Happy birthday, Proton!

  • poVoq@slrpnk.netM
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    1 year ago

    While I appreciate the efforts Valve puts into improving WINE/Proton, lets not forget that they are standing on the shoulders of giants and gaming with WINE was not that bad before the integration in Steam either.

    • ampersandrew@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Gaming with Wine was decidedly far worse before Valve started pumping money into it. Back before Proton was officially announced, there was a silent acceleration in Wine compatibility, getting better a rate we weren’t used to, and it’s in large part due to Valve partnering with CodeWeavers.

      • sab@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I think the point isn’t to say Valve’s help isn’t appreciated, but to give a little reminder to share some gratefulness with the amazing people developing Wine before Valve got involved as well. It was and is an impressive piece of software in its own right. :)

        That doesn’t mean Valve wasn’t a complete game changer. The fact that they managed to make a handheld Linux gaming device popular among gamers rather than just open source fanatics is impressive as hell, and we’re all better off.

    • dannoffs@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      What? I’ve exclusively used Linux since 2006 and gaming outside of retro emulation was absolute trash until proton. Of course WINE and code weavers were doing great work but it was overly complicated to use and the compatibility was abysmal.

      • Baŝto@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        Let’s not forget that Valve released a Linux port for TF2 in 2012, released their native client in 2013, released SteamOS in 2013 and in the end ported nearly all their games to linux. It didn’t start with Proton.

        But Humble Bundle pushed ports before that, because games had to have a Linux port in order to get into the bundle.

      • poVoq@slrpnk.netM
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        1 year ago

        I am on Linux even longer than you and native Linux gaming was not trash at all, it worked great, just the selection of games was very small (edit: before Steam was even a thing on Linux). WINE was always a bit hit or miss, but once you got something working, it was usually ok. Sure Proton made it more convenient, but it was more of an gradual improvement than the quantum leap some people claim it to be.

        • Grangle1@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Going from a miniscule library of games that could work (I remember Linux Steam back before Proton having almost nothing of note) to opening up something pretty close to the entire Windows library and running Linux on Valve/Steam’s own handheld console for their games is indeed a quantum leap. That’s what Proton has done for Linux gaming. It may have gotten there eventually just with Wine and community contributions, but it would have taken possibly quite a few years longer to get there without Proton.

          • poVoq@slrpnk.netM
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            1 year ago

            I think that is very subjective to the types of games you are interested in. For me Steam before Proton had so many native (indie) games that I literally couldn’t find the time to play all of those I was interested in.

            • Zorque@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              So you agree that your interpretation was very subjective, and many people didn’t have the ease that you had?

              • poVoq@slrpnk.netM
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                1 year ago

                No, because going from thousands of games to play to even more that you will never have the time to play is not a quantum leap.

                If you had said Proton/DXVK made it finally possible to play a few triple A games I would have agreed. Still not a quantum leap though.

    • Zorque@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I think their efforts are more for bringing gaming on Linux to more mainstream attention. Not knowing you can game on Linux is a major factor for a lot of people in not switching.

    • firecat@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Please don’t spread misinformation Valve does not put in effort, they paid people to make Proton, it’s the community that makes the code NOT VALVE. A simple github chart can tell you everything.

      • poVoq@slrpnk.netM
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        1 year ago

        They directly hired people to work on it… how else would you describe “putting efforts into” when a company does it?

        • firecat@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          You can’t say Mcdonald’s CEO put effort in his work because he hired people to make the food. See how dumb that sounds.

          • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            It sounds dumb because no one’s saying that, you just made it up. That would be like if someone was directly crediting Gabe Newell with, idk, CS:GO battlepass sales or something. That’s not what anyone’s saying.

            A better comparison would be crediting McDonalds as a company for their work in the handheld apple pie space. Did they outsource the work? Maybe. Did they come up with the recipe themselves? Probably not. But without McDonald’s involvement, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy hot, fresh, fruit-filled pastries with our Big Macs, and our fast food dessert choices are better for it. See? Much less dumb.