to work on Proton, Mesa, and more

#271

Post by npteljes »

Spivak wrote: post #9

Proton is way better than it has any right to be and single handedly made Linux a viable gaming platform. The odds of any particular game working on Linux is higher than Mac now.

Well, it's standing on the shoulder of a giant. Wine has been going strong for 29 years now, counting from its initial release. What I really appreciate in Valve's contribution is the integration and UX work they have put in it. It's just a breeze to use Steam and Proton, I can hardly imagine it being even more simple. Which, of course, was not the case with the original Wine, although Winetricks, and other projects like Lutris made it a lot easier.

Re: Valve is paying open-source developers to work on Proton, Mesa, and more

#272

Post by danielheath »

omnimus wrote: post #257
danielheath wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m using classic i3, with a nearly stock config. I have a key binding to start a launcher (in lieu of a start button). I3bar to indicate which workspaces have new chat messages etc. Default black background, all non-critical notifications disabled; I get distracted easily, so I craft an environment that avoids distractions.

simple window manager - how can you say i3?! most people wouldnt know how to do anything in there

Most window managers are easy, but not simple. i3 is simple, but not easy.

In general, I'd prefer to have something both simple and easy, but in most cases that's not an option.

Re: Valve is paying open-source developers to work on Proton, Mesa, and more

#273

Post by bayindirh »

viraptor wrote: post #228
bayindirh wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because AppImages need no daemons and plumbing. They are self contained binaries which contain everything it needs to run. Running a big infra to run a single binary once in a while feels like a burden to some of us.

Flatpak also doesn't need daemons beyond what the app is using.

Yet you need to install flatpak package and its dependencies to run flatpak applications. Not to mention the flatpak package contains a four ".service." files, too.

They might not be triggered and launched all the time, but this mode of operation is different from .appimage files, which are just ordinary binary files you directly run.

Re: Valve is paying open-source developers to work on Proton, Mesa, and more

#274

Post by poulpy123 »

hnarn wrote: post #44
haunter wrote: post #10

Linus at DebConf 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=310&v=Pzl1B7nB9Kc&feature=yo... >I’m on a record saying, that maybe Valve will actually save the Linux desktop. And it’s actually not because I think games are important! I don't care, I don't play games. I think some people do, so games maybe important. But the really important issue is I guarantee you Valve will not make 15 different binaries. And I also guarant…

Unless we’re talking about embedded systems (and most of the time, not even then I’d guess for portable gaming devices for example), what is the actual drawback of these “huge” binaries? Wasn’t the reason to separate binaries and libraries in the first place to conserve disk space? They are then clearly versioned to signal that you can’t expect just any version of the library to work with the program you wrote. The t…

I just checked and I have 5600 binaries in my /usr/bin. They take an average of 100kb. If statically compiling them means an average of 50M that means 281gb.

Re: Valve is paying open-source developers to work on Proton, Mesa, and more

#275

Post by poulpy123 »

pxc wrote: post #101
butz wrote: post #63

Thanks to Valve Linux is single OS on my home computer. Most of the games from my medium sized Steam library are working, and few that does not work today, will probably be fixed in the future. Need to mention that I do not play new AAA titles or multiplayer games, but I enjoy older games, and some of those are broken on modern versions of Windows.

Single player gaming, indie gaming, and retro gaming are all gaming niches where I'd say that a smooth Linux experience with widespread support is 'already there'. It's really only the (crucial) segment of big, trendy multiplayer titles where support is still really hit-and-miss. If gaming is essential to your social network, Linux may not be ready for you to entirely switch over. But if you're someone whose social h…

Afaik what I have seen with the steam deck the problems come mainly from old title that are probably not a priority or big new titles with anticheat or denuvo

Re: Valve is paying open-source developers to work on Proton, Mesa, and more

#276

Post by Linux_Watcher »

haunter wrote: post #10

Linus at DebConf 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=310&v=Pzl1B7nB9Kc&feature=yo... >I’m on a record saying, that maybe Valve will actually save the Linux desktop. And it’s actually not because I think games are important! I don't care, I don't play games. I think some people do, so games maybe important. But the really important issue is I guarantee you Valve will not make 15 different binaries. And I also guarant…

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that excluding work related stuff gaming is very important to those who own a Windows PC.

Re: Valve is paying open-source developers to work on Proton, Mesa, and more

#277

Post by versteegen »

freedomben wrote: post #106
slavik81 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not enough information for me to understand what's wrong, but I suppose maybe I should find a Steam Deck and try things out myself. If you want to follow up privately, my email is in my profile.

AMD does have two different drivers (which I find maddening). I bought a monstrous GPU to use for hashcat, but the open source/built-in drivers don't support the openCL that hashcat (and crypto mining) need. The Pro driver doesn't get updated fast enough to work on Fedora, which is also a travesty for me. I really wish that weren't the case. I can't speak for steam deck though, just my experience on a self build.

Have you heard about just-released Mesa 22.3 which now has rusticl for modern OpenCL support? Previously Mesa used Clover for OpenCL, which was stuck somewhere just below OpenCL 1.2 (but only reports OpenCL 1.1 support).

Re: Valve is paying open-source developers to work on Proton, Mesa, and more

#278

Post by scheeseman486 »

pjmlp wrote: post #54
iforgotpassword wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I played life is strange 2 recently. It has a native Linux Version. On startup it complained I should set my CPU governor to performance instead of governor. Then it said it only supports AMD and Nvidia cards. I pressed continue and the system hard-locked. This machine is about a year old today, and this is the only crash I had, ever. After that I configured steam to use the windows version instead, and I co…

Hence "OS/2 runs Windows better", all over again. We all know how that ended.

That was in an era of rapid change for Windows APIs, these days games target Windows from ~5 years ago.

Another comparison that I think is more apt: "IBM PC Compatibles run IBM PC software better"

Re: Valve is paying open-source developers to work on Proton, Mesa, and more

#279

Post by scheeseman486 »

pjmlp wrote: post #247
smoldesu wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is there to get over? They run better on Linux most of the time, plus I don't need to groan when Microsoft asks me to enable the Windows™ Gaming Hub™.

Great, I guess we can forget about SDL and friends, and start adding a note "Want this on Linux? Ask Valve".

They wrap to SDL, so it's still being used. Proton is mostly an assemblage of FOSS projects, direct interaction with Valve isn't needed to use those any more than direct interaction with, say, a major contributor to Mesa like Intel when using that.

Re: Valve is paying open-source developers to work on Proton, Mesa, and more

#280

Post by scheeseman486 »

pxc wrote: post #115
pjmlp wrote: post #15

They would do better by sponsoring native GNU/Linux games, or even ports from other POSIX like platforms like Playstation/Android, instead of playing OS/2 with Windows games.

It looks like this is getting a lot of hate, but I think there's clearly some truth to it. As an initial effort to bring a huge library of games to Linux, Proton is brilliant and a huge achievement. But it does feel less secure, in the long run, than having developers writing games for Linux as a first-class platform from the start. Idk what the transition plan could look like, but eventually we should hope to see th…

It isn't less secure, win32 programs have just as much as access as native binaries do. Valve also runs Proton in a container.

Not to say the current implementation is secure though, only that the use of Wine/Proton makes no difference.

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