Valve Introduces Proton Next

https://linuxgamingcentral.com/posts/valve-introduces-proton-next/

by WallyFunk • 4 years ago

361 255 4 years ago

linuxgamingcentral.com

milliams• 4 years ago

How is this different from Proton Experimental?

bcrescimanno• 4 years ago

Proton Next - Candidate build for the next major version release.

Proton Experimental - "Bleeding edge" builds.

cybersol• 4 years ago

So Proton is like Debian, Proton Next is like Debian Testing, and Proton Experimental is like Debian Sid. Got it, thanks!

jasonpeacock• 4 years ago

I had to go figure out what Proton is:

"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."

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton

johnxie• 4 years ago

It has come a long way. When running through Proton, the game and all its middleware are supported seamlessly. Take a look at https://www.protondb.com

psychphysic• 4 years ago

It's witchcraft is what it is.

skywal_l2• 4 years ago

You can learn some of the spells here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33156727.

SkyMarshal2• 4 years ago

It's Steam's downstream fork of Wine, which is not an emulator.

musicale3• 4 years ago

1. An emulator is a system which implements another system's functionality so as to serve as a usable replacement. Examples include in-circuit emulators for hardware components, or software emulators for game system hardware. In each case, the emulator is a usable replacement for the original system.

2. WINE reimplements the functionality of Windows, as exposed by the Windows ABI, as software running on Linux.

3. The combination of WINE and Linux is in fact a usable replacement for Windows.

4. Which means that WINE running on Linux conforms to the above definition of an emulator for the Windows system.

5. Therefore, WINE running on Linux certainly is an emulator for the Windows system.

QED

LeSaucy• 4 years ago

It is incredible how well proton works on the steam deck.

A4ET8a8uTh02• 4 years ago

As one of my buddies put it, 'it is basically magic'. I agree. Compared to manual fiddling, it is amazing. For the proton work alone, Steam got a lot of goodwill from me.

Shared404• 4 years ago

Same here.

I almost went to GOG, but Proton pulled me back to Steam very quickly.

irusensei2• 4 years ago

Also works very well on a full AMD laptop I own. Running Fedora.

I often play FFXIV with it. Not verified. It’s ironic that the game runs perfectly on Proton but the main source of problems and incompatibilities is the launcher which uses MSHTML for wathever reason. Proton GE seems to have fixed the issue with the launcher but game patches sometimes break it.

mattbee2• 4 years ago

It really is.

And I noticed quite early on: the Steam games which had problems were the ones with native Linux ports - wonky display settings, or controller not recognised or something like that. The fix is always to tell it to "force" a version of Proton, which caused Steam to go and download the Win32 build instead.

opan• 4 years ago

I get the feeling people hit a bad game or two and stopped checking, so I just want to say native ports actually work fine in my experience, both before and after Proton's birth. Terraria, Garry's Mod, Valve's own titles, and Starbound should all work fine to name a few.

I fear we'll get fewer proper native ports because of Proton, so it's hard for me to get excited about it. Especially with how it seems to be on by default and work sort of invisibly, it's like they want to hide from people if they're playing a native game or not. I don't even think it's a malicious move, more like the common sin of trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator at the cost of the older advanced users.

I have heard some old ports were actually just shipping their game with wine, so for those Proton is probably an improvement, but some games (indie especially) actually made proper ports years ago and I think we ought to use them and recognize their efforts.

ip264• 4 years ago

What a mirror world this is, where Win32 (via Proton) is the best & most stable Linux ABI.

Dwedit• 4 years ago

How much of Proton fixes go back to Wine and vice versa?

tomnipotent2• 4 years ago

CodeWeavers is responsible for upwards of 2/3 of Wine commits. A lot of open source projects benefit from similar relationships, like Postgres/Crunchy Data.

TulliusCicero• 4 years ago

Proton is just a UI/service/convenience layer for Wine, right? So when there's specific fixes for games, are those actually Wine updates?

kubik369• 4 years ago

No, Proton is Valve's fork of wine.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 4 years ago

Why does Proton have so many Wine dependencies?

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.

ACS_Solver2• 4 years ago

Importantly, Proton also integrates DXVK. I don't know the details too well but I think DXVK is responsible for a large part of Proton's "it just works" and it's a separate project from Wine. You can configure Wine to use DXVK but in Proton everything is preconfigured so you never have to think about them as different components.

dudeinhawaii2• 4 years ago

Proton was instrumental in my move from Windows to Linux. With over 400 games in my back catalog, I didn't want to lose thousands of dollars not to mention thousands of hours on games which I enjoy.

Thus far, 92% of games have ran flawlessly for me on Fedora (4 failures in the last 50). The main issues have been related to games that have kernel mode drivers for copy protection or other exotic types of anti-cheat. Perhaps most amazing (to me anyway) is the fact that mods and workshop items work perfectly. In most cases, I could pop open a saved game and continue on Linux, custom mods included.

Performance-wise, I haven't noticed a difference but I generally run very modern hardware which works better with the DirectX to Vulcan implementation. I also swapped to an AMD chip/gpu when moving to Linux and I think that removed the headaches that people often have with Nvidia drivers. Overall, it's been fantastic.

javawizard• 4 years ago

At risk of picking nits, 4 failures in 50 would be 92% :)

dudeinhawaii2• 4 years ago

Haha, just spotted that myself, thanks :)

skywal_l2• 4 years ago

Do you mind giving us the name of those 4 games failing on proton?

dotancohen• 4 years ago

I would rather have the names of the 46 games that did work!

jandrese2• 4 years ago

Some notable Linux gaming failures for me:

Roblox. Kids really wanted me on this but I've never been able to get it to work. Technically not on Steam/Proton, but a notable failure.

Eador: It runs but the graphics are completely garbled.

Anything VR: No luck at all getting QuestLink working on Linux.

Several games don't like later versions of Proton and I have to force them on older versions. This isn't a huge problem except that it it an annoying amount of fiddling to figure out which version is working.

hellonc3• 4 years ago

There's a popular online video game that I wouldn't name that seems to be turning a blind eye on Linux users stripping out the anticheat to run the game through Proton, which is very nice of them.

irusensei2• 4 years ago

I thought this was something really new. TBH you can probably take advantage of many of these new features by using one of the Glorious Eggroll releases. It’s nice that it can be used from the interface though.

Nullabillity• 4 years ago

This seems to be in between stable and experimental, which is in turn usually behind the GE builds.

manchmalscott2• 4 years ago

Valve's continual focus on Linux (SteamOS 1.0 was released eight years ago) is honestly incredible, Proton even sometimes works better than native Linux builds. Truly nobody else (in the gaming space) is doing it like Valve are. I saw a talk[1] from a KDE dev talking about features Valve sponsored to be added to KDE Plasma and it's things that are useful for everyone outside the context of the steam deck.

The only thing that doesn't really work I've noticed is when games have an online component, whether it's like easy anti cheat which I've heard should be just flipping a switch to enable but I haven't seen anyone actually do that, or some weirdness happening with whatever the new Microsoft Flight Simulator is doing that makes it seemingly a 50/50 coin toss as to whether it'll run with the exact same settings.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0gEIeFgDX0

zamalek4• 4 years ago

I watched a talk by GabeN years ago, where he explained his business philosophy (which also had to do with his exit from Microsoft). It was strikingly simple: treat your customers well. Supporting Linux is treating his customers well (even if the majority of customers don't understand that... yet).

manchmalscott2• 4 years ago

It totally makes business sense for them to not have to depend on Microsoft (who have their own gaming business) for their customers to play games, we all win when consumers have meaningful alternatives.

ip264• 4 years ago

If his customers don’t feel they are being treated well (e.g. they don’t understand, and won’t for years) then does it really fall under that principle?

gatonegro• 4 years ago

treat your customers well. Supporting Linux is treating his customers well.

It's really won me over, I can say that much. When I was using Windows, I favoured buying games from GOG over Steam whenever possible. DRM and all that.

Ever since I moved to Linux, it's been the opposite. GOG couldn't care less about Linux compatibility, and while you can get their stuff going through some combination of Wine/Lutris scripts, the experience I get with Steam is so much better.

MikusR• 4 years ago

treat your customers well

That's why it took a lawsuit to get refund support for Steam.

Keyframe3• 4 years ago

Yet fleecing game developers with 30% cut on sales at the same time. It's a soft big cushion to talk profound thoughts from. Reminds me of billionaires giving advice like "you just have to believe and work hard"... yeah, but that's a low baseline you have to have anyways.

firecall• 4 years ago

The Steam brand and mindshare is second to none in my experience.

My tweener kids will preference Steam over all other platforms. They would rather buy/re-buy, or pay more for a game on Steam than use another game launcher.

Their are games that are free to play with Xbox game pass, but they would rather buy and play them under Steam.

They have negative views on Epic, Ubisoft and so on. Blizzard/Battle.net aren't even on their radar.

They are mostly indifferent to MS/Xbox Store.

With Steam, the brand respect they have is five-stars!

ClassyJacket2• 4 years ago

This is the freedom you have when you're not a publicly traded company and don't have the boot of capitalism constantly pressing down on your neck.

_cenw• 4 years ago

Though, let's be honest, that's not the reason for Valve investing in Linux. Users wouldn't care what's running underneath their games as long as the games run reasonably well.

Back about a decade ago there was real concern that Microsoft might lock away modern graphics APIs behind some sort of entitlement and Valve simply didn't want to be dependent on Microsoft.

viraptor• 4 years ago

It's a bit more than flipping a switch with the anti cheat. Those are absurd systems which use every a bit of trickery on Windows to both detect any manipulation and hide themselves from being interfered with. They both load up as Windows drivers and check for things like enforced driver signature. Steam will need either perfect compatibility with everything they do, or EAC and others will need to cooperate to provide SteamOS-specific versions.

It's in EAC interest to not work on wine out of the box, otherwise it would be too easy to work around.

SXX3• 4 years ago

Basically Valve already partnered with anti-cheat developers and enabling their support on Linux is in fact just flipping of a switch.

Unfortunately this switch need to be flipped by developers / publishers of particular game and they dont cooperate too well.

MagicMoonlight• 4 years ago

Proton works better than native windows builds. In some cases it actually fixes bugs in the windows version

smeagull2• 4 years ago

It's also true for support of old games. I could use a VM with a flaky version of Windows XP (which I have done, and it always crashes) OR I could use wine and have no issues.

mhh__• 4 years ago

Forget native Linux, it's more stable than native windows for me on a few games (and sometimes faster because of windows FS horribleness)

rob742• 4 years ago

My own experience with Proton has been a bit more spotty, maybe because I tried it with some really old games that are not that well tested? Bioshock 1 crashed several times, then I got it to work with some hints from ProtonDB, Bioshock 2 worked "out of the box", Batman: Arkham City (which I bought years ago and never actually got around to playing) didn't work, and I wasn't motivated enough to fiddle with the settings long enough to get it to run. One way to improve Proton would be to provide a possibility to automatically import settings from ProtonDB (it's called "DB", but actually it's more of a forum). But if you look at ProtonDB, every user seems to have different problems and different solutions for these problems, so it's hard to see if some kind of consensus has emerged on how to best get a game to run.

account4215• 4 years ago

Bioshock 1 crashed several times, then I got it to work with some hints from ProtonDB

Bioshock is a tricky one because it runs very close to the virtual address space limit (2GiB) and Wine + in-process graphics drivers add just enough overhead to make push it over the edge in more cases than on Windows. This isn't purely a Wine/Proton issue though and can also cause crashes on Windows for the game. For Bioshock it is enough to set the large address aware flag so that it can use the full 4GiB 32-bit virtual address space.

neurostimulant• 4 years ago

This release added Arkham City support. You might want to check it out again.

andrepd• 4 years ago

Proton is literally what made me permanently go from dual-booting Windows to going Linux full time. I can play all games I care to play with excellent performance on Linux. It's pretty amazing. Kudos to the Wine and Proton team.

polishdude20• 4 years ago

It makes sense from a survival perspective. Microsoft has their own game store, apple too. If you want to sell games to people, you need a way to play them and not be at risk of being shut down by the big players.

account4215• 4 years ago

Right, if anything and Valve's Linux commitment isn't really there 100%. E.g. SteamVR on Linux is still a mess with no updates for ages. Alyx came to Linux long after the Windows release and has had pretty much no bugfixes since. Probably more due to Valve's management model where things don't get done if no one is specifically interested in them than an overall focus but still...

smeagull2• 4 years ago

I have a incredibly well specced Mac from work that I could use for gaming, but Linux support on steam is so far ahead that I don't bother anymore - it's a pain to figure out what games are supported on Mac - something I no longer even bother to check on Linux.

KptMarchewa• 4 years ago

If it was Google instead of Valve, those projects would been killed approximately 47 times already.

sod• 4 years ago

The combination of a CEO that wants to do cool stuff, infinite money thanks to Steam, and no need for growth at all costs because of lack of investors - it's rare and glorious.

KronisLV• 4 years ago

Valve's continual focus on Linux (SteamOS 1.0 was released eight years ago) is honestly incredible, Proton even sometimes works better than native Linux builds.

A while back, I actually did a blog post about using Linux as my daily driver for a week, including gaming: https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/a-week-of-linux-instead-of-... (you can ctrl+f "Running games and ProtonDB" if you want)

Clearly not all games work well or even launch successfully, but the situation is way better than it used to be a few years ago regardless! A part of it is the fact that game engines now do cross platform pretty well (pretty much any popular engine out there does Linux export as well with very few issues, though supporting it might be a different question), and Proton is also a good initiative for all the other titles.

Also, the ProtonDB site is useful if you want to check against your Steam library, or a particular title in general: https://www.protondb.com/ It's probably the first place that you should check out when you want to see whether you could play the games you like on Linux.

Even the current GPU drivers are typically serviceable, apart from the whole open source vs proprietary driver debate (which some might choose to overlook, whereas others wouldn't), though curiously I haven't found an alternative to AMD Software for tweaking how my GPU works on Linux, unfortunately. I mention CoreCtrl as one passable option in that blog post, but it's rather barebones.

Here's hoping that things only continue to improve and we don't get caught up with too much bad press or superstitions and put a positive spin on things where possible: https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/linux-users-provide-mor...

NayamAmarshe3• 4 years ago

Using Proton feels like magic. The fact that you can run games made for a totally different OS, which isn't even based on Unix or Linux is a big feat in itself.

Valve is just a single company pushing for Linux gaming and the results have been excellent.

Linux is the perfect candidate too. Efficient, open, easy to modify and adapt. I hope more companies follow Valve and realize the true untapped potential of Linux systems.

kilolima2• 4 years ago

Why is it magic? Wine has been around since forever. It's not like Valve wrote most of the underlying code proton runs on.

And what's with all the valve/steam hype from people that should know better? At the end of the day you are using a DRM front end (steam) that fragments the mod ecosystem and obfuscates the process of installing and running the software you paid for on your own computer.

miohtama• 4 years ago

Linux and Wine open source ecosystem have always been resource constrained. For this reason, they have not been able to deliver the polish Proton brings to make the Linux gaming available for mass markets.

If DRM locked frontend like Steam is the price to pay for it, it is a small price. Eventually their changes get upstreamed and it improves the ecosystem overall.

hypothesis2• 4 years ago

I think it’s “magic” in same sense that, say, Ubuntu used to be in the beginning. There were other distros too, but none did mix it all together for easy of use/polish. So ignore the hype and enjoy benefits to the ecosystem.

tomnipotent2• 4 years ago

Wine gets you 80% of the way there, but that remaining 20% that Proton fills in takes it from "awesome technology" to "usable product". Everyone is building on the shoulder of giants.

ip264• 4 years ago

Wine didn’t get that much beyond “tech demo” level magic for many years. Magic for sure, but not of the same grade.

NayamAmarshe3• 4 years ago

Wine is amazing too but if you notice, Wine is not as great at running Windows apps as Proton is at running Windows games. Most games work great with Proton but only a few apps work properly with Wine.

And what's with all the valve/steam hype from people that should know better?

In Linus Torvalds' own words: "Valve will save the Linux Desktop"

howinteresting• 4 years ago

Others have already covered Proton being actually usable without tweaking compared to Wine. But I want to dispute your other point.

Obfuscating usually means to make harder. Steam generally makes it easier to download and play games with features like automatic updates, remote play and cloud save sync, not harder.

ACS_Solver2• 4 years ago

The initial release of Proton felt like magic to me.

I tried many games with Wine across many years, from versions well before Wine 1.0 to 4.0, I also tried CodeWeavers something (Crossover?) when that was a thing. A few games worked very well, for example I remember running a newly-released Civ4 almost seamlessly. But most games didn't. Some would be playable but with graphical or audio glitches, performance or stability issues. Others wouldn't be playable no matter what. Tinkering with dll overrides, wineprefixes and all that was often necessary.

Then Proton came and, almost overnight, the Linux gaming experience improved more than in the previous fifteen years of Wine-based attempts. A few years later now, my default expectation has changed to games just working on Linux, unless they use a rootkit-style anti-cheat system. Most games I played under Proton have worked with native-like quality, I could as well be running them on a Windows gaming rig. A few games worked with minor issues such as a few seconds of garbled audio on startup or slower startup. There's only one recent game where I had to give up on Proton, and that game is supposed to run well according to ProtonDB, I just couldn't it right on my system.

girvo3• 4 years ago

As someone who paid for CodeWeavers/CrossOver back in the day and spent far more time fighting WINE configs than I did gaming, Proton honestly does feel a bit like magic.

Sohcahtoa822• 4 years ago

At the end of the day you are using a DRM front end (steam)

I take it you don't use Steam.

Yes, Steam is DRM, but it's the most non-intrusive DRM to have ever existed. You can play your games offline. There are no "false positive" errors when it comes to copy protection. No activation limits. I've done at least 5 system overhauls since Steam came out, and I've never had it tell me "Sorry, you can't reinstall that game!"

I mean, yeah, if you're the type to go "ALL DRM IS BAD!", then none of this will convince you. But it should be worth noting that I have NEVER heard of anybody getting blocked from downloading or playing a game they bought from Steam.

that fragments the mod ecosystem

More like, it replaces it with an excellent platform. Have you even HEARD of Steam Workshop?

and obfuscates the process of installing and running the software you paid for on your own computer.

This is a feature, not a bug.

Also, once you've installed a game, you don't even HAVE to run it through Steam. You can just as easily find the executable and run it directly.

SahAssar• 4 years ago

Is there something substantially new here or is this just a beta branch of the regular proton?

ShamelessC2• 4 years ago

Can someone please summarize this rather than giving a one sentence blurb about why you love proton, as that is only tangentially relevant.

fhd2• 4 years ago

It basically means you can now try the upcoming release, not just stable vs experimental, which is the choice we had so far. You can select it on a per-game basis, so if things don't work in stable you can select next.

LegitShady2• 4 years ago

proton now has an opt-in beta build

ShamelessC2• 4 years ago

It did before- one of the many reasons the article is so confusing.

ydlr• 4 years ago

Thanks to proton, I have completely forgotten how to configure wine prefixes.

hypothesis2• 4 years ago

Is this unique to Proton? There seems like quite a few game managers on Linux nowadays, none require knowing much of Wine.

bagels2• 4 years ago

Still no pubg, afik :(

nyadesu• 4 years ago

Is it related to steam deck's anti-cheat support?

bagels2• 4 years ago

I do think it's related to the anti-cheat in the game.

climb_stealth2• 4 years ago

I wish they would sell the Steam Deck in Australia. Does anyone know whether you can buy one overseas and use it anyway?

SXX3• 4 years ago

Basically it's normal PC so you can even just install Windows there (but it will degrade overall experience). So there is absolutely no lock-ins and you can use hardware any way you like.

climb_stealth2• 4 years ago

That makes sense from a hardware point of view. I was wondering whether there would be issues using a Steam account from an unsupported country.

It requires a Steam account in a supported country to order. But after receiving it, can you log in to an account from a different country? Technically it should be doable. But there might be some policy that stops it from working.

jackvalentine• 4 years ago

Yes, I got mine from an eBay reseller shipped to Australia for a bit of a markup and it works fine - only ‘foreign’ thing I noticed was on the KDE desktop the date format was american which is obviously a single setting change and you’re done.

boppo1• 4 years ago

Can proton be used to run other windows software well under Linux? I would KILL to have desktop-excel in xubuntu.

openmapsguy• 4 years ago

You’re looking for wine https://www.winehq.org/. Proton is built on top of wine.

G3rn0ti• 4 years ago

If you restrict yourself to older office versions like e.g. 2013, they should be working fine with vanilla wine. At least I remember running Word seamlessly on my gnome desktop. I even created a „desktop“ file so I could double click on word files to fire up Word.

I recommend using the „play4linux“ fronted to wine which makes it rather easy to install and maintain windows applications and games.

trelane4• 4 years ago

If you're looking for applications, CodeWeavers' Crossover Office is the place to go. If you actually can't afford it, you can use plain WINE. But Crossover is nicer, has support, and funds WINE development, since CodeWeavers sends their patches upstream.

https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover

gkhartman2• 4 years ago

Will desktop excel actually run smoothly on this? It's been ages since I've tried, but I didn't have much luck in the past.

I'd really love to ditch my windows machine, but my employer makes use of excel plugins that only run on the desktop version.

MerelyMortal• 4 years ago

Excel and Word in Office 2016 work pretty well in Crossover. (I don't know about the newer versions.)

UI_at_80x24• 4 years ago

I want to buy a SteamDeck. But I don't think I have the spare hours. After work, taking care of the kids, and housework I _might_ have 1 spare hour a day to sit down with the wife. I'd rather watch something on TV with her. To have any kind of free time I have to stay up till 1am!

I could bring the SteamDeck when I bring the kids to the park, but that just feels like I'm cheating the kids.

I work from home.

8am-9am get ready for work/get kids ready for the day

9am-5pm work

5pm-8pm doing stuff with the kids

8pm-9pm eat, get kids ready for bed

9pm-11pm housework/watch TV

11pm-midnight miscellaneous stuff to prepare for the next day.

I almost wish I had a commute by train or something. Or a housekeeper, or an Au Pair/nanny.

How the fuck do other grownups do it? (I'm 49, and exhausted all the time)

weatherlight• 4 years ago

Sometimes it's fun to cuddle with the kids while you play a game that they enjoy.

My 6 and 4 year old love "Tunic" and "Stray."

The Steamdeck is a lot of fun.

dark-star• 4 years ago

The SteamDeck is actually perfect if you only have like one hour here and there, since you can just pick it up and continue playing from where you left off (suspend/resume works flawlessly)...

http-teapot• 4 years ago

Same boat! I picked up a Steam Deck, was desperately looking for a multiplayer game I could play 20-30 minutes in the day, and found Deep Rock Galactic. I only play when my wife watches a TV show or in bed.

PrivateButts• 4 years ago

My wife loves the Steam Deck, mainly because I've been playing more games in the living room at night, instead of playing games in my office. Being in the same room as one another, even if we're doing different things, works pretty good for us.

It's also gotten them back into PC games, as they have more access to games through family sharing and the Deck does a great job of taking care of most of the fiddly bits of playing on PC.

I fully expected the deck to be the typical valve hardware experience for me. Something that was well built, and very neat, but would be gathering dust in a month or two. However, I think we've got more usage out of my Deck in 6 months then we've gotten out of my Index, Vive, Steam Controller, and Steam Link combined.

gausswho• 4 years ago

Being in the same room as one another, even if we're doing different things, works pretty good for us.

My partner feels this way too. I feel the opposite. To me in some way I cannot reason it makes me wish we would a) do anything else as long as we had each other's attention or b) enjoy time to ourselves. Either to me lead to better longer term health.

_Cr15py_2• 4 years ago

This is exactly where we are at home. Some nights after all the kids are in bed and the day is over we will watch a movie or TV. Other nights we have the Steam Deck up and running... my wife isn't really a gamer but she likes to watch engaging games - while reading books - so it works out pretty well.

It just comes down to dividing time effectively. I will admit that is always going to be different for everybody, but we have found it works. :-)

Scramblejams2• 4 years ago

You have decided to be an engaged parent! That's awesome. The world needs more of that.

The SteamDeck is, as a wise sibling said, not for playing more games, but for playing games more. It's really excellent for gaming in very small doses as opportunities arise. Find yourself waiting for 5 minutes for someone to do something? Hit the button, pick up the game right where you left off. When you get interrupted, hit the button, it goes right to sleep. Perfect for a busy life.

MattyRad• 4 years ago

This exactly, I can confirm the Steam Deck is perfect for 5-30 minute gaming jaunts. It's similar to the Nintendo Switch, but the Deck actually has a huge number of varied, high quality games- frequently at bargain prices.

Idling on the couch with my wife while the baby naps for an hour is the sweet spot, where pre-Deck I was struggling to find decent mobile game (having exhausted all the decent games on Nintendo Switch).

I'll add that finding the right game is important! One that doesn't require a lot of cognition. Personally, FTL is my go-to. I can pick it up, do a few encounters, and drop it again without losing any progress.

Tade02• 4 years ago

How the fuck do other grownups do it? (I'm 49, and exhausted all the time)

I suppose the answer is "they don't". I've found that I can't really commit to any side project any more because my time off is not consistent.

Also:

5pm-8pm doing stuff with the kids

You're a better parent than me. I have such days, but I can't say I spend this much quality time with my child every day.

In any case I have a friend from two previous projects whose child is just two weeks older than my toddler, so we compared notes regarding this and many other topics.

Summary of what's definitely possible with one child:

-Inviting grandma/pa over - provided they live close enough.

-Scheduled leave from parenting - like one evening a week. The other parent takes over.

-Cleaning person. Personally I just get up every hour from my office and do some chores. It's not enough, but it helps.

-Nanny.

-One parent as the homemaker.

-Natural tendency to sleep less. I have maybe 7h of sleep ahead of me right now but somehow this is fine. Perhaps I'll pay the price for this later in life, who knows.

atemerev5• 4 years ago

“One parent as the homemaker” — this looks very unfair in 2022.

girvo3• 4 years ago

I am 32 and don’t have kids, so I have more spare time luckily — but the exhaustion for me was originally low iron (unlikely unless you have a vegan diet too), and low B12 (which is surprisingly common in people on non-vegan diets too!). Supplementing iron and drinking more (fortified, here in Aus) soy milk solved the exhaustion for me: if you haven’t had a blood test in a while to check some levels it might be worth looking into

Asooka2• 4 years ago

How the fuck do other grownups do it?

Wait until the kids are old enough to take care of themselves at home. Once they're about 12, they should be more than capable of helping with housework a bit, taking care of their own affairs, and even going alone to the park with their friends.

atemerev5• 4 years ago

Of all this, I have chosen not going to work. I work from home as a consultant. I don’t know how people can possibly live and keep their families while going to their office jobs every day.

Since you already working from home, you might want to look for something more asynchronous than working 9-5 non-interrupted.

qwerpy• 4 years ago

Trying to figure this out myself. Bought a steam deck and love the idea of it, but haven't had consistent time to play it in between all the family and work obligations. One problem is I like to play games that require quite a bit of focus. RPGs or strategy games that require I have maps/guides up in another monitor, and have a lot of context to page in every time I play. Maybe it's time for me to take up more casual games? Racing, puzzles, platformers, etc. Games that you play for 5 minutes at a time.

nocsi• 4 years ago

SteamDeck is hit or miss and is really more for tinkerers. Similar to you, I have limited time and have probably gamed on PS5/Nintendo Switch probably 90% of the time. There’s something about playing on a steam deck being unwieldy and having the fans come on obnoxiously every 20 seconds. My arms hurt holding it up and to be able to play portably, you need the foresight to enable offline mode for games. It really feels like using an Android, wherein the “fun” of the steam deck is having to tinker.

I’d rather just play on a Switch where you can hop into a game for just an hour and feel your time is respected. At the end of the day, I’d rather just have something that works reliably for games.

baby2• 4 years ago

SteamDeck is hit or miss and is really more for tinkerers

woot. I'm definitely not a tinkerer and I'm having a blast with the steam deck. I haven't configured anything, I just buy and install games that say "plays great on the steam deck". I did try to play games that didn't have that badge a few times and actually didn't have any issues.

I’d rather just play on a Switch where you can hop into a game for just an hour and feel your time is respected

I have a switch too and 1. the store is so laggy I don't even want to launch it anymore and 2. it's such an outdated piece of hardware that I just don't have the heart to turn it on anymore and wait for loading screens now that I have the steam deck. Honestly the steam deck is just light years away

poulpy1234• 4 years ago

Hmm no, steam deck works out of the box for the things that they says work out of the box. The only time I had to change something was for getting an alternative control layout but it was for an unrated game and it was 2 clicks

Being much more open than for example the switch, it is a bit more complex to use, but I don't think it's a problem for anyone here, even with a severe lack of time and motivation.

baby2• 4 years ago

Honestly the steam deck is the only way someone like you could do some gaming. I usually use it right before sleeping and have it on the side of the bed. I do quick games, sometimes play for just like 10 minutes (usually Noita).

poulpy1234• 4 years ago

Just sell your children, it will give you time and enough money for 2 steam deck and a lot of games

gilbetron• 4 years ago

You get more time as they get older, and in fact it is good for you to not spend as much time with them - they should be doing a lot on their own with other kids. Kicking them out of the house to go play is a wonderful thing to do, assuming you have an neighborhood that supports it. By the time they are 12 or so they start really not wanting to do a lot with their parents, and then by 15 or so it's hard to book any time with them! So just wait, you'll get time back eventually ;)

musha68k6• 4 years ago

Due to Proton I feel like coming back to PC gaming after almost 20 years, great stewardship by Valve there.

The last "rig" I built was for Doom 3 after which I'd never bothered with keeping a NTFS partition again.

Apple silicon just doesn't seem to get to the levels needed for a state-of-the-art Cyberpunk 2077 experience even on pricier high-end Macs. I'm also still not willing to buy any "next-gen" consoles for the first time either (trend of maybe efficient but still glorified PC architecture continuing).

Would anyone have a list of well tested Linux + Proton compatible components?

Nvidia or AMD? Which drivers are better maintained at this point? It would still be cool to run some machine learning workloads for fun of course.

Any pointers would be appreciated.

themoonisachees2• 4 years ago

Basically anything recent but not the latest components will work well. If you want hassle-free then going with amd everything is the most efficient IMO.

I'm running a ryzen 3600 and a radeon rx5700xt, and i've not had any driver issues, be it with x11 or wayland. I've been playing a bunch of games from my library but there are still some games that aren't compatible (for ex. Vermintide 2 has non-compatible anticheat) so i keep a spartan windows instal on a 128gb ssd for those and VR. VR is a non-starter on linux.

That being said, nvidia has RT cores now, which can do very fast matrix multiplication which is advantageous for ML workloads (on top of a lot of ml work being optimized for cuda cores). Can't speak to their drivers but older cards should be safer, especially considering the 40 series hasn't been shown to be worth it over used 30 series.

musha68k6• 4 years ago

Interesting point about VR. I guess the sets and controllers are married even more so to the Windows APIs and will incur stark penalty on immersion for even slightest lag (due to API translation)?

A bummer for sure.

I also honestly was leaning more towards buying a used RTX 3080 or RTX 3090 from one of the (ex) Ethereum miners. I actually played through Cyberpunk 2077 on Geforce Now "RTX 3080" and am definitely spoiled by real time RT and DLSS now.. The compression artifacts and occasional lags and packet loss did become grating after a while though (to me). Biggest issue with GFN though is lack of games (I still don't understand why they can't just support any game on any of their integrated marketplaces. I mean it's me buying them on those platforms then playing them through GFN instances).

But I also gather here from multiple answers that AMD apparently should still be the choice on Linux. Maybe I need to wait a bit longer for them to catch up on the realtime RT and ML image reconstruction..

AlotOfReading• 4 years ago

My current experience on alder lake + Nvidia 30 series isn't quite a smooth enough experience to move my non-technical fiancee over, but it's close enough that I've considered it.

The AMD drivers are mainlined and they've gotten a lot better about stability than where they were a couple years ago. Valve has done a lot of compatibility testing/fixes for the steamdeck as well.

The Nvidia drivers are also pretty stable and many distros provide them out of the box. They're still going to be your main choice for ML stuff.

For CPUs both Intel and AMD are extremely well supported. There are generally more eyes on the Intel side though.

musha68k6• 4 years ago

Thanks for answering.

My current experience on alder lake + Nvidia 30 series isn't quite a smooth enough experience to move my non-technical fiancee over, but it's close enough that I've considered it.

So you are considering it because stability with Nvidia 30* would still be good enough for you in light of a gaming use case?

eggsome• 4 years ago

For GPU: AMD (but not _too_ cutting edge is the easy answer here). Any of the Radeon 6000 series will work well out of the box with recent open source kernels.

CPU wize Intel/AMD does not matter.

account4215• 4 years ago

but not _too_ cutting edge is the easy answer here

If you are comfortable with building the drivers (Kernel/Mesa) from yourself, then cutting edge GPUs are usually fine too. E.g. Navi 2 support was all there on release day but perhaps not yet in all distros. Not saying that this should be reasonable for everyone but we are on a tech forum.

terribleperson• 4 years ago

Go with wired networking or be careful about your choice of WiFi hardware. Some wireless chipsets have poor Linux support, but there are usually lists of good ones and bad ones. When it comes to graphics, AMD GPUs Vega or newer work incredibly well on Linux. NVidia has a fairly substantial lead in GPU performance, but they have poor Linux support and appear to be actively working to make their hardware a bad deal. Most motherboards have no issues on Linux, but audio and networking can be pain points. CPU brand is not an issue with Linux, but since your choice of CPU and choice of motherboard are tied together, it is something you might have to think about. Perhaps pick a price, find AMD and Intel motherboards that support the features you want and have good Linux compatibility, and then figure out which brand gets you better performance at that price with your desired feature set.

Hardware that requires a proprietary windows app to control can be a problem - think RGB hardware and fancy gaming mice. There is some software to work with these sorts of things and you can get Logitech gaming mice working on Linux but it is somewhat harder than it should be. Stay away from Razer - their software is more troublesome than anyone else's.

Steam has absolutely incredible controller support. It is ludicrously good. If you want to play games on PC with a controller, hope they're Steam games or at least work well when launched through steam.

Use PCPartPicker when you're putting together your build. Their website is a wonderful tool for checking compatibility even though it's not perfect. If you ask someone for advice on your build, being able to give them a PCPartPicker link really speeds things up. If you're looking for a place to get advice on a build, /r/buildapc is generally decent.

If you're concerned about upgradeability or future-proofing, it's not a great time for that on the CPU front. AMD's AM5 socket just came out and probably has a good few years ahead of it, but the first-generation motherboards are awfully expensive and you should never buy first gen mobos anyways. It is also quite possible they will have poor support for Zen 5 CPUs. Intel's LGA 1200 socket is obsolete and current LGA 1700 motherboards probably won't support anything past the 13th generation (Raptor Lake). That said, a new mid or high-end CPU is likely to remain useful for many years since popular games are somewhat limited by the need to support 9th gen consoles. Similar is true for GPUs, but GPU prices are not great at the moment though they are better than they have been in the past few years.

If you have any other questions let me know.

musha68k6• 4 years ago

Thanks for the thorough answer, especially insightful with regards to CPU, chipsets and on the peripheral fronts.

To be honest I'm still aching for that realtime RT + DLSS fix without being dependent on GFN "PRO" all without having to go all retrograde to Microsoft world.

Not too interested in any RGB hardware luckily.

I'll play with PC Part Picker for a bit again :) now that I know that in general things seemingly should be expected to be much smoother even with the potential NVIDIA GPU choice on Linux...

shmerl• 4 years ago

AMD all the way. Avoid Nvidia on Linux.

esturk2• 4 years ago

You can get a SteamDeck which could double as a desktop PC with a dock.

musha68k6• 4 years ago

I pondered the SteamDeck before and it's definitely cool (big Proton push!) but I personally prefer the OLED Switch or my Apple silicon Mac for lighter mobile use cases (indie games, text heavy RPGs).

I don't think the SteamDeck runs Cyberpunk 2077 with anything even close to real-time RT at 1440p @ 40fps minimum?

depressedpanda• 4 years ago

I switched from an Nvidia card a couple of years ago as I got fed up with the crashes and general instability it caused on my system. Running an AMD card was such a breath of fresh air in comparison that I would never recommend Nvidia for anyone wanting to run Linux.

It's a pity you want to do ML though, as I suppose that complicates your decision process. Nvidia "works", but be prepared that a system update might break stuff for you.

musha68k6• 4 years ago

Thanks for sharing, appreciate it.

MikeMaven• 4 years ago

I want to throw some love out for GloriousEggroll and their custom proton distribution as well. Thomas has done fantastic work on Proton and it generally works better for me than the official version.

https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom

gjsman-10003• 4 years ago

A reminder once again that Proton only exists because, for all the benefits of Linux, making a native Linux port is a massive mess. The community calling for developers to make native ports often forget that Linux's userland stability and consistency is simply not at the level developers expect or need for a quality port.

Until the day arrives when you can install a game on, say, Fedora 37 that was initially developed against, say, Ubuntu 16.04 or Fedora 26, it is not happening. Win32 is by far the most consistent and widely-supported API on Linux right now, which is a damning indictment of Linux, not game developers who don't support it. Even macOS has way better backwards compatibility and consistency than Linux does, but developers are scared to touch that. If macOS isn't good enough for developers, native Linux ports are a pipe dream.

trelane4• 4 years ago

I've yet to have a game not work because I was using the wrong distro.

gjsman-10003• 4 years ago

I am talking about native Linux ports and people who complain about the lack of native ports instead of, at best, Proton ports.

Yuioup• 4 years ago

Really? I have nothing but problems trying to play native Linux games. 99% don't even launch.

Proton is a much better experience.

account4215• 4 years ago

Proton would exist even if porting to Linux would be trivial because many games would still not be ported.

celdon25• 4 years ago

Okay, but what does it actually do?

msla• 4 years ago

It's a Windows compatibility layer based on Wine. It allows Windows software to run on Linux without having to run Windows in a VM.

kjuulh• 4 years ago

Happy to see a fix for final fantasy XIV launcher. That thing had been an infuriating ordeal.

Kudos to the proton team for supporting such an archaic technology.

999900000999• 4 years ago

Gamepass is a gift and a curse, on one hand, it makes Windows gaming dirt cheap. But it also makes Linux Gaming like this pointless.

If half the games I want to play are locked to Gamepass, I'm not having fun with Linux. Now, if Gamepass could run on Photon, we can talk.

impulser_• 4 years ago

Why doesn't Apple put this much effort into bring MacOS into the same realm as Windows in terms of gaming?

You would think they would invest more money and time taking away one of the last major advantages of Windows vs. MacOS.

Microsoft obviously sees gaming as one of the big advantages to Windows, hence why they have been buying up gaming studios and combining Xbox and Windows into the one gaming platform.

IshKebab2• 4 years ago

They probably would prefer to parlay iPhone games to Mac, then they have tight control over them and can offer things Microsoft can't.

musicale3• 4 years ago

Why doesn't Apple put this much effort into bring MacOS into the same realm as Windows in terms of gaming?

I don't speak for Apple, but their bread and butter is the zillions of App Store games, so the business incentive is clearly to move those developers and games onto macOS so that Apple gets a cut of every game sale and in-app purchase. Moreover, those games are already optimized for Metal and Apple silicon. They already work well on modest hardware running on batteries.

In a sense it's a very clever strategy: Apple completely sidesteps the "PC game" market, which has largely left Apple behind, and creates its own "App Store game" market - a huge collection of games, all of which are optimized for Apple APIs and silicon, and which make billions of dollars for Apple through App Store commissions. Moreover, those games run across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV. Apple also avoids potentially unflattering GPU and game performance comparisons (especially with compatibility layers like WINE) - the hardware fades into the background, which is something Apple likes.

From the user perspective though? Many Mac users would still like to be able to run PC games (especially ones that aren't in the iOS or macOS App Stores) out of the box, and this would be served by developing a high-quality version of Proton (or equivalent) for macOS. And they'd also like Steam to work well out of the box. Making this happen would be a drop in Apple's bucket, and probably wouldn't reduce App Store sales. And it might help with hardware sales for students and others who might be on the fence due to certain Windows games not running on macOS.

stetrain• 4 years ago

I know why Apple doesn't care to do so, but I really wish they would at least just work with Valve enough to make Proton on Mac a reality.

There was a brief moment where Steam for Mac was announced on stage at an Apple event and Macs got the Half-Life series, Portal, Team Fortress 2, and many others.

Now these games won't even launch on a modern Mac because they are still 32-bit binaries that were never updated.

If Apple doesn't care to be a marketplace for "PC Gamer" type games then fine but at least partner with someone who does care.

account4215• 4 years ago

Now these games won't even launch on a modern Mac because they are still 32-bit binaries that were never updated.

The cost of updating all games ever released and of maintaining a 32-bit compat layer is so incomparable that dropping that layer only makes sense because they expect other companies to bear that cost.

Same for Ubuntu or other Linux distros wanting to drop x86 - makes things slightly easier for them but an absolute insane move for the overall ecosystem.

musicale3• 4 years ago

I wouldn't mind it if someone made a version of Proton that ran on macOS.

gigatexal• 4 years ago

Proton and Wine and the folks behind Lutris and Valve’s work on Steam have allowed me to nuke Windows for good. I’m so happy. I’m gaming on Fedora 36 with Nvidia drivers on i3wm and just won’t ever go back.

esturk2• 4 years ago

FYI, you can get a Steam Deck that doubles as a desktop PC with a dock. Analogous to the Samsung Dex but a lot better. It's essentially a dockable linux computer.

_Cr15py_2• 4 years ago

I've been out of the loop with Steam for a while. I used it back in the Half-Life, CS Source, and Team Fortress 2 days. However more recently I've been a Stadia user... it just made a lot of sense with a busy life schedule. Grab a controller and sit down on the sofa to play amazing games. With Stadia coming to an end in Jan 2023 I started to look for an alternative... none, for me, came close to what Steam is offering. So I went for a Steam Deck (with a dock) and a PS5 controller. Valve truly is for the gamers.

nurettin• 4 years ago

I remember using Wine to play pretty much any game on linux back in the early 2000s, even before 64bit was a thing. We had wine hacks, we had a rudimentary dx9 compatibility layer, we had hardware acceleration, and we could just pirate crossover over torrent or dc++ for that one pesky microsoft game that won't load. (of course we don't do that anymore!)

I feel like Proton is just a repackaging of what we already had, which is the culmination of the hard work of the Wine team for the past 20 years, coupled with an online distribution system which could take back your "digital assets" at any time.

    We reserve the right, but are not obligated, to remove, disable or suspend your or any user's access to any Content or the Services, at any time and without notice

Reference: https://store.steampowered.com/eula/471710_eula_0

make3• 4 years ago

I wish there was proton for MacOs. We do have access to a number of games, but nowhere as many as on windows

Valve Introduces Proton Next

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