Is it worse though? What’s the actual benefit of Linux native if performance with Proton is largely the same?
I’ve been gaming on Linux since before Steam on Linux was a thing, and things are way better now than they’ve ever been. Yeah, there were more native Linux ports, but total game selection was much worse, and WINE compat was buggy more often than not.
Proton solves the chicken and egg problem of devs not supporting Linux because the audience is small, and the audience being small because of limited selection. Here’s what I’ve seen on Linux:
Only a handful of Linux native games outside of FOSS - notables were Minecraft and FTL, and I mostly found them on Humble Bundle; WINE was another option, but good luck
Steam comes to Linux, and brings hundreds of native Linux games - no compat layer though, but still decent selection - I made my account in 2013 when the client was released; game library explodes
Proton is a thing - now I can play a bunch of Windows games I couldn’t before; game library explodes again
Steam Deck is released, and with it a ton of fixes for Proton - game library swells substantially, and my collection of games with technical issues dwindles
Game devs start actually testing games on Steam OS, enable anti-cheat support on Linux, etc
Gaming on Linux is better than it ever has, and I honestly don’t even prefer native ports anymore because Proton has gotten so good. With step 5, we’re on the cusp of Linux gaming being mainstream outside of Steam Deck, and that’s when games will support Linux en masse, which means:
more anticheat support
less buggy day 1 experience
more users switching from windows
I’ll happily trade native Linux ports for orders of magnitude more games. Maybe we’ll get more native ports eventually for a few extra FPS, but honestly, I don’t care about that anymore.
Is it worse though? What’s the actual benefit of Linux native if performance with Proton is largely the same?
I’ve been gaming on Linux since before Steam on Linux was a thing, and things are way better now than they’ve ever been. Yeah, there were more native Linux ports, but total game selection was much worse, and WINE compat was buggy more often than not.
Proton solves the chicken and egg problem of devs not supporting Linux because the audience is small, and the audience being small because of limited selection. Here’s what I’ve seen on Linux:
Gaming on Linux is better than it ever has, and I honestly don’t even prefer native ports anymore because Proton has gotten so good. With step 5, we’re on the cusp of Linux gaming being mainstream outside of Steam Deck, and that’s when games will support Linux en masse, which means:
I’ll happily trade native Linux ports for orders of magnitude more games. Maybe we’ll get more native ports eventually for a few extra FPS, but honestly, I don’t care about that anymore.