What does HackerNews think of Proton?
Compatibility tool for Steam Play based on Wine and additional components
All of their work on Proton is open source: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton
The hardware may be more powerful on your phone (but it probably isn't). The screen is probably better but the steamdeck's screen is pretty great to my eyes.
I can also easily stream games to my steamdeck just like my phone, and sometimes do.. however that really only works if I am on the same local network unless I want to take a huge video compression quality hit.
I can take my steamdeck on an airplane and play any game that doesn't require a really reliable internet connection (or games without that requirement of course). But if you are trying to stream games, have fun with that I guess.
Source is here: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton
Notice that includes a lot of git submodules; the big one is Wine, but it also includes forks of dependencies such as ffmpeg.
Because you might think, at first sight, it just downloads the Windows version of a game on the Deck which it the runs through its Wine-based but very optimized Win32-to-Linux layer called Proton (https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton) and that's it right?
Well, that's actually wrong :)
Valve learned a lot when they added MacOS support to Steam and they did the same thing for Linux and especially Linux on the Deck.
When you install a game through Steam on the Deck it downloads a package made available by the developer for the Deck whenever possible. So the "Verified for Deck" games could also very much be "optimized for the Deck" games which means:
- They can have a UX completely optimized for the Deck (looking at you, Rimworld)
- They can contain models, shaders and textures especially optimized for the AMD APU
And last but not least:
- While the developer - ofcourse - is just able to test and deliver the Win32 binary on Proton and be done with it (looking at you, Elden Ring) they can also create a specific Linux binary optimized for the AMD APU in the Deck!
"Proton is a tool for use with the Steam client which allows games which are exclusive to Windows to run on the Linux operating system. It uses Wine to facilitate this."
For e.g. - firefox (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/#product-desktop-r...). Win64 installer is 50mb. MacOS installer is 130mb. Linux 64-bit is 70mb.
Same is the case with Chrome - https://chromeenterprise.google/intl/en_US/browser/download/... . Windows MSI is 79mb. OSX PKG for the same is 195mb.
So by that measure - OSX has already lost right ? The entire package-everything-together has won in probably one of the largest OS ecosystem that exists today. Size does not matter... mom-proof experience does matter.
>How much progress could we make if Steam deprecated their runtimes, abandoned containerization for new games, and let all new games just use the native system libraries? How loudly do you think gamers would complain if a distribution upgrade broke their favourite game?
This OTOH does not exist. Linux gamers are 1% of either the gaming market or the desktop computing market. All gamers either dual boot windows...or android. Even for those who game on Linux, they do it on an abstraction layer like Wine. Which is what Valve maintains - https://github.com/ValveSoftware/wine and https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton
Valve only needs to maintain wine & proton for a distribution. The games themselves ? well, they are windows only. Nobody compiles for Linux.
My first thought when I saw this was that it better be able to connect to an external screen, and it does! An added bonus would be if I could hook up external controllers to it as well.
I've heard of Valve's Proton[1] but not sure how stable it is and if it can support any Windows game on their platform. If so, then that would be pretty amazing to have access to some Windows-only games without building a PC.
I'm definitely interested but I'm in no rush. I'd rather upgrade to a PS5 first but I'm gonna keep my eye on this. If the reviews in the long term are good maybe I'll get the 2nd generation of it.
Wonder if they'll release a Oculus-Quest-like all-in-one VR system next.
This should give you a pretty good idea. For example, Cyberpunk seems to run pretty well which is impressive considering how buggy the game can be even on Windows. Proton has been an excellent experience for me so far... And you can use it for non-steam games. It's just a fork[0] of Wine with DXVK and some other Wine "extensions" baked in.
[0] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton
Also good luck buying a new GPU in the next 4 years :)
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/
wine @ eef39a6 vkd3d-proton @ 72d9b32
Cobbling together existing tools is really powerful in games and graphics :)
Steam Play is part of the Steam client, so is proprietary. ProtonDB isn't open source but does data dumps to github regularly [3].
[0] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/
[1] https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk
There are also some instances of game-specific behaviour: Proton detects at runtime which game is running and decides whether to enable or not some code. This is done for the most filthy hacks that are required to run something, but risk to spoil some other program. Search the code for instances of getenv("SteamAppId") or getenv("SteamGameId").
What is Proton?
"Proton is a new tool released by Valve Software that has been integrated with Steam Play to make playing Windows games on Linux as simple as hitting the Play button within Steam. Underneath the hood, Proton comprises other popular tools like Wine and DXVK among others that a gamer would otherwise have to install and maintain themselves. This greatly eases the burden for users to switch to Linux without having to learn the underlying systems or losing access to a large part of their library of games. Proton is still in its infancy so support is inconsistent, but regularly improving."
Source Code:
> Proton is a tool for use with the Steam client which allows games which are exclusive to Windows to run on the Linux operating system. It uses Wine to facilitate this.
My question is, what's the "secret sauce"? If this is in fact that much more successful than Wine, what's different? Is Valve putting lots of dev time into it? Or is it just pre-configured for ease of use?
But according to [2] the game runs really well on Linux via Proton. Personally, I don't see any problem using Proton to play the game on my Linux gaming-rig.
> allowing more and more games to exist and do well on the market Valve is doing amazing
> Compatibility tool for Steam Play based on Wine and additional components
> Proton is a tool for use with the Steam client which allows games which are exclusive to Windows to run on the Linux operating system. It uses Wine to facilitate this.
> Most users will prefer to use Proton provided by the Steam client itself. The source code is provided to enable advanced users the ability to alter Proton. For example, some users may wish to use a different version of Wine with a particular title.
please don't, not through steam. i'm sure steam collects some statistics on how people are using proton, and if they start seeing stuff like this show up they might start locking it down again.
you might be able to run proton stand-alone for stuff like this if you really want to. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton
Proton is just a fork of WINE[0], with a gaming focus and some Steam-specific compatibility additions.
>Steam Play allows you to purchase your games once and play anywhere. Whether you have purchased your Steam Play enabled game on a Mac or PC (both Windows and Linux), you will be able to play on the other platform free of charge.
I've been using it for a few games, and the experience is great. There are lots of folks finally deleting their Windows setups and moving to Linux full time because they can finally play their AAA titles on Linux without any installation hassles.