Proton is the Future of PC gaming. But how does it work? [Gardiner Bryant, YouTube]

Submitted ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz⁩ to ⁨steamdeck@sopuli.xyz⁩

cross-posted from: beehaw.org/post/16434132

YouTube video: youtu.be/uScsmjvdwyo

Invidious video from YouTube without YouTube: inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=uScsmjvdwyo or 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

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Comments

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DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
YouTube face… And useless red arrow?

Definitely No thanks

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- leavemealone@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  YouTube 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.
  
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  - woelkchen@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    dearrow.ajay.app
    
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  - Juice260@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I 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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YourPrivatHater@ani.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
They do need to make Linux native games.

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- bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Sadly 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.
  
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  - YourPrivatHater@ani.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    What? There are loads of Linux native games, and more need to come
    
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  - woelkchen@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    Win32 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.
    
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  - mkwt@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Yep. 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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- mipadaitu@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tux_Racer
  
  We already have the only one we need.
  
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- helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Why? They comprise like 3% of the market and the native Linux versions usually run worse than the Windows ones run through Proton…
  
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  - neshura@bookwormstory.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    in 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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- vinnymac@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Proton is the gateway drug to us getting more Linux native games. In due time!
  
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  - Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Yeah, 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).
    
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  - woelkchen@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    Proton 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.
    
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Juice260@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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.

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- Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  With 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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LegoBrickOnFire@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Can someone explain how portability is still an issue? Are there no cross-platform API and libraries that allow developpers to write portable apps?

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- Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Many 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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