7 years later, Valve's Proton has been an incredible game-changer for Linux
It has been 7 years since Valve revealed Proton, their compatibility layer to run Windows games on Linux systems. What an incredible time it has been.
I think the real gamechanger has been Vulkan and DXVK. Proton would have never taken off with OpenGL.
all because some weeb wanted to play nier automata
proton is fantastic. I installed linux on my latop, just as a sort of introduction to it. But I've managed to run whatever games I want using Proton. For my next pc I'll use linux
For my next pc I’ll use linux
Check my post history but that's pretty much my #1 transition recommendation : do check that your future hardware is actually compatible. Most is... but you don't want to risk it when it's relatively easy to check!
PS: if you can, try to buy from manufacturers that do NOT sell a PC with a Windows installation. Ideally do buy something pre-built, try to give money to companies that even do ship with Linux installed. It's economically and morally nicer but also insure that your setup will 100% work.
When you have a new PC, put it on the old one too. You could run a Jellyfin server off it it or use it as a NAS device or something.
I think adopting Proton was the smartest thing Valve ever did. They are going to capture 90% of gamers switching from Windows to Linux.
It would be nice though if Valve finally dropped 32 bit Steam client dependencies, and maybe made a wow64 Proton build. I'm really tired of enabling multilib just for Steam.
Would 64-bit Proton be able to support old 32-bit games?
Yeah, that's what wow64 does.
while eac itself doesn't depend on 32bit it doesn't currently support wow64 wine
game-changer
pun intended
I've been here the whole time!
7 years later i'm still sometimes awestruck i'm playing games on linux flawlessly.
it's wine with bubble wrap, dxvk, and a shit ton of game specific hacks
True, but that is what did the trick. No tinkering, just a flawless experience (in most cases). This changed everything. No longer I start a game in the evening, wondering if it will start or not (I worked all day, I don't want to google what I have to change to get the game to run again...). I double click and expect it to work (and it normally does).
There are things to learn from this...
And computers are just a bunch of carefully arranged grains of sand.
100%, I deleted Windows partition (despite paying for it, thanks OEM deals...) only after Proton was insuring I could play the games I wanted on Linux too, no reboot required.
A decade ago I was whining to my friends that I didn't like Steam because I was using Linux and Steam was really shitty on that OS at some point. I remember not being able to get the correct keyboard layout in chats, and tons of little annoyances, like not being able to choose where you install games. It was disappointing.
As someone that loves FOSS, I never really liked the model of "not owning my games" but I must admit that it works for most people that don't care about such things. Valve made huge progress with Steam for Linux over the years, and Proton was indeed a game changer.
I have to tip my hat to them.
It was the last big hurdle to completely ditching Windows. If they get enterprise management solved, it's all over with.
Was there a precursor to proton integrated with steam? I would've sworn my friends were bringing this up in like 2016 or 2017 and describing it as a special version of wine for games that valve made
I was there playing whatever worked since the steam client linux beta