Proton is the Future of PC gaming. But how does it work? [Gardiner Bryant, YouTube]
Proton is the Future of PC gaming. But how does it work? [Gardiner Bryant, YouTube]
cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/16434132
YouTube video: https://youtu.be/uScsmjvdwyo
Invidious video from YouTube without YouTube: https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=uScsmjvdwyo or https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=uScsmjvdwyo
Video description:
It’s clear there are some people who don’t understand Proton. So let’s talk about it. #Proton #SteamPlay #CompatibilityLayer
00:00 Introduction 00:41 The basics of a computer 01:46 What Proton is not 03:04 What is an emulator 04:32 Proton acts like a map 05:25 Proton translates API and system calls 06:18 Proton provides a Windows-like software environment 06:55 Why are some games incompatible? 08:52 Shouldn't we demand native Linux games? 11:07 Conclusion
YouTube face.... And useless red arrow?
Definitely No thanks
47YouTube faces and click bait titles invention are one of the darkest hours of the internet. I get it, it gets more clicks and views, but that is so cringe.
17I agree mostly but ironically, I think the whole “cringe” thing is the darkest. It gives a get back in line* vibe (to me anyway) that’s been played out forever. Straying away from the norm should be encouraged or ignored if it’s not for you but openly insulting someone for it is pretty lame.
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18Sadly this has more or less died with unmaintained games. It's a pain the arse to get old native games working. And for many titles the Windows version with Proton works much better than the Linux native one. Win32 has somehow become the most stable Linux API.
34Win32 has somehow become the most stable Linux API.
Windows is a moving target. Wine/Proton is a reverse engineering chase of a moving target. WINDOWS GAMES ON PROTON BREAK ALL THE TIME! Stop making stuff. It's great that Proton exists but it's not like Java. What does not break? Flatpak Runtimes and Steam Linux Runtime.
-3Yep. Linux is a total pain in the behind to write applications for, because of API and ABI instability. Just ask notable Linux desktop application developer Linus Torvalds.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tux_Racer
We already have the only one we need.
13Permanently Deleted
4in my experience that usually boils down to the Linux version getting (an understandably) low priority compared to the windows version. Which is something that won't change until Linux has a significant market share and I can't fault the devs for it. For an example of a game where that is not the case I'd like to take Factorio, where the devs went out of their way to properly work on the Linux native version and even include Linux/Mac exclusive features for their next update. But that only happened because one of the devs themselves uses Linux.
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Proton is the gateway drug to us getting more Linux native games. In due time!
4Yeah, can't get market share without games, but it's hard to get games without marketshare. Proton made sure we have games, now we need marketshare. Once we have marketshare we'll get more high quality linux native ports (I hope).
5Proton is the gateway drug to us getting more Linux native games.
It's not when Win32 apologists keep making insane claims how stable Proton is... "Proton is great, it just runs all the Windows games" is the mess that got us to the place where games we buy just start crashing suddenly because nobody of those developers realizes that each major release of Proton must be treated like its own OS with proper QA targeting that. Proton works great for old games because these old games no longer change. For modern games that still get updates Proton is a gamble because a reverse engineered version of the Windows API just isn't stable.
3
As a consumer and Linux user I want to agree that there should be more native support for games but from a realistic standpoint it just wouldn’t make sense. Even the Xbox having an estimated 20% of PlayStation’s sales has been enough for publishers and to slow down on support for that console. Linux makes an optimistic 3ish percent of consumer’s PC operating systems and doesn’t easily allow kernel level installs by games to support their anticheat measures. Again I would absolutely love to boot into Linux more often when I’m gaming but the numbers just aren’t there.
8With any luck windows won't continue to allow kernel anti-cheat much longer either. I also assume that sooner or later there may be government action on kernel anti-cheat, since many of the popular games/anti-cheats are Chinese owned. If tiktok spying is enough of a concern to ban the app, it's a pretty short logical step to being thinking that Chinese companies shouldn't be allowed to install full access, unremovable backdoors on millions of PCs.
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Can someone explain how portability is still an issue? Are there no cross-platform API and libraries that allow developpers to write portable apps?
2Many game engines let you make Linux builds, but there are still bugs and optimizations that have to be done manually to get it working. The video claims it takes ~6 months to make a proper port, and even then it might not run as smoothly as the windows proton version does.
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