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.
7 years later, Valve's Proton has been an incredible game-changer for Linux
Submitted 7 months ago by Davriellelouna@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
lucien_rowan@lemmy.cif.su 7 months ago
pogmommy@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
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.
buttnugget@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Are they working on a fix for the kernel anti cheat? Is it possible?
Luccus@feddit.org 7 months ago
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.
GenocideCuntsFuckOff@lemmings.world 7 months ago
I like team fortress 1
GenocideCuntsFuckOff@lemmings.world 7 months ago
I like team fortress 1
GenocideCuntsFuckOff@lemmings.world 7 months ago
I like team fortress 1
GenocideCuntsFuckOff@lemmings.world 7 months ago
I like team fortress 1
GenocideCuntsFuckOff@lemmings.world 7 months ago
I like team fortress 1
GenocideCuntsFuckOff@lemmings.world 7 months ago
I like team fortress 1
Bahnd@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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.
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
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.
Zink@programming.dev 7 months ago
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.
96er4lyf3@lemy.lol 7 months ago
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.
OhVenus_Baby@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
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.
KeenFlame@feddit.nu 7 months ago
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
IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Common GabeN win
tehn00bi@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Praise be to Gaben!
StannisDMannis@lemmy.today 7 months ago
It’s pretty cool.
Aaron_Davis@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I love it! Not only do I use it on the Steam Deck, but also on my Desktop PC running Linux.
echodot@feddit.uk 7 months ago
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.
ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 7 months ago
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.
toynbee@lemmy.world 7 months ago
If you have a particular game in mind you can check protondb.com, which tries to cover both Proton compatibility and Deck compatibility.
CybranM@feddit.nu 7 months ago
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
AppearanceBoring9229@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
You can use windows freely without activating, or at least you could last time I needed it.
olympicyes@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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!
enthusiasm_headquarters@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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 find and dandy.
I continue to be happy with how awesome Linux has gotten just over the past 5 years.
LunaChocken@programming.dev 7 months ago
Have you tried flatseal? It’s designed for flatpak permissions
sunbytes@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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?
olympicyes@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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.
enthusiasm_headquarters@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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 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).
I’ve been running Mint MATE for about 9 years. Love it to death.
tea@lemmy.today 7 months ago
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.
kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de 7 months ago
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.
Magnum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
Thank you Lord Gaben
sonymegadrive@feddit.uk 7 months ago
Thank you
Lord GabenCodeWeaverssSun MicrosystemsIt’s corporations making money off of OSS all the way down
Magnum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
How do they make money with proton and foss?
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
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
Magnum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
It’s a meme
maniajack@lemmy.world 7 months ago
He’s still a billionaire tho 🤮
SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
Thank you to the workers who actually programmed, tested, and implemented the thing*
nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
to his credit as a billionaire he could have paid all those people to do something that sucks way more
lightrush@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
To Gaben’s credit he collects a lot less of the surplus these workers create than most other billionaires. But yes.
MehBlah@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I still use wine for most of my games on the desktop.
OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
Proton upstreams to Wine a lot. You can tell by the number of patches they have keeps fluctuating
MehBlah@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I know but I’ve been using wine so long that its comfortable and I rarely fail to get a game running on it.
pyre@lemmy.world 7 months ago
well what has it been doing for the first 6 years
Patches@ttrpg.network 7 months ago
Building momentum for the year of the Linux.
Any day now…
Electricd@lemmybefree.net 7 months ago
Bro actually said it’s the year of Linux
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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.
Patches@ttrpg.network 7 months ago
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 35 after 36 years of experience.
bilb@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
Well, Office365 works fine. You can even run it in MS Edge if you want.
rdri@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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.
Electricd@lemmybefree.net 7 months ago
Or Adobe, that’s the most frequent complaint
Natanael@infosec.pub 7 months ago
It’s built on Wine, any general improvements to compatibility will generally support desktop programs using the same APIs
richardwallass@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
A custom wine
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 7 months ago
This is what finally let me transition to Mint :3
MiltownClowns@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Proton is the reason I daily drive Linux. That is a simple, unequivocal fact.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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.
tea@lemmy.today 7 months ago
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).
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Me too, soon I guess. I have a Steam Deck, and now using Windows on my laptop is kind of like torture.
grue@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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.
Tuuktuuk@sopuli.xyz 7 months ago
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.
danzabia@infosec.pub 7 months ago
weird flex but OK
devolution@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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.
floo@retrolemmy.com 7 months ago
macOS has been free for, like, 15 years.
KillerWhale@orcas.enjoying.yachts 7 months ago
Macos is free. At the cost of paying *2 for hardware
lichtmetzger@discuss.tchncs.de 7 months ago
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”.Tortellinius@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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.
androidisking@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Anybody can download Windows images too. That doesn’t mean the OS is free.
malwieder@feddit.org 7 months ago
macOS is included with every Mac, not free.
ClassyHatter@sopuli.xyz 7 months ago
Hackintosh is a thing (or at least used to be), but it’s against the EULA.
deur@feddit.nl 7 months ago
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 and Switch(es) use it. BSD derivitives are the most popular game console OS. It’s the year of BSD!
Feyd@programming.dev 7 months ago
I haven’t booted windows in like 6 months and I game on my desktop PC like 4 times a week.
tabular@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Obligatory Steam Deck runs Linux BTW.
tabular@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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 running software unless daddy Sony says you can. It’s a battle between consumer rights, including software freedom.
charizardcharz@piefed.world 7 months ago
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.
hansemilla@discuss.tchncs.de 7 months ago
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?