5 years ago Valve released Proton forever changing Linux gaming

While I appreciate the efforts Valve puts into improving WINE/Proton, lets not forget that they are standing on the shoulders of giants and gaming with WINE was not that bad before the integration in Steam either.

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Gaming with Wine was decidedly far worse before Valve started pumping money into it. Back before Proton was officially announced, there was a silent acceleration in Wine compatibility, getting better a rate we weren't used to, and it's in large part due to Valve partnering with CodeWeavers.

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- I think the point isn't to say Valve's help isn't appreciated, but to give a little reminder to share some gratefulness with the amazing people developing Wine before Valve got involved as well. It was and is an impressive piece of software in its own right. :)
  
  That doesn't mean Valve wasn't a complete game changer. The fact that they managed to make a handheld Linux gaming device popular among gamers rather than just open source fanatics is impressive as hell, and we're all better off.
  
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Yeah, that's not necessarily the case. Did it kind of work? Sure, if you knew what you were doing. Was it at all the seamless experience that Proton is now? No.

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What? I've exclusively used Linux since 2006 and gaming outside of retro emulation was absolute trash until proton. Of course WINE and code weavers were doing great work but it was overly complicated to use and the compatibility was abysmal.

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- Let’s not forget that Valve released a Linux port for TF2 in 2012, released their native client in 2013, released SteamOS in 2013 and in the end ported nearly all their games to linux. It didn’t start with Proton.
  
  But Humble Bundle pushed ports before that, because games had to have a Linux port in order to get into the bundle.
  
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- I am on Linux even longer than you and native Linux gaming was not trash at all, it worked great, just the selection of games was very small (edit: before Steam was even a thing on Linux). WINE was always a bit hit or miss, but once you got something working, it was usually ok. Sure Proton made it more convenient, but it was more of an gradual improvement than the quantum leap some people claim it to be.
  
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You're correct in giving WINE the credit it's due.

But I couldn't disagree more with the "gaming with WINE was not that bad" statement.

It was horrible. Game updates broke compatibility a thousand times, outdated Wine wrappers were a mess, setting up most games involved convoluted scripts, and even when things magically just worked performance was usually lower (except for some specific CPU bound games).

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The results were fine, but the work to get there was quite bad quite often.

UX polish is one of those things that just isn't as fun to do, and isn't as rewarding either. So pumping a bunch of money into it is going to go a long way towards making all the other hard work come out better.

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I think their efforts are more for bringing gaming on Linux to more mainstream attention. Not knowing you can game on Linux is a major factor for a lot of people in not switching.

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- The 10 developers Valve hired have nearly nothing in their Github profile. Proton history is nothing but community based code and a copycat of Wine, just like everyone said in the very start of Proton.
  
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I didn't even know that Proton was Wine, until somewhere else pointed it out here on Lemmy... (granted, I am not a proton user, that's why my lack of context was there, but I follow the Chinese retro handhelds community so that's why I knew why Proton is awesome).

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Please don't spread misinformation Valve does not put in effort, they paid people to make Proton, it's the community that makes the code NOT VALVE. A simple github chart can tell you everything.

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- They directly hired people to work on it... how else would you describe "putting efforts into" when a company does it?
  
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- So paying someone to do something doesnt give you any credit? How does companies work then. Please don't credit any company for anything, they just paid people who put in the work? Who are you kidding?
  
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I think a lot of people are misunderstanding what Proton actually brought to Linux gaming.

I had been running Linux exclusively for some moths in 2013-2014, and trying to get games to work on Linux felt like this : Wine is likely able to run it if you can found the right configuration, but good luck with that. I think the only game I managed to run without issues was Civilization 4, so I rolled back on Windows some time later.

Of course, Valve contributed to Wine, and projects like dxvk and others are major achievements (if a team effort), but that's not their main contribution. Valve understood that gamers may be somewhat more tech-litterate than other people, but that making games work on Linux should be easy. And that's what Proton was made for.

Nowadays, most games I buy on Steam work out of the box. I sometimes forget to check protondb before buying a games, and I rarely had an issue. Even if in 2018 you had to tinker a bit, you rarely needed more than to choose the correct Proton version (big up to Glorious Eggroll).

I think it's symptomatic of the situation of the Linux Desktop : technically, it's where it needs to be. But there is still a gap in accessibility and easiness. Tinkering is nice, but you should not have to do it to have something that works.

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Not only that but they helped reach critical mass to drive adoption, and used their dominance in the industry to push studios to work with us, instead of against us.

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Nice to see some comments like yours truly get it. The amount of people I've seen that now use Linux just because of Proton is surprising. It also gave us the Steam Deck. Valve do tons and people saying it's just "Wine patches" or moaning I didn't focus on Wine are missing the big picture that you get nicely :)

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To add to that, back in the day you had to find out what engine a particular game used as there were huge compatibility issues with certain engines and others ran a fair amount slower via Wine. Some engines, however, ran incredibly well under Wine.

That said, there were some cool things you could do in Wine like define a pseudo monitor to run your game on. Example, back in 2010 (before widescreen monitors were more common) I had a triple head setup on Linux. I could specify in Wine an arbitrary monitor size (like say 2560x1024) and run games "full-screen" centered on my setup while having other windows open on the edges of my real desktop.

Even games that officially didn't support multiple monitors and on Windows (would force themselves to one screen and black out the other ones) ran well via Wine with this setup.

It was a bit involved to get working the first time though!

Played through the HL2 games, Supreme Commander, Rift: Planes of Telara, and even Wow that way (though WoW had other issues with non 4:3 displays).

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That's great and all, but the Wine devs deserve much more credit. Proton is just like the icing on top.

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You're massively simplifying it. Proton is a lot more than just "icing" on the top.

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- while it's definitely not just icing on the cake, they were definitely standing on the shoulders of giants.
  
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- For those who don't know such as myself, care to give more detail?
  
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Are you kidding? Proton is much, much more than "icing on top".

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I feel like attributing this to Valve is really disrespectful to the folks who developed wine for decades (and more recently also Vulkan). The real game changer is Vulkan, which made Linux graphics to be competitive with DirectX. (OpenGL interfaces to DirectX was simply not competitive)

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You're right. So many people to thank here. One thing you cannot deny is that Valve is one of few companies that loves gaming on Linux and it deserves a huge credit.

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- One thing you cannot deny is that Valve is one of few companies that loves gaming on Linux
  
  Valve is a corporation, what they really "love" is money. All their Linux strategy is simply future-proofing. They know that if gaming kept being restricted to Windows, they could have been destroyed overnight by Microsoft, especially since MS start betting hard on gaming and built their own Steam competitor.
  
  and it deserves a huge credit.
  
  Well, they certainly do. I, for one, am grateful, since I've been using Linux for over 20 years. But I know they're in for the money, and that's ok.
  
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- Valve does not love gaming, they refuse to listen to TF2 fans, they never build games, they brought out studios, criminal cases, Antitrust lawsuit and branding loyal fanbase that keeps defending Valve awful actions in gaming. This is not love, this is toxic community and a toxic company aiming to be profitable at all cost.
  
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The kickoff meeting for Vulkan was hosted by Valve. Like everything it’s not only Valve, but they had their fingers in this too. Valve is just one of the companies/groups that is pushing linux ports and vulkan support.

Valve is mostly moving interests of big game companies with steam machines and steam deck. Steam machines flopped, but initially they made companies consider ports. The success of steam deck will likely result into them paying more attention to not break wine/proton.

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I feel like attributing this to Valve is really disrespectful to the folks who developed wine for decades

Honestly, it feels like comments like this are just intentionally missing the big picture, or just don't understand any of what Valve actually do.

It's been said by comments elsewhere, but Wine was really not good years ago. It was difficult to use, obscure as you had to seek it out and know what to do. Valve funded DXVK, VKD3D-Proton, various extra Wine patches and pushed it all together into Proton with Q&A testing, regular upgrades for big games to get them working ASAP and put it in front of millions easily directly in the Steam client.

and more recently also Vulkan

Which once again, Valve massively helped push and even hosted the early discussions on it.

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It's a collaborative effort. The Wine and Vulkan projects have all done a lot and deserved credit for doing massive, amazing things. But for Linux gaming specifically, Proton has absolutely changed the landscape, and if Valve continues down this path, will make Linux an ever better gaming platform. So I don't think it's unfair to say thanks to Valve.

Not only have they sunk significant resource into making Linux gaming more viable, they've released Proton under BSD and seriously pushed developers to make Linux-compatible binaries. If Linux continues it's slow upward trend in popularity, Valve will be in large part to thank.

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At least initially this was mostly DXVK though, which is a project that was secretly funded by Valve after it showed some promising initial results. Edit: but I agree that WINE deserves more credit.

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- as someone else said, it's a "standing on the shoulders of giants" moment for Valve
  
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I feel like attributing this to Valve

What exactly do you mean by "this"? The post is about the 5 year anniversary of Proton. Also, why do you consider crediting the developers of Wine disrespectful? I just can't follow.

Of course Proton wouldn't have been possible without all the many years of work that went into the Wine project in the first place, and everyone who contributed to Wine should be applauded for their effort. Valve has funded a lot of extra work though to get things like DXVK and VKD3D-Proton for the translation from Direct3D to Vulkan into a state where performance can be really great! Valve also funds work on Linux graphics drivers, Linux kernel work and the list goes on.

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Thank you. I found this post disrespectful, and insulting. Valve have started contributing to a long running project. Which is great, but there has been tremendous work over the years before valve, and even still

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what is vulkan

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- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulkan
  
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I would not be using linux (at least not exclusively) if it weren't for proton. Many thanks 🙏

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fidel-salute-big

Thank you Valve for consistently making gaming easier even in my silly little operating systema

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This is the best summary I could come up with:

A lot of the early porting work that came along was slowly dying off since the Steam Machines didn't provide the boost Valve and Linux gamers were hoping for.

Side-note: John Carmack (id Software / Oculus VR / Keen Technologies) even thought Wine was the solution back in 2013.

Valve has funded a lot of extra work though to get things like DXVK and VKD3D-Proton for the translation from Direct3D to Vulkan into a state where performance can be really great!

Games like Deep Rock Galactic, God of War, Death Stranding, Baldur’s Gate 3, Brotato, Beat Saber and so on.

You get the idea, there’s a truly ridiculous selection of games available and at times it’s a little paralysing scrolling through my Steam Library deciding what to play — a delightfully annoying problem to have huh?

Valve produce updates to Proton constantly to improve compatibility, with over 300 revisions to the main changelog (although some a minor text corrections) it's clear to see how much work goes into it.

The original article contains 1,145 words, the summary contains 169 words. Saved 85%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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Arthur Morgan voice (while running through Proton): Thank you.

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what

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- I wont spoiler you if you didnt play RDR2 yet
  
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Oh those memories, playing Commandos 2 on an old Laptop running Lubuntu in the summer of 2016. The wine setup worked strangely easy. But yeah, Proton accelerated everything immensely!

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Valve is the only corporation I will unapologetically simp for. It's amazing how far Linux gaming has come in the past few years, especially now that the developers of stuff like EAC are finally making their shit compatible.

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Valve is such a weird company.

They became where nearly every PC game is sold by using some of the greatest games of all time as advertising. The orange box has to be the biggest return on a loss leader ever.

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Proton made me uninstall my dual-boot windows-steam-launcher

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Are there still more people with VR headsets than Linux gamers on the steam survey?

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I am getting a MacBook for work reason (my work required MacOS-only app, not my choice). I would prefer to only have 1 laptop if I could. So should I pay extra for higher model (more GPU cores) and use it for gaming? (I Mostly play racing game and single player RPG). Or would I better off by getting the base model MacBook pro, and a mediocre PC with the money left over (~$700)?

I've never owned nor used MacOS before.

Thanks.

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macOS has made it difficult for both game developers and Wine developers to support the platform by letting their OpenGL support rot, removing 32-bit support, ignoring Vulkan and coming out with their own graphics API, Metal. Wine is in a worse state than on GNU/Linux. There aren't many native games available for macOS.

That being said, your best bet is likely CrossOver. They employ the principle Wine developers, worked with Valve on Proton, and have put a lot of effort into supporting macOS. They've got a free trial with complete functionality you can try out.

But if the games you're playing have native releases for macOS, that's not something you need to worry about. There are just so few games available on macOS that I assumed they don't. Now, I only have an Intel iMac which I never play games on so I couldn't tell you how the newer ARM laptops perform.

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- This is very out of date. The new game porting toolkit makes it trivial to play most windows games.
  
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Gaming on Mac is a bit of a new territory. You can install Linux on modern Macs through Asahi Linux, but most games don't work on it yet since it's still somewhat experimental.

If you want to stick with MacOS, there's a sort of Proton for it called Game Porting Toolkit. You may want to look at some benchmarks on it.

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@cordlesslamp @simple
Simple : Buying MacOS machines harm the climate and the software devs , Whatever are your reason , please think twice if you can chosse an open platform instead

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- My work load require Logic Pro, which only available on Mac, unfortunately.
  
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