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Valve Introduces Proton Next

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Re: Valve Introduces Proton Next

#51

Valve's continual focus on Linux (SteamOS 1.0 was released eight years ago) is honestly incredible, Proton even sometimes works better than native Linux builds. Truly nobody else (in the gaming space) is doing it like Valve are. I saw a talk[1] from a KDE dev talking about features Valve sponsored to be added to KDE Plasma and it's things that are useful for everyone outside the context of the steam deck. The only th…

Forget native Linux, it's more stable than native windows for me on a few games (and sometimes faster because of windows FS horribleness)

Re: Valve Introduces Proton Next

#52

I wish they would sell the Steam Deck in Australia. Does anyone know whether you can buy one overseas and use it anyway?

Basically it's normal PC so you can even just install Windows there (but it will degrade overall experience). So there is absolutely no lock-ins and you can use hardware any way you like.

Re: Valve Introduces Proton Next

#53
I want to buy a SteamDeck. But I don't think I have the spare hours. After work, taking care of the kids, and housework I _might_ have 1 spare hour a day to sit down with the wife. I'd rather watch something on TV with her. To have any kind of free time I have to stay up till 1am!

I could bring the SteamDeck when I bring the kids to the park, but that just feels like I'm cheating the kids.

I work from home.

8am-9am get ready for work/get kids ready for the day

9am-5pm work

5pm-8pm doing stuff with the kids

8pm-9pm eat, get kids ready for bed

9pm-11pm housework/watch TV

11pm-midnight miscellaneous stuff to prepare for the next day.

I almost wish I had a commute by train or something. Or a housekeeper, or an Au Pair/nanny.

How the fuck do other grownups do it? (I'm 49, and exhausted all the time)

Re: Valve Introduces Proton Next

#54
post #25

Valve's continual focus on Linux (SteamOS 1.0 was released eight years ago) is honestly incredible, Proton even sometimes works better than native Linux builds. Truly nobody else (in the gaming space) is doing it like Valve are. I saw a talk[1] from a KDE dev talking about features Valve sponsored to be added to KDE Plasma and it's things that are useful for everyone outside the context of the steam deck. The only th…

I watched a talk by GabeN years ago, where he explained his business philosophy (which also had to do with his exit from Microsoft). It was strikingly simple: treat your customers well. Supporting Linux is treating his customers well (even if the majority of customers don't understand that... yet).

> treat your customers well. Supporting Linux is treating his customers well.

It's really won me over, I can say that much. When I was using Windows, I favoured buying games from GOG over Steam whenever possible. DRM and all that.

Ever since I moved to Linux, it's been the opposite. GOG couldn't care less about Linux compatibility, and while you can get their stuff going through some combination of Wine/Lutris scripts, the experience I get with Steam is so much better.

Re: Valve Introduces Proton Next

#55
Due to Proton I feel like coming back to PC gaming after almost 20 years, great stewardship by Valve there.

The last "rig" I built was for Doom 3 after which I'd never bothered with keeping a NTFS partition again.

Apple silicon just doesn't seem to get to the levels needed for a state-of-the-art Cyberpunk 2077 experience even on pricier high-end Macs. I'm also still not willing to buy any "next-gen" consoles for the first time either (trend of maybe efficient but still glorified PC architecture continuing).

Would anyone have a list of well tested Linux + Proton compatible components?

Nvidia or AMD? Which drivers are better maintained at this point? It would still be cool to run some machine learning workloads for fun of course.

Any pointers would be appreciated.

Re: Valve Introduces Proton Next

#56
post #38
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is. And I noticed quite early on: the Steam games which had problems were the ones with native Linux ports - wonky display settings, or controller not recognised or something like that. The fix is always to tell it to "force" a version of Proton, which caused Steam to go and download the Win32 build instead.

I get the feeling people hit a bad game or two and stopped checking, so I just want to say native ports actually work fine in my experience, both before and after Proton's birth. Terraria, Garry's Mod, Valve's own titles, and Starbound should all work fine to name a few. I fear we'll get fewer proper native ports because of Proton, so it's hard for me to get excited about it. Especially with how it seems to be on by…

Looking over the Linux ecosystem, I would say that Linux itself has far more blame for the lack of native ports than the developers do. Developing for Linux is complicated, requires constant intervention, has frequent compatibility gotchas, has little "best practices" established, among other issues. Games are complicated things - name one native Linux port that works just fine on Fedora 37 when it was built for Ubuntu 16.04. Unless it got recently updated or is only a simple 2D Game, odds are not in your favor.

For an example of this, read Mike Rose about the game Defenders. Linux was 0.8% of sales, but over 50% of technical complaints. Whereas, if they dumped it for a Proton build, the onus is no longer on them for a working Linux build or for compatibility issues on Linux - its way easier to just say YMMV.

Blaming developers for the lack of native games is like the pot calling the kettle black. Until Linux becomes a decent platform to build for, developers aren't interested in rewriting major parts of their games every time the Linux community has a new idea. The lack of native games, I would argue, is more a failure of Linux than a failure of game developers.

Whether we like it or not, this lack of stability in Linux and the ability to just fork every time you don't like something, has led to Win32 becoming the common API for Linux. You build for Windows and Vulkan, and specifically test your game against Proton, and you can run on almost any Linux distribution that supports Proton without banging your head into a wall, or doing frequent patching every year.

Re: Valve Introduces Proton Next

#58
post #52

I wish they would sell the Steam Deck in Australia. Does anyone know whether you can buy one overseas and use it anyway?

Basically it's normal PC so you can even just install Windows there (but it will degrade overall experience). So there is absolutely no lock-ins and you can use hardware any way you like.

[deleted]

Re: Valve Introduces Proton Next

#59
post #52

I wish they would sell the Steam Deck in Australia. Does anyone know whether you can buy one overseas and use it anyway?

Basically it's normal PC so you can even just install Windows there (but it will degrade overall experience). So there is absolutely no lock-ins and you can use hardware any way you like.

That makes sense from a hardware point of view. I was wondering whether there would be issues using a Steam account from an unsupported country.

It requires a Steam account in a supported country to order. But after receiving it, can you log in to an account from a different country? Technically it should be doable. But there might be some policy that stops it from working.

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