Didn’t it all start with Wine and later Vulkan / DXVK? Didn’t Valve just put it all together in a nice package or am I missing something?
Proton is the reason I daily drive Linux. That is a simple, unequivocal fact.
Not me! I switched in 2017, right around the time Windows 10 “telemetry” (read: spyware) was getting backported to Windows 7.
It was a rough first couple of years, gaming-wise, but I managed to get by playing mostly Linux-native games and using PlayOnLinux with pre-Proton WINE for the one or two games important enough to justify the hassle.
(INB4 “weird flex but OK”)
I gotta admit, I was pretty conflicted about Proton when it was first announced, since there was a lot of fear that it would reduce developer impetus to make proper Linux-native games. I’m not actually sure whether that came to pass or not, but I feel like the issue is a lot less important than it seemed at the time.
weird flex but OK
It would make sense that developers would support their game as played through Proton, which is not really that different from just making a proper linux-native game. It should work just as fast both ways.
Samsies. Steam Deck showed me it was possible. Made the switch a little after that (waited for Hell Let Loose to turn on EAC for Linux).
Same here.
Windows 7 EOL is why I switched to linux.
proton is why I’ve stayed on linux.
I only have windows on my laptop atm, and thats only because of sheer laziness and the fact i dont use it much anymore… will be putting linux on it eventually, though.
Me too, soon I guess. I have a Steam Deck, and now using Windows on my laptop is kind of like torture, so the Deck has been my main PC.
Yeah it has. I don’t even bother looking at the supported operating systems for most games on Steam anymore. I also don’t play overhyped microtransaction-laden bullshit like cod or fortnite, either, so no loss there. If I ever wanted to play that kind of game, I have a PS5.
So, my middle aged ass plays the microtransaction-laden bullshit known as Roblox because my 3rd grader and all his friends love it.
It doesn’t even have a Linux version but thanks to the project “sober” it plays absolutely fantastically on Linux. I think they claim 2x the performance of the windows version. I just know I have a powerful but old system (8c/8t 9700k cpu and gtx1080 gpu) and I can lock it at 144fps at 1440p and it uses like 20% of my system resources. Not that it’s a visually demanding game, lol.
Going all-in on my switch to Linux (my win10 partition for dual booting lasted less than two weeks) has had zero negative impact on my ability to play the games I want. In fact, it has led to me using my PC a lot more and my phone a lot less. Feels good.
I’ve suffered one loss, I can’t play Mechabellum any more. But other than that my experience has been much the same, smooth across all fronts.
I want it to evolve to support more desktop applications. This is the one thing that will continue to hamper Linux adoption. Games are the best place to start, but we need all those old obscure, irreplaceable desktop apps to work now.
It’s built on Wine, any general improvements to compatibility will generally support desktop programs using the same APIs
A custom wine
I love it! Not only do I use it on the Steam Deck, but also on my Desktop PC running Linux.
I’m getting back into PC gaming after being consult exclusive for a while. I’m assuming anything with kernel anti-cheat is still not trying to work which is a problem because it means I either have to buy a windows licence or mess around with a cracked one which has its own security concerns.
I think my plan is to dual boot and use Windows as little as often.
If you have a particular game in mind you can check protondb.com, which tries to cover both Proton compatibility and Deck compatibility.
Yeah, when w10 dies this is probably what I’ll end up doing too. I want to ditch windows but a lot of the programs I use don’t have Linux support
Was the same for me and I said screw it, and figured out alternate programs to use , annoyamce ? For sure but18 months later it’s no longer an issue.
There’s this handy list of online games with anti-cheat that are compatible with Linux. The majority isn’t supported, but some major titles are, surprisingly.
You can use windows freely without activating, or at least you could last time I needed it.
Thank you Lord Gaben
Thank you to the workers who actually programmed, tested, and implemented the thing*
to his credit as a billionaire he could have paid all those people to do something that sucks way more
To Gaben’s credit he collects a lot less of the surplus these workers create than most other billionaires. But yes.
I’m glad he’s not as evil as the other billionaires, but can we stop with the billionaire simping? Ironic that an account on a left-wing anarchist instance made that comment lmao
It’s a meme
He’s still a billionaire tho 🤮
Thank you
Lord GabenCodeWeaverssSun MicrosystemsIt’s corporations making money off of OSS all the way down
How do they make money with proton and foss?
They sell games to people with SteamDecks, I guess. My comment was probably a bit blunt TBF. I think Valve is transformative in the gaming space. They’re not doing it for free though, and I think it helps to remember that.
Proton actually is free, I use it without a Steam Deck. I mean yeah they build a handheld console and they are allowed to sell it I guess? They don’t sell SteamOS and they don’t sell Proton, I could use both without paying them a dime right now. Legally. They also upstream to Wine … Actually for free?
Literally this week I learned that you need to install flatpak Nvidia drivers if you use flatpak Steam. Once I found that out, proton works great!
A sidestory to this is that Flatpak and AppImage have been miraculous boosts to Linux OS machines. After I figured out that ya gotta throw the --user flag into your flatpak installs so they don’t jam up your / tree, and also throwing flatpak override --user xyz.app onto a few apps that benefit from universal access, things have been fine and dandy.
I continue to be happy with how awesome Linux has gotten just over the past 5 years.
Have you tried flatseal? It’s designed for flatpak permissions
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This is why I have used flatpak steam. It’s a lot easier to manage drivers in it vs the shitshow that is doing it natively with adding custom driver specific repos and whatnot.
Hoping the new PC I just ordered (with an AMD GPU) will be better with the native app.
I will remark that that sounds like a distro issue - I use Arch and the drivers are just in the official distros, no need to add external ones. Just look up what you need on the wiki and install it.
That said, AMD will still probably be a better experience.
(btw)
I use Arch, btw.
:)
No flak. I do, too.
I’m on Fedora KDE. I think it was drivers. I had the official drivers just fine, but at the time (18-24 months ago?) they were shitty and breaking some games on my GPU so I switched to alternate drivers. I think the drivers are better now, but I haven’t switched back and cleaned out my repo list.
I think I was using an NVidia GPU up until about 3 years ago, when I switched to AMD when upgrading, so my knowledge on that front is a bit outdated.
The arch wiki has more information if you’re curious, but I’m aware of official proprietary drivers, official partially opensourced drivers, separately packaged legacy drivers, and the unofficial opensource Nouveau drivers which weren’t really usable back then.
What you’re describing sounds odd to me, but looking it up, sounds like Fedora doesn’t package official drivers? I’m having trouble finding proper information on this, but it could be for ideological reasons, since those drivers are proprietary - so the default drivers might be Nouveau, which might be rather broken, both because of lack of workforce and NVidia blocking unofficial drivers from using their devices properly.
If that’s the case, it’s basically a conflict between ideology and usability within that distribution - it might seem like a great distro for users, and it might be competently made, but when somebody doesn’t care about the ideology and just wants their device to work, they’ll end up with confusion and work to do.
Bazzite has native drivers included. I believe Fedora requires you to install them.
It does seem to go a step further, Fedora seems to not only require you to install them, but also not provide them in the official repositories, requiring you to use unofficial repositories. Most software in a distro’s repositories doesn’t come preinstalled, but it’s generally as simple as running the package manager.
I’ve been using mint exclusively for like 3 months and have been using a hearty blend of terminal installs and the program manager app.
It seems to not have caused any problems YET, but I’ve been assured it will. I see flatpack conversations a lot and don’t fully understand the differences (apart from the install method).
Is it worth understanding and committing to a single system or can I just be a low-power user for a while?
One thing you might notice is that flatpak defaults to “system” installs. Is your root system directory filling up? You probably want to start installing onto --user, as this will put things in /home where they belong and, by default, sandbox permissions away from root (that, too, can be easily changed).
Also, don’t fear mixing different ways of installing. I use AppImage, Flatpak, the default app-get install method, and .deb. FlatPak at this point is the best, because it offers the ease of use of AppImage, but the flexibility and auto-maintenance of apt-get/Software Update. The only problems I’ve encountered were due to me not understanding that it was filling up my root partition by default…
I’ve been running Mint MATE for about 9 years. Love it to death.
Recommending the —user flag is good advice and isn’t intuitive!
Basically every app is sandboxed to some extent. That way you don’t get conflicting dependencies. Because I use this machine for work, game performance is a much lower priority than file system permissions and stability and for most typical workloads. MacOS does the same thing by default now and very few apps get access to the actual root directory.
MacOS has more than sandboxed… they are basically removing the ability of a user to do anything to their computers. I can’t fix my dad’s imac (I used to fix my own macs), they are impenetrable… They’ve more than “sandboxed” apps, they’re forcing all but previously established powerusers to take their dying overpriced lumps to the Apple store. This, they say, is “good for you.” I loved Apple for 8 or so years. Hate them to death now.
My 9-year-old quad-core running Mint MATE 22 boots up faster than both my dad’s 2-year old iMac and my 6-core PC running Win11. And I can tell you what every process running is doing… bonus.
So, Valve has indeed done a lot to make Linux more attractive for gamers. It isn’t perfect yet, but we are getting there. And yes, kernel-based anti-cheat is one of the reasons why it isn’t perfect yet.
I’d argue kernel-based anticheats are one of the areas gaming on Linux excels. Video game developers should not have that level of permissions over consumers’ machines, certainly with how little your average gamer understands the potential consequences of these rootkits. So the fact that all of the ones I know of can’t be installed under Linux is more than acceptable, it’s ideal.
Are they working on a fix for the kernel anti cheat? Is it possible?
Not really. But from a security perspective, giving software for a video game, done by InfinityWard, EA, Activision, Treyarch and similar, access to the lowest level of your operating systen is kinda insane.
I wouldn’t want any personal data on such a device, let alone do online baking on that thing. It’s weird how normalized it has become give entertainement-software this kind of power over your devices.
From what I read, Microsoft is planning to kick anti-cheat out of the Windows kernel too, so maybe that will help on the Linux side as well.
From Wikipedia:
Programs and subsystems in user mode are limited in terms of what system resources they have access to, while the kernel mode has unrestricted access to the system memory and external devices. Kernel mode in Windows NT has full access to the hardware and system resources of the computer.
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This is what finally let me transition to Mint :3
It’s pretty cool.
Common GabeN win
Praise be to Gaben!
well what has it been doing for the first 6 years
I really only miss fortnite and the ocassional call of duty warzone but other than those two or some multiplayer games Linux is far more enjoyable. Yeah I know this games and those companies but let someone enjoy something for once. Help me find a work around. Until then I dual boot mint and windows debloated as much as possible for only a few multiplayer games.
It’s not that the companies should be boycotted, it’s that they chose this themselves, the publishers choose these types of drm and anticheats when they could have included decency, neither the players, developers or elitists need to take any heat it’s just a greedfaced choice for a publisher that carefully weighs gold against reputation and outrage, because they’re a parasite on Earth, a made up elaborate middle man professional scam that; just like hedge funds provide heavy negative benefit to the human race, actively ruining our chances as a species to survive, a bloated boil about to burst and provide nothing but pox on everything they touch
Destiny 2 was the old game I played 2 years ago when I switched to linux full time that does not play nice with Proton. And given how its driven itself off a cliff. I will miss the old space opera, but nothing of value was lost.
