Valve Rolls Out Wine-based "Proton" For Running Windows Games On Linux

[Lestibournes]

Putting aside whatever love Valve has for Linux, I believe Valve's strategy has 2 main aspects. First, Windows is the primary PC gaming platform and it's been getting more and more restrictive. Valve wants to hedge against the day that Windows gets too restrictive and makes it too difficult for Valve to do business on Windows or for Steam users to buy and play games on Steam. If that day comes then Valve can invite those users to SteamOS where now their entire library of games will be waiting for them. This also serves as a deterrent against Microsoft. If Microsoft tries to shut out Steam it can expect a mass exodus of gamers, so they won't do it.

The second aspect is the console wars. Steam has a userbase comparable to a console, only on a PC. They also have a massive library of games and features not available on a console. Perhaps the main problem is that the vast majority of the games on Steam are Windows only and very few AAA games work on Linux. With this new SteamPlay All the AAA games on PC, past present and future, will be available on SteamOS which will make Steam Machines a real competitor in the next generation of consoles.

On the PC this will enable switchers, but I don't think we'll see a wave of switching unless Microsoft seriously screws Steam and its users. It's just that whoever already wants to switch will be able to do so more completely and easily.

On the console we can expect SteamOS to carve out some significant marketshare with the next generation so long as Steam Machines with a competitive combination of performance and price are made available. So instead of this bringing about the Year of the Linux Desktop it would bring us Year of the Linux Console. Once Linux, through SteamOS, becomes big on the console then we may see more games developed with cross-platform technologies like Vulkan and SDL in order to target SteamOS on the console with the advantage of making ports to other platforms easier. Also we could see some PC gamers choosing to buy gaming PCs with SteamOS for their next gaming PC, but not a wave of people ditching Windows just to switch. It would just be "SteamOS is an OS geared for gaming, I use a computer primarily for gaming and surfing the web and don't really need anything else, and all my games work on SteamOS, so maybe when I need a new PC gaming rig I'll just buy a Steam Machine gaming PC".

[Sniperfox47]

I've been thinking about the whole photon vs native games.

And what I have come with is this:

Imagine that rather than a windows emulator it was a PS4 emulator that out of the blue was allowing thousands of PS4 games to play with great performance. Would you think it is a bad thing? I don't think so.

Totally agree. I mean, I can't speak for anyone else but personally I'd much rather see non-native games that work really really well and allow more users to embrace that platform than see a bunch of native titles that are just afterthought exports of a game built for other OSes which barely works and which devs don't bother to support after launch.

At the end of the day it doesn't matter at all if you have native games if they don't have proper support due to the infinitismal market share.

[Lestibournes]

Games are content, just like music or movies. The only thing that really matters is how well they play, not whether the use standard Linux technologies or system integration, because nobody sees that. I'm more surprised that it took Valve this long to do this. Since Valve wants to use Linux to remove its dependence on the goodwill of platform vendors like Microsoft and Apple and to compete in the console space it makes sense that they'd want to have as many of the games in their library working on Linux as possible. That's what they need in order for SteamOS (and Linux in general) to be a viable competitor in the gaming PC and console market.

[JPFSanders]

You have to look at the big picture here. For linux to grow (and get more native software) linux needs a bigger userbase, it's just too small, the industry doesn't take it seriously. A lot of people do not like the direction Windows is going but they can't just "opt out of it" because one of their main reasons for using a computer in the first place is gaming.

We can't force developers to make native linux applications, without more native linux applications (and games), linux won't get more users, and without more users linux won't get more native applications. So an approach like this is very much necessary to increase the potential userbase of linux and attract gamers from windows to linux, not all gamers are enthusiasts that demand maximum performance after all and the performance hit isn't that bad and may even be nullified for many games in the future if this sees more development.

I was downright surprised valve didn't do something like wine integration for steam when they first made steamos. And I'm glad they're doing it now, because at the end of the day, consumers care more about convenience than anything else, and needing to jump through hoops like several separate wine setups for individual non-native games is anything but convenient.

I've been thinking about the whole photon vs native games.

And what I have come with is this:

Imagine that rather than a windows emulator it was a PS4 emulator that out of the blue was allowing thousands of PS4 games to play with great performance. Would you think it is a bad thing? I don't think so.

[Brisse]

Anyone having any luck with DXVK based games? The only thing I've been able to get to run so far is DOOM in Vulkan mode.

Doom is native Vulkan and thus it is not relying on DXVK.

I've tried three games so far.

Life is Strange: Before the Storm - does not work with DXVK due to lack of stream output support. Runs fine with PROTON_USE_WINED3D11=1 %command% except Xbox controller not working and mirrors in the game render as plain black textures. Performance is good with a solid 60fps at highest settings at 1440p.

Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin - Spent 10+ hours enjoying this with proton. At first it crashed at launch. Then I tried wined3d11 which works fine but has a little bit of stuttering here and there. Then I switched from Wayland to x.org and tried DXVK again and it works there with great performance.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution Directors Cut - Despite being a d3d11 based game, this doesn't seem to run on DXVK no matter what I do but the game works perfectly fine using wined3d11 with great performance. It's not that I'm forcing wined3d11 through a startup parameter, it just doesn't seem to initialise DXVK for some reason. Had some mouse issue where mouselook gets bound inside a box but a quick alt-tab solved it.

[Particle]

Anyone having any luck with DXVK based games? The only thing I've been able to get to run so far is DOOM in Vulkan mode.

[rabcor]

This is huge. I am not sure how I feel about this. Will this make developers now unwilling to work on the Linux port since the "compatibility layer" would take care of this job? Would this end up hurting gaming on Linux?

You have to look at the big picture here. For linux to grow (and get more native software) linux needs a bigger userbase, it's just too small, the industry doesn't take it seriously. A lot of people do not like the direction Windows is going but they can't just "opt out of it" because one of their main reasons for using a computer in the first place is gaming.

We can't force developers to make native linux applications, without more native linux applications (and games), linux won't get more users, and without more users linux won't get more native applications. So an approach like this is very much necessary to increase the potential userbase of linux and attract gamers from windows to linux, not all gamers are enthusiasts that demand maximum performance after all and the performance hit isn't that bad and may even be nullified for many games in the future if this sees more development.

I was downright surprised valve didn't do something like wine integration for steam when they first made steamos. And I'm glad they're doing it now, because at the end of the day, consumers care more about convenience than anything else, and needing to jump through hoops like several separate wine setups for individual non-native games is anything but convenient.

[Particle]

I built Mesa 18.3.0-git using LLVM 8.0 and have DOOM to where it will at least launch now so long as I use OpenGL. Unfortunately, it's a garbled epileptic seizure-inducing nightmare on screen. Nonetheless that is progress!

Update / Edit:
I installed mesa-vulkan-drivers and DOOM runs now (in Vulkan mode only). It seems that LD_LIBRARY_PATH and LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH don't work for letting an application find the vulkan driver built when compiling Mesa. That is how in the past I've always tested newer Mesa builds without doing a make install. Since I'm a believer in package management, I try to avoid that. It's one of the main reasons why I run Debian testing instead of stable. That said, I'm only getting Mesa 18.1.6's Vulkan driver because of this fact. I expect I'll get 18.2.0 pretty quickly once it exits RC status. The Debian guys are pretty aggressive with 3D driver stuff these days in testing.

[Weasel]

Hypothetically, if this involves significantly improving Wine, could this make it a lot easier to run non-games on Linux? It would be great if it made it easy to run line-of-business apps on Linux. If that happened, then I could be truly and completely Windows free.

Obviously any application that will use those features will benefit from them, such as CAD or 3D animation software.

[Weasel]

As I understand it it's still separated and won't be built into Wine itself. It's a project that works with Wine, but not as part of the Wine code.
So whatever work Valve does for the Vulkan parts (vkd3d, dxvk or moltenVK) will stay with those projects, as it should.

It's just a library that gets linked to wine itself.

vkd3d is part of the "wine project" (winehq) which includes other stuff like the website and other components, with the main component being "wine" itself.

Here's the git list