this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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It is a win, but it's more of a Steam Deck win than a plain Linux one.
Proton?
Valve puming money in the Steamdeck is paying off for everybody gaming on Linux.
It made me pull the trigger again and this time i'm not even dual booting.
Well, sure, proton is great, but I wish HW support was better more than I like proton.
I'm so close to doing the same thing. We're at the point where proton compatibility is good enough that most of the games in my library work. And even if a game truly doesn't work on Linux at all, I just talk myself out of buying it anyway.
I think I pretty much only boot up Windows once every few weeks to keep it updated.
I don't need to dual boot because the stuff I play just works on proton or is "native" (minecraft)
It's a double-edged sword though. It means there's no point in developing native Linux games, because it'll run through Proton anyway. Keeping Windows the default gaming platform still, and making Steam the only way to acquire games if you wanna play on Linux. You CAN add non-steam games to Steam, but they're not guaranteed to work. I don't know if you can also run Proton without Steam because I've never needed to try, but that would be a hassle for your average user.
There was never a chance in hell that AAA games are natively coming to Linux. I rather have them now with a compatibility layer and gain some market space, we'll go from there then
Not at the current market share, sure, but Microsoft is doing a lot to alienate people with new restrictions slowly being built in. Vulkan being good helps too, but now thanks to proton there's no need to move from d3d12 to Vulkan, which is kinda sad.
Either there's proton and people can play or there is no proton and no linux users and no steam deck. This is a thing where you need to recognize you can't win
Honestly, I doubt we'll ever see native linux games be the norm. Windows isn't going away anytime soon, your average joe most likely move to linux, so it's cheaper and just as good for companies to just target proton.
But if some gaming peripheral maker wants to advertise Steam Deck support they will essentially have to support Linux at least!