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.
Common GabeN win
Praise be to Gaben!
It’s pretty cool.
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.
You can use windows freely without activating, or at least you could last time I needed it.
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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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.
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.
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.
(btw)
I use Arch, btw.
:)
No flak. I do, too.
Thank you Lord Gaben
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
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?
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.
He’s still a billionaire tho 🤮
Proton is the reason I daily drive Linux. That is a simple, unequivocal fact.
Same here.
Windows 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.
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).
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.
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.
weird flex but OK
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.
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.
Get it to run Office and you’ve a game changer.
Yes, yes I know Libre/Open Office but try telling Shelly in Accounting who still struggles with Excel after 36 years of experience.
Well, Office365 works fine. You can even run it in MS Edge if you want.
Or Adobe, that’s the most frequent complaint
FUCK ADOBE
But yea, those cock suckers are the only reason I have to dual boot.
Locked in their ecosystem because they’re abusing their dominant position
“cock suckers” don’t make sense here though
I would imagine older versions can run properly, no? Like maybe 2007 or 2010. Later ones got too integrated with the OS which must be the main difficulty.
It’s built on Wine, any general improvements to compatibility will generally support desktop programs using the same APIs
A custom wine
Whatever allows us to leave the clusterfuck that is Windows is a blessing. M$ has had a monopoly for too long and I’m not paying for MacOS.
macOS has been free for, like, 15 years.
Yes, you have to already own an Apple computer, but Apple users don’t pay for OS upgrades.
Technically, anyone could download the OS images, but there’s not a lot that non-Apple users can do with them.
Macos is free. At the cost of paying *2 for hardware
You have to pay for hardware to run any operating system.
I don’t have to solder my ssd to the system to use it
So what?
That doesn’t change the fact that macOS is free.
Bruh what? Did you really just say that not having to buy software exclusive to a certain hardware makes the software free?
That’s like saying the OS on a PlayStation is free because you only had to pay for the PlayStation.
Nah man, you purchased the OS with the hardware. That’s why it’s exclusive.
No, I said your argument is ridiculous. So is this one you just made.
It’s not like either of those things.
macOS is free. Just because it requires a computer to run doesn’t mean it isn’t free. That’s the worst rationalization. I’ve heard yet.
macOS is absolutely not free, and your argument is exactly the same as those examples the previous user provided.
Floo just means that Apple used to charge for MacOS updates but they don’t anymore. They are old enough to remember the $129 upgrade fee. You’re also right because the hardware is obviously a license dongle that costs more than a retail copy of Windows. If you want MacOS, at least the $500 Mac mini and $800 MacBook Air are as good as anything you can buy at that price point. Kind of irrelevant but to this thread tho.
Prove it
macOS is included with every Mac, not free.
Well, then show me a receipt where you (or anyone) paid for macOS. Should be interesting.
when you buy a banana at the grocery store, show me the receipt that you paid for the shipping of said banana. When you buy a computer keyboard, show me the receipt for the ‘F’ key. When you buy a TV, show me the receipt for the capacitors.
This is not how receipts work.
You’re comparing apples and bananas. But the only thing that’s bananas is your argument
As they need to be installed on Apple hardware, there’s an implicit cost associated with it.
If you want to be super pedantic for no reason, you’re correct, it is technically free.
Technically not. MacOS wouldn’t be what it is today if apple didn’t get any money out of it. They get that money from selling the hardware the software is exclusively on among other things. Let’s say i. e. Ubuntu: When it first got released then it relied on its owners personal revenue for a long time. None of the hardware sold financed Ubuntu, because Ubuntu didn’t earn money through hardware. It’s obvious that the money earned by apple through its sales also go back into macOS, because if the hardware didn’t make any money, macOS ceases to be developed as well.
With OPs logic, every software is technically free. But no, you pay for macOS with the hardware you purchase. You purchase the hardware because of the OS, not because of the hardware. Technically, you could spin the argument and say that you pay for the OS, and for it to be run a certain way and the hardware that comes with it is free. If that sounds like bogus it’s because it is bogus.
Is hackintosh not still a thing? Did they neuter it somehow? Or are we just not considering that since it’s a pain in the ass to set up and works out of the box on a very limited selection of hardware?
I believe macOS 26 will be the last that’ll run on Intel hardware. So functionally, a year from now, Hackintosh is dead. Well, Hackintosh running the current macOS, of course. I imagine there’ll be a thriving community working to keep existing hardware chugging along.
It’ll be interesting to see the momentum of Linux on Macs though. If Asahi manages to crack those last few hurdles with the M1/2 hardware, it’ll be a rock solid OS, particularly as ARM64 software becomes more common. Suddenly you’ll have a bunch of incredibly capable Macs going cheap because they can’t run the largest macOS.
I don’t understand this argument. It makes no sense. Just because a piece of software is included for free with an Apple computer doesn’t mean you’re paying for it. It’s like you see the word “free” and just decide it means something different than what it really means.
Because I am capable of critical and complex thinking. Just because something is labeled as “free” does not necessarily mean there are no costs associated with procuring or using a product. If you’re handed a proprietary piece of technology for “free”, but the only way to use it is to pay for another piece of technology or software that you have to pay for… it’s not free. It’s complementary, but it’s not free. You still need to pay some amount to use it.
This is the same faulty logic as arguing that Linux also costs money because you have to pay for a computer to run it on. Any operating system requires that you own a compatible device to run it on.
You’re just drawing some imaginary line at Apple computers. It makes no sense.
Do you also think the engine that comes with your car is free because the manufacturer doesn’t sell it as a separate item and it’s not listed on the receipt?
Edit: His answer proves he’s just a troll. Weird thing to troll about though but I don’t judge what someone gets off to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
I don’t see how cars and engines have anything to do with the fact that macOS is free.
And, yeah, if it’s not listed on a receipt as something I paid for, you can’t argue that I paid for it. Or that anyone did. That’s absurd.
So when someone buys [anything] with a screen, the OS on the screen if free?
I don’t have a receipt for the OS in my car, so it means I must’ve gotten it for free. Same with the seats, steering wheel, mirrors, buttons, doors, you bang it! But what did I actually pay for then?
I never said that. But it does show how this black-and-white all the nothing approach makes no sense.
macOS is free because it’s free.
I have a MacBook Pro 15” 2018. I paid around $3K for it new. What is the cost for me to update to macOS 26 Tahoe or the one that comes after it?
I’m running Sonoma on a 2016 MacBook Pro. didn’t cost me anything because macOS is free.
The last version of MacOS I used was $130 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Tiger
And in my original comment, I said they hadn’t charged for it in about 15 years. And it’s been almost exactly 15 years.
I can show you many receipts where I bought a Windows laptop without a trace of any Windows licence on it.
Same, you can’t really install macOS on anything else than a Mac.
Sure you can do a Hackintosh, or run Windows without a proper licence (you can buy a Windows for like… $2 on the grey market). But you won’t have any support…
What does any of that have to do with the fact that macOS is free?
It is not free if you have to pay a specific hardware from the same company to run it. Same goes for Windows, it is not free if you are forced to buy Windows with the laptop.
In both case you pay for the software through the hardware.
Of course it is. It cost me nothing to download and install it.
Unless you can show me how you’re actually paying for the operating system, then I don’t see how you can keep making this argument. It makes no sense.
It’s the same nonsense is arguing that you have to pay for Linux just because the computer you are running on cost money.
there’s not a lot that non-Apple users can do with them
Oh, there is.
I am a web developer and I use this to run Safari and the iOS simulator without paying Apple’s “debugging tax”.That’s a limited time opportunity because x86 support is getting dropped with macOS 27.
Unless they don’t provide ARM downloads or have some other problem, couldn’t you just use the ARM version, because part of what QEMU is is an emulator, to emulate other architectures?
Well…looks like my employer will have to buy me a Macbook soon.
I bought the cheapest MacBook Air for my wife. It’s pretty nice. Lightweight, sturdy, and such good battery life that she doesn’t keep track of her charger. Personally I have a physical KVM that I use to switch between my Linux workstation and my laptop.
Anybody can download Windows images too. That doesn’t mean the OS is free.
I never said it did.
macOS is free because they don’t charge for it.
This is a dumb argument. Apple does provide you the OS upgrades for free but getting an ISO file and installing it on a non-Mac computer is impossible so no it’s not really free
Really? Did you pay for it? Because it’s free for me when I download it.
Sounds like you got scammed
That’s not the point. You’re still going to have to pay money regardless if you want the operating system. Whereas windows and Linux allow you to use their ISOs is any laptop or computer so no buddy.
If I already owned a laptop beforehand and I wanted Linux on it, it’s free. If I want MacOS I WOULD HAVE TO GO SPEND MONEY ON A COMPLETELY NEW COMPUTER THAT’S A MAC. that’s the point I’m trying to get at.
Compatibility has nothing to do with how much something costs. The fact is, there’s no way to actually buy macOS. Because it doesn’t cost anything.
As I’ve said elsewhere, by your logic, every operating system cost money to run because you have to pay money for a compatible device to run it on.
You’re just drawing some imaginary line at Apple. That makes no sense.
You’re missing the core point: Compatibility directly impacts accessibility. Just because something doesn’t have a price tag doesn’t mean it’s actually usable without cost. macOS is only ‘free’ if you already bought into Apple’s walled garden. That’s like saying Disneyland is free because walking around inside the park costs nothing—after you paid $150 to get in.
I cannot believe there is this long, drawn out argument over whether MacOS is free or not when my intention was MacOS + Mac = me not buying because it’s too much money for a meh system that doesn’t run half of the games or apps (though that’s been changing).
I feel like reading between the lines is a skill, or an art form that has gone extinct with young folk.
You’re missing the point: macOS is free. Just because you have to buy hardware to run it on doesn’t make it any different than any other free operating system like Linux. There’s plenty of hardware that doesn’t support Linux , too, so your argument, especially falls apart there.
Hackintosh is a thing (or at least used to be), but it’s against the EULA.
Yeah, the big reason to do that was so you could attach an EGPU which wasn’t supported natively. Now it is, though, so the need for that mostly disappeared. Plus, macOS is now so reliant on proprietary interval hardware like the T2 chip, then I won’t run on anything, but Apple hardware.
eGPUs? I ran a Hackintosh because Apple didn’t sell hardware in the configuration I wanted. Less to do with GPUs and more to do with the lack of hard drive slots or PCIe slots. I had a nice workflow with some pieces of shareware that slowly lost support with each major OS update and every major update also came with less customizing for Finder. By the time they switched to their own ARM chips, I was ready to drop it. Apple’s idea of game support was just mobile shit anyway. They should have become partnered with Valve on Proton.
The big reason to make a hackintosh was to use eGPUs?
eGPUs were not supported natively? And now they are?
What timeline are you talking about here? Is it all back 10-6 years ago?
Maybe, because I haven’t looked into it in a few years.
Ok, that makes a bit more sense then.
eGPUs got pretty good support on Intel Macs in the years leading up to Apple Silicon. And that transition started 5+ years ago. And now all Apple Silicon Macs have no eGPU support.
I find it weird that you cite eGPU support since hackintoshes almost always have PCI slots. And the eGPU support still comes from Apple (at the driver level) even on a hackintosh. AFAIK.
I did a little digging. It seems like mainline Apple hardware with Thunderbolt 2 had limited eGPU support because of bandwidth constraints. Thunderbolt 3 had full support.
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Exactly what nuance is there to blatant insults and ableism?
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Right, because I’m to blame because no one can prove that macOS costs money.
Being certain of a fact is not evidence of whatever bigoted thing you’re accusing me of.
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Right, I’m the one “fixated” on this, but all of the people like you dog pile on me, and trying to insist a fact isn’t true aren’t “fixated”.
Seems like projection to me. And deflection from the fact that you can’t prove your point.
This is what finally let me transition to Mint :3
well what has it been doing for the first 6 years
Building momentum for the year of the Linux.
You know, the one we’ve been reading about for 20 years.
Bro actually said it’s the year of Linux
Considering october is the planned end of life for w10 I wouldn’t be surprised
It’s not over til it’s over
That’s why I finally switched
And why I will as well
What did you switch to?
I ended up with mint. The UI is familiar and it was very easy to set up. Most of my needs are simple. Browsing. Gaming. Occasional spreadsheet.
I’m going with mint as well, hope it will be a good experience
I have already started searching for alternative software because I have a bunch that support Windows only currently
Is there a straightforward way to see at-a-glance which games in my library are not compatible?
You can connect your steam library via protondb.com - but I also play games flawless that are ranked silver so yeah
Yep, this is the way. Pretty much every game works fine unless there is specific anticheat or some launcher nonsense.
Ta. I figure my Micro ITX with Win 10 will have to become Linux soon so it’ll be nice to know what I’m losing.
I still use wine for most of my games on the desktop.
Proton upstreams to Wine a lot. You can tell by the number of patches they have keeps fluctuating
I know but I’ve been using wine so long that its comfortable and I rarely fail to get a game running on it.
This is not a battle between Linux and Windows. It is a battle between the Steam Deck versus the Desktop PC platform (windows users). Stop with the claiming Linux marketshare over it.
I’m off to celebrate how widely BSD is used because technically the Playstation uses it and the switch incorporates code from FreeBSD. BSD derivitives are the most popular game console OS. It’s the year of BSD!
Fortunately Valve publishes monthly hardware statistics so we can back claims with statistics. Linux comprises 2.89% of their surveyed share. Of that 28.31% are using Steam OS. Using the wayback machine we can check the statistics from last year. Checking the July 2024 results using the Wayback Machine shows Linux at 2.08% with Steam OS comprising 40.97% of that.
From that we can see that Linux is growing, while Steam OS is becoming less of a contributing factor to the Linux share.
Someone citing actual facts on the internet?! Impossible!!
Sourced facts nonetheless
the deck is a gateway drug for linux
I think if Valve would release SteamOS 3.0 for PC that would make a bigger dent in Windows. TurboTax just announced they will not support Windows 10 for the new version and that’s probably just the start for Win10 abandonment.
does turbotax support linux?
No but I think the point being made is that people that have been clinging to Win 10 as a refuge from the crapfest that Win 11 is are going to start running into significant problems soon. Increasingly you’re not going to be able to get software for Windows 10. A lot of people are opting to migrate to Linux rather than going from Win 10 to Win 11, and as the holdouts on 10 are increasingly corned some amount of them will make the same decision.
They support web browsers
Despite its drawbacks electron is probs a great thing for linux uptake. it makes cross platform development very easy
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/ has some statistics from the Steam Survey. Somewhat interesting bit is that if you only take users who use English as the language in Steam, the Linux market share is 6.3%.
Proton existed long before the Steam Deck, and before that as DXVK.
This is a battle between closed proprietary OS and open source. Proton enables translating DirectX/Windows APIs not only to Vulkan/Linux x86, but even to ARM and BSD.
Proton is mostly Wine, not DXVK. Wine does the translation of Windows and some DirectX APIs. DXVK translates Direct3D to Vulkan. Proton pulls it all together with some game specific patches, integration with gamescope and other Steam specific integrations.
All of this being open source means it can also be compiled for ARM and BSD. Though to get x64 games to run on ARM you need an additional emulation layer like Box64.
Though rumor has it that Valve is already experimenting with x64 emulation for their Deckard project, which is likely to be their next VR headset.
Couple technical nitpicks.
First it’s debatable if Proton existed long before Steam Deck. I’m not sure the exact timeline but I think it was created as part of the Steam Box effort which wasn’t all that long ago. On the other hand though Wine which Proton is built on top of most certainly has existed for a very long time before either the Steam Deck or even Proton (I have fond memories of LAN gaming with it back when Diablo 2 was new).
Second Proton doesn’t enable ARM (at least by itself) so that claim is a little misleading. There is a project to realtime translate x86 instructions into ARM but that project (Box86) although it fulfills a similar role and could be used in conjunction with Proton isn’t actually Proton. Using Proton by itself will not enable you to play x86/Windows games on ARM.
Lastly Proton is kind of irrelevant to the whole Linux vs BSD thing. Technically what enables that is that both implement POSIX standards plus use mostly the same libraries, frameworks (like Vulkan), and applications. Yes running Proton on BSD will let you game on BSD but that isn’t really a result of Proton doing the work so much as it’s a side effect of the fact you can run Proton on BSD in the first place. Additionally while there are technical and philosophical reasons why the distinction between Linux and BSD is important, practically speaking they’re the same thing these days. OpenBSD isn’t that much more different from a Linux distro as one Linux distro is from another.
Proton definitely existed before the Steam Deck was released.
Proton had its initial release in 2018. I was using it on a linux desktop in 2019.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_(software)
The Steam Deck came out in 2022, after ~4 years of Proton improving from masses of desktop/laptop users running everything possible through it on all kinds of hardware to (auto) generate bug and crash reports for Valve (and others), who then of course actually developed it up to… I think Proton was at either 7 or 8 when the Deck actually came out, now we are on 9, 10 will probably come out of beta and be official Steam default by the end of the year.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Deck
…
Also, Proton was not created as part of the Steam
BoxMachine, that was way earlier, back in 2015.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_(computer)
Also also, the ‘Steam Machine’ was really more of just a minimum spec requirement than a specific product, the idea was to try to get other manufacturers to take their own crack at the concept, got a small amount of buy in, but not much.
Ah cool, thanks for looking all that up. I knew Proton pre-dated Steam Deck, I just wasn’t sure exactly where in the timeline it fit between the original Steam Machine launch and the release of the Steam Deck.
It’s kind of a shame that Steam Machine failed, but in many ways it was a little too ahead of its time and its failure brought us to the Steam Deck which is a much more sensible approach.
Ultimately none of this would have existed without Wine and ironically the Microsoft app store (or whatever they’re calling it these days). The threat of MS getting a stranglehold on program distribution on Windows the way Apple does on OS X and iOS was enough to spur Valve into putting significant effort into making Linux a viable gaming platform, something we’re all benefitting from greatly.
People seem to be downplaying somewhat how significant an achievement this is for Linux. The thing is, for most programs you can find alternatives because the point isn’t the program it’s what you do with it. People don’t use Photoshop because they enjoy Photoshop, they do it because they want to create something, which means if you can create that same thing using a different program then you don’t need Photoshop. On the other hand games are an experience. The point is the game. Sure you can play a different game, but that’s not an Apples to Apples thing as the experience however similar isn’t the same. That means games are uniquely placed as a roadblock for migrating away from a platform, something consoles with their exclusive releases have known for a long time. Giving people the option to play the exact same game under Linux as they can under Windows is massive because there really isn’t any other way to solve that problem.
No prob!
I think all your other info in the first comment, as well as this more recent one, is pretty much bang on accurate.
Getting gaming to work on linux is the path toward more mass adoption.
Linux has already been increasingly functional, capable, usable, and solid in many other ways, I’d argue superior in many ways… for a while, and gaming really is the last hurdle.
There are still some other hurdles. GIMP isn’t as good as Photoshop (at least that’s what the Photoshop-users keep telling me,) Kdenlive isn’t as good as Premiere, etc. There are still market segments where switching to Linux is unfeasible. However, gaming is a pretty big segment in itself, and it is becoming feasible for many of those users to switch to Linux (with the main exception being people who play games with kernel-level anticheat.)
This creates a snowball effect since as more people switch to Linux it creates incentive for software and hardware makers to provide Linux support, which will allow more people to switch to Linux, etc.
Gaming isn’t the last hurdle, but it’s a very important one.
Do you know what I did last week thanks to Proton? Installed EndeavourOS on my freshly purchased laptop, installed steam, and installed a bunch of Windows games. Then I played them. At no point did I wonder whether they would run.
Now, you may think being able to do that isn’t something that is going to get more people using desktop Linux (or that it hasn’t already done so), but as much as I’d love to agree with you, then we’d both be wrong.
I say this as someone who used to care about convincing other people to use Linux. (Before shifting into “you can lead a horse to water…” mode, and now I just don’t give a shit.)
However, what I gained from that experience is this: In twenty years of being Linux-only on my personal desktop, the number of times I have read the phrase, “I’d love to use Linux, except for [some statement about a game or games]” is astronomical.
Now, is Proton going to make desktop Linux the best choice for everyone? Clearly not, duh. But it is remarkably disingenuous to suggest that it’s not had a massive benefit to the Linux community and ecosystem as a whole, including, and dare I say especially, desktop Linux. It is flat out impossible to imagine that a substantial portion of current and future Linux users aren’t people for whom Proton solved what they considered to be a substantial barrier to usage.
In my experience, it’s not actually Proton specifically but more generally Wine along with DXVK and Vulkan itself.
I have as good a success rate with Windows games from GOG under Wine through Lutris (which also defaults to using DXVK and Vulkan plus has Wine configuration scripts for most GOG games, making their install fully automated and zero-configuration) as I have with Windows games from Steam under Proton.
If I understand it correctly, Proton is mainly a fork of Wine with Steam integration thrown in and changes to make sure it works with specific Steam games, so I don’t think the improvements are Proton specific, but rather more global than that (the use of Vulkan instead of OpenGL, DXVK allowing DirectX games run with Vulkan, Wine improvements).
Mind you, if improvements in Proton are flowing to those other projects and having a big impact, then credit were credit is due for Proton pulling up the whole ecosystem, otherwise Proton isn’t actually as crucial in improving Gaming on Linux as seems to be portrayed in so many posts here.
I can understand that if all people have used for gaming in Linux is Steam and never games from other digital sources - like GOG or even pirated games - via launchers like Heroic or Lutris, it might seem like Proton is the secret juice making gaming under Linux nowadays a vastly better experience than before, but in my experience in the last year of gaming in Linux, a good laucher using Wine + DXVK + Vulkan works just as well as Proton.
Proton developers are working on Wine code. Their patches go upstream. If you are using Wine, you have benefited (massively) from the sea change that has occurred (directly and indirectly) as a result of the development of Proton.
I remember the naysayers predicting that Gabe would never in a million years make the required investment because the state of Linux gaming was (in their assessment) that terrible.
And now we’re having argue about whether it actually did anything for us? In the comments about an article about how much it did for us?
That’s not an argument I’m having, I watched it happen.
Well, credit to Steam then.
I didn’t know one way or the other if Proton development ended up in Wine or not, much less if Steam was or not directly participating in Wine development, all I knew is that Proton was forked from Wine in the beginning.
This makes Linux desktop a viable option for millions of users where it wasn’t before. It’s absolutely a battle between Linux and Windows.
Years ago I made the switch to Linux, then I wanted to play WOW again but it would not run on my Linux machines, so I started to dual boot. Then I began to wonder why I was keeping Linux installed.
Eventually I made the shift to macOS because I worked in theatre and needed it for specific Mac only programs. But I still have a Lenovo legion that I am getting ready to swap over to Linux (not that all of the games I currently play do not run on macOS or my steam deck).
If I was able to get WOW running on Linux years ago I likely never would have swapped back to windows. And I am currently trying to convince my son to install Linux on his pc running windows 10.
Strange, WOW should have been able to run. Maybe needed a command line switch to enable OpenGL for optimal performance. But back then Blizzard games had a great track record of Wine compatibility. I never had any problems with their games.
There was one instance of Linux WOW players being banned for cheating. But that was rectified in a matter of days.
Blizzard used a cheat detection system in wow that allowed their server to send arbitrary code for clients to run. The code failing to return an expected result was a sign that there was tampering going on. Emulating windows api to run on Linux is a form of tampering, though obviously not necessarily a sign of cheating. Guessing they used some code that didn’t work on Linux and banned everyone who failed before realizing that some failed due to Linux, and then were able to separate the Linux users from detected cheaters by how it failed (either that or they had to undo all bans from that round).
Though it does make me wonder if it meant they can’t/don’t detect cheaters on Linux. Probably not, because my guess is they start out by looking for any cheats they can find, install them on test machines, then work at detecting the differences between those test machines and ones without the cheat. So they’d know about Linux-based cheats, too. They might even be able to use timing-based attacks to detect kernel level ones, too.
This was 2006/2007 I think. Every article I read about it had a different solution and none worked fully.
I also remember when I asked for help on wow centric forums being crappy replies of “don’t use Linux” and when I would post on Linux centric spaces getting “don’t play wow” replies.
Boo! I’ve added “help nocturne play wow on Linux” to my todo list when my time machine is done.
I played WOW under Linux since open beta of WOW 1.0 until the first expansion, after which I quit it. The performance probably wasn’t on bar with Windows, but besides some problems after some of the patches, the stability was rock solid even in 25-man raids.
I wish I had found you nearly 20 years ago to help me get it running.
I’ve tried switching to Linux on my home desktop several times over the last 3 decades, but because I always use that machine also for gaming it always had some Windows in a dual boot configuration and I always found myself not really booting Linux more than once in a while.
Since my last switch, maybe a year ago, even though Windows is still there in duat boot, I’ve only ever booted it once and that only to move some data files which were in the main windows partition over to a data partition I have in a seperated drive (were most of my data files already resided but a few were still elsewhere) so that I can cleanly share it between both OSes.
Whilst I know more than enough to muck around with Linux and Wine configuration (and for example had to do the latter to get a pirated version working of a game I have in Steam whose official version won’t run in Linux no matter what I do), it’s very seldom that I actually have to do it (and I don’t just use Steam with Proton but also Lutris with Wine for GOG games), whilst in my previous try maybe 5 years ago getting anything but DOS games to run under Linux was a major PITA.
There are the obvious options that can’t work due to the general mode anti cheat software, but over the past 1.5 years, I’ve only had a couple of steam games where I had to tweak something because it didn’t work out the gate. Every major title I’ve played worked first try.
I tried Linux a couple times over the bast 20+ years and it was still too raw for me. Now, it just works for me. I’m by no means a Linux guru but I am a computer smart guy. I setup a laptop with Mint for my brother who knows the bare minimum about computers, and he’s had no issues using it. The progress made over the past decade has been wildly positive.
The Bazzite console I built which is connected to my living room TV stands in contradiction. The Linux-driven gaming PC that’s sitting on my desk is confirmation.
Windows 11 and the forced obsolescence of hardware is leaving a sour aftertaste, and at this point a game maker essentially has to choose to not support Linux via Proton.
You might not be able to run Battlefield or CoD, but Marvel Rivals and Overwatch run particularly well, if not better on Linux.
And with Microsoft entering the handheld market, this is very much a question of Linux vs Windows for gaming.
I haven’t booted windows in like 6 months and I game on my desktop PC like 4 times a week.
Edit: also https://www.protondb.com/ distinguishes reports between steam deck and PC so you can see that people are using both there as well.
Obligatory Steam Deck runs Linux BTW.
If BSD had a the same software license as Linux then I would celebrate it running on PlayStation hardware as users would be more free. Instead PS consoles are locked-down, preventing you from running software you want to use unless daddy Sony says you can. It’s a battle between consumer rights, including software freedom.
Cry me a river…
