Comment on 7 years later, Valve's Proton has been an incredible game-changer for Linux
orclev@lemmy.world 18 hours agoCouple 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.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 hours ago
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.
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 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.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Deck
…
Also, Proton was not created as part of the Steam Machine, that was way earlier, back in 2015.
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.
orclev@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
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 is 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.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 hours ago
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.
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
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.