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

[tarceri]

Good for Linux on general, but I feel sorry for CodeWeavers, though I suppose most of their business comes from macOS users anyway.

From the official announcement:

Q: What is Proton exactly? How does it differ from normal Wine? Who worked on it?

Proton is a tool distribution based on a modified version of Wine. The included improvements to Wine have been designed and funded by Valve, in a joint development effort with CodeWeavers. Here are some examples of what we've been working on together since 2016:

• vkd3d[source.winehq.org], the Direct3D 12 implementation based on Vulkan
• The OpenVR and Steamworks native API bridges
• Many wined3d performance and functionality fixes for Direct3D 9 and Direct3D 11
• Overhauled fullscreen and gamepad support
• The "esync[github.com]" patchset, for multi-threaded performance improvements

Modifications to Wine are submitted upstream if they're compatible with the goals and requirements of the larger Wine project; as a result, Wine users have been benefiting from parts of this work for over a year now. The rest is available as part of our source code repository for Proton and its modules.

In addition to that, we've been supporting the development of DXVK[github.com], the Direct3D 11 implementation based on Vulkan; the nature of this support includes:

• Employing the DXVK developer in our open-source graphics group since February 2018
• Providing direct support from our open-source graphics group to fix Mesa driver issues affecting DXVK, and provide prototype implementations of brand new Vulkan features to improve DXVK functionality
• Working with our partners over at Khronos, NVIDIA, Intel and AMD to coordinate Vulkan feature and driver support

[davidbepo]

i just tried it with a crappy old game, and IT WORKS! now to test my favourite game, warframe, the hype is real

[audir8]

165/233 games on Steam are Linux games for me. Getting the Steam beta, it's 166/233 (Doom), and enabling the option to play all games through Steam Play, it shows all 233 games are playable on Linux. I'm sure better statistics will help them port "important" games, and I can't wait to play Quake Champions. Bye-bye wine prefixes, it's been good while it lasted. Just launched Sins of a solar empire, and it works great.

I don't think Linux ports of games are affected much, other than Linux market share going up, and with it coming better ports.

[M@GOid]

This looks like very bad news for port developers like Feral, Virtual Programming and Aspyr.

I may use this for Windows games that I already have and do not have a chance for a port, but I stand by the mantra "not tux, no bux".

[Mario Junior]

Goodbye, Windows!

[geearf]

Why ? Anything native should be better than that crap wine

It's obviously for testing purposes, but Wine may actually perform better than many so called native ports, especially with Nine or DXVK.

[cybertraveler]

i am not exaggerating when i say this is the linux gaming new of the year, happy and excited to hear this

I think we should all mark the 21st of August as the linux gaming new of the year!

Let us not forget this day.

[ramrod]

This looks like very bad news for port developers like Feral, Virtual Programming and Aspyr.

I may use this for Windows games that I already have and do not have a chance for a port, but I stand by the mantra "not tux, no bux".

There will probably still be plenty of quirky games that just refuse to work with a wine solution that they can port. In the end this could potentially help them by bringing more customers over to linux, meaning more customers for those games.

[lectrode]

The source repository does confirm that DXVK is being used for the Direct3D on Vulkan support.

I would hope so. From their announcement, they employed the main developer of it:

In addition to that, we've been supporting the development of DXVK, the Direct3D 11 implementation based on Vulkan; the nature of this support includes:

• Employing the DXVK developer in our open-source graphics group since February 2018

I think this can only be good news for Linux on the Desktop. More games (easily) playable on Linux means more people can switch to Linux and still play their games, meaning that the overall Linux Steam market share can really start to grow, and developers can see all the people switching to Linux and start making even more games natively support it. The fear that developers will be lazy and say "the game runs in Proton, my work is done" is a short-sighted fear that will only affect the near-term. As the market for Linux users grows, so will the demand for native Linux games.

Valve (and all the contributers to WINE and Graphics drivers) is continuing to grow and support gaming on Linux at an ever-growing rate. DXVK alone is HUGE for getting more gamers to switch to Linux, allowing for the first time playing AAA DX11 windows games (like GTA 5 and some of the COD series) on Linux at a comparable performance without having to use KVM or virtual machines or dual- booting. Just look at all these titles, many of which were previously unplayable or required the aforementioned workarounds, that now run nearly flawlessly on Linux: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGf...lvecaXQ/videos


If I were to say I'm excited for the future of Linux gaming, that'd be an understatement!!

[ConvexEd]

Amazing news. It being integrated into the client with just a few clicks is a godsend. Now if it just works as well, then it's great for all of us. The more people join Linux the better.