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
    • 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.

        • I know, I have many of them. Most of them I specifically bought when they got Linux support, like Tomb Raider and Alien Isolation.

          Not a single commercial game runs as well natively as it does through Proton. Tomb Raider - has much worse graphics. Alien Isolation - for some reason the DPad doesn’t work. Baldur’s Gate - I have to supply some old openssl (or so, can’t remember) library. And I shudder at the thought of trying to get Unreal Tournament 2004 or Doom 3 (not the open source version) running. I should try to dig out my disc for Ankh to see how hard it is to get that one running.

          Maintained games and especially open source ones run great. But the sad reality is that it costs money to maintain software. Linux backwards compatibility is abysmal. It is much easier to get a 20 year old Windows game to run than a 20 year old Linux game.

          Though to be fair, it is also hard on Windows to get a 20 year old Windows game to run. Wine is just a great piece of software.

          I would love to have more native games. My own game is native as well. And luckily most indie devs usually also bring out a native port. And still most of the time the Windows version via Proton just runs better.

          • Yeah, wine is incredible for preservation. Many older games don’t work on either platform (old windows games on windows, old linux games on linux), but running old windows games through proton usually works great.

          • Yeah the aaa and aa games don’t run well because the devs or rather greedy publishers don’t care about Linux gamers and hate us because they have to make actually working stuff and not rely on shitty anti cheat that has permission it shouldn’t have ever.

      • 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.