Proton is just the compatibility layer, which allows you to play Windows games on Linux.
It’s one of the main reasons so many people switched to Linux in the last months and years, since Proton gets even better from week to week. Something, games designed for Windows run even better on Linux (Proton) than on Windows!
From what I’ve heard, requiring Proton isn’t that bad, especially for the devs. Often, games engineered for Windows run better on Linux than the same ones for Linux.
It is. If well maintained, upstream/identical in features compared to the Windows one, and have some same degrees of support possible with it; I think it’s better than running it via Proton. But both is good, was still worth showcasing that find.
In the short term the answer is a clear “yes”, as it allows players to play nearly all Windows games on Linux without modifications, and game developers to ship their games on Linux without any extra costs.
In the long term it might have a bad effect on the market, as it further helps to cement Microsoft’s control over multimedia APIs, since game developers now have little incentive now to target anything other than DirectX…
In this case it’s a bit weird though, as the game lists Linux as supported platform, but obviously just ships the Windows build with Proton instead of having a native Linux build that uses open cross-platform APIs.
In this case it’s a bit weird though, as the game lists Linux as supported platform, but obviously just ships the Windows build with Proton instead of having a native Linux build that uses open cross-platform APIs.
It being under supported platforms might mean that the developer officially supports proton and thus Linux. Hopefully they’d provide fixes if they somehow break the game on proton (e.g. they won’t add an unnecessary launcher which breaks the game).
In the long term it might have a bad effect on the market, as it further helps to cement Microsoft’s control over multimedia APIs, since game developers now have little incentive now to target anything other than DirectX…
However, there are others that would argue that Microsoft's control over multimedia APIs was fully cemented since decades ago, and developers have never had much incentive to target anything other than DX since then.
Back in 2014, Valve tried to bring Linux gaming to the spotlight by offering solid and targetable APIs for developers to port their games. This approach failed hard, and most games had serious deficiencies because most publishers would rather stick a half-assed DX wrapper (like DXVK only infinitely worse) than actually do the work for a proper port.
So, with only a handful of games and what did appear was usually worse than on Windows, releases stopped coming after a year or so.
In the long term it might have a bad effect on the market, as it further helps to cement Microsoft’s control over multimedia APIs, since game developers now have little incentive now to target anything other than DirectX…
You’re not wrong, but people have been saying this for >20 years. We’re living in that future.
In the short term the answer is a clear “yes”, as it allows players to play nearly all Windows games on Linux without modifications, and game developers to ship their games on Linux without any extra costs.
It’s the dual-edged sword of making it more accessible now with a workaround, which disincentives developers from building with actual support in mind.
So Proton is allowing more people to switch to Linux for gaming, which is good! However, instead of putting pressure on developers to make Linux versions of games and software they can just use Proton, so they will continue making only Windows versions, which is bad.
Wow, now you’ve got me imagining this weird future where everyone has switched to Linux for desktop use because of how bad windows has become, but developers still make games only for windows because of Proton. 😵💫
I’ve seen numerous games in my library that were formerly native switch over to supporting Proton and abandoning the native port. I get that it cuts down on needed time and effort to maintain and we can still play on Proton, but I would really prefer native if there is the opportunity.
The way I like to think about it is that Proton essentially provides a standard, stable API across both Windows and Linux for gaming (Win32). We typically talk about it as a translation layer, and it is, but also to some degree it’s also “here’s an implementation of Win32 for Linux.”
If game devs can, say, buy a steam deck and know their game works on it, that means it’s gonna work on other steam decks and probably most Linux machines. It’s making it easy for devs to test and develop for Linux, even if it’s not really “on Linux.” Copy the Windows files to the steam deck, run your release checklist, and you’re good to go.
I would really prefer native if there is the opportunity
I prefer native apps too, but I’ll still use websites and some electron apps, and I’ll still use applications built in C#, Java, Python, etc. None of those are really native either. Proton is analogous to a virtual environment for running an interpreter. Potentially, it’s slower and has issues a la Python, but if the program can work, then I don’t care about the theoretical problems; it works despite them. So I think it’s fine.
If it means more games for Linux and a standard that developers can target, encouraging them to “support Linux,” then that’s a win I think. Like I said in another comment, a studio can buy a steam deck, throw the same Windows export on it, and then have someone run through the same set of tests they’d normally go through. If it works there, it’ll work on most Linux machines. Having a standard API is not a bad thing imo
Apparently there are a number of instances where it outperforms the native Windows version.
I’m inclined to agree – it seems Proton has reached the point where your Windows game will now play essentially the same on Linux as it does on Windows, with a few edge-cases. Why make extra work to maintain a native Linux version?
Some crappy DX9 titles run better with DXVK across the board, Windows included. It never occured to me that you can use DXVK on Windows too, but games like GTA 4 run so much better with it.
That has absolutely 0 relevance to this post lol. Smite has literally always been Windows only.
Smite devs are very mediocre bordering on inept. It took themike a year and a half of multiple attempts to get EAC working for Linux. Crashing is prevalent on both windows and proton in smite 1.
If smite devs took on a native Linux port, it would be an absolute garbage dumpster fire filled with never fixed bugs, incompatibility, probably an unusable amount of crashes. I’d rather play decently through proton than experience that BS.
but I would really prefer native if there is the opportunity.
This only makes sense if the native port is better. In the witcher 2, I get better graphics and performance when playing through proton instead of using native. And there are certain games with ‘native’ ports which don’t even run and just crash.
I have a Milk-V Mars but it really isn’t performant enough for any task I have for an SBC. Distro support seems to be a pain too, as the provided Debian image isn’t meant to run on repos aside from a Debian snapshot from 2022.
I really do hope things improve. I’m planning on moving over to an RK3588 ARM board for desktop daily drivering but one day I’m hoping a decently affordable RISC V alternative will turn up.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !selfhost
Hopefully. But it feels like we do this very often. We get a drug or something else that does this or that and is touted as being the best at this and then a few years later we announce that it was a horrible decision and has harsh consequences. Cigarettes, plastic, trans fats, so many dietary trends…
I’d love to try it but I’m skeptical just for this reason. Hoping not to hear in a decade that all these people developed the same type of cancer or some other horrible ailment.
But what you’re describing is just how science works in a world where we’re trying to make discoveries quickly due to our lifespans only being around 75 years compared to the billions or millions or thousands of years for everything else existing.
As long as we continue making discoveries along the way, this is progress. It sucks that we keep getting things partially wrong sometimes, like with asbestos, but we’ll eventually get it right as long as we keep following the process.
The examples given are not problems with science and time-scales. They are examples of the corrupting influence of money. Companies push their product as being fantastic, and deliberately cripple any science that would challenge their profits. Cigarettes are probably the most famous example of this.
lemmy.ml
Active