Proton 9.0 Beta Makes More Games Playable Under Steam Play, Updates VKD3D-Proton & DXVK

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Proton 9.0 Beta Makes More Games Playable Under Steam Play, Updates VKD3D-Proton & DXVK

In time for weekend Linux gamers, Valve and their CodeWeavers partners today rolled out their first public beta of Proton 9.0 as their Wine-based software that powers Steam Play for enjoying Windows games on Linux with ease under the Steam client...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Proton-9.0-Beta-Steam-Play

[henrik]

Wayland support? 😁

[Kjell]

Is there any easy way to enable Wayland support in Proton 9.0 without having to modify the registry/wine prefix for every individual game?

Edit: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/4638

[MastaG]

It's amazing to see what they've achieved when in control over the full stack (OS, kernel, drivers, user-space etc)...

I have my Steam Deck permanently docked and it's bringing a console experience to the kids.
Even Windows can't match this with its updates and various components always nagging.

But then again when I install the latest Steam beta client on my PC running Fedora / Gnome, it's far from perfect either.
Many games don't scale well, run poorly or not at all.

I really hope the general Linux desktops (Gnome/KDE) will catch up in this regard.

[AlanSMac]

I do love a Proton release with ever improving support. Not much mention of performance but hopefully some improvements there. I installed Auto Mobilista 2 on my Deck the other day and got frame pacing issues where it would go slow then suddenly fast forward mode as you were coming into a corner.

[davidbepo]

kudos to valve for keeping up development of this great piece of SW

[RejectModernity]

Wayland support? 😁

No wayland support atm. But you can bump this thread so the devs might consider enabling it

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/4638

[Eirikr1848]

Proton can only accommodate so much for unoptimized games like Palworld. But they are doing soooo much for gamers on Deck and Linux overall, it’s amazing. Where are we overall with Linux x86_64 PCs in use globally? 40 million? 100 million? More?

> Be me, eager gamer ready to dive into Palworld on my Steam Deck
> Heard it's like Pokémon but with survival twists, can't wait
> Game loads, excitement through the roof
> Realize UI text is smaller than my will to exercise, squinting becomes my new hobby
> FPS drops hit harder than my mom's flip flop, nostalgia but painful
> Battery draining faster than my social battery at parties, only an hour of playtime
> "No worries," I think, "I've battled worse demons in tech support"
> Dive into settings, feeling like a wizard casting optimization spells
> Motion Blur: Off, Anti-Aliasing: TSR, Shadows: Low, my Steam Deck's fan sighs in relief
> FPS finally stable, game looks like a potato, but a smooth running potato
> Battery life extends, now lasts longer than my last relationship
> Still, every victory's sweet, even if I'm playing on a glorified calculator
> Look back at the journey, realize I've become the very tech support I once feared
> It's not about the pixels on the screen, but the adventures and the crashes we survive
> Palworld on Steam Deck, an epic tale of survival, not just for my Pals, but for every frame per second​

[Sethox]

Proton can only accommodate so much for unoptimized games like Palworld. But they are doing soooo much for gamers on Deck and Linux overall, it’s amazing. Where are we overall with Linux x86_64 PCs in use globally? 40 million? 100 million? More?

That was the promise and the project goal for Proton. To take all the pain from developers that releases their application on the Steam Platform, developers has less to think about while Valve has it's community to solve the problems with Proton.

In terms of Palworld, it's beta software/early access, so it's obviously going to be un-optimized.

[skeevy420]

But then again when I install the latest Steam beta client on my PC running Fedora / Gnome, it's far from perfect either.
Many games don't scale well, run poorly or not at all.

I really hope the general Linux desktops (Gnome/KDE) will catch up in this regard.

And it isn't that much better on CachyOS / KDE. What does work usually works great, but Proton containers really add a layer of annoyance that makes things harder for people that aren't computer savvy. When you compare Any Linux OS where extra tools you might want to use are all containerized to Windows where extra tools are all installed globally, that's a BIG change for most people and it greatly increases the difficulty of use. That issue also decreases the amount of games that will run well with all hardware combinations.

IMHO, Valve needs to make a way for users to customize Proton by modifying an existing base Proton prefix so it can include 3rd party programs as well as the ability to update existing game prefixes with those changes. For example, if you play games with head tracking, it's damn annoying having to install OpenTrack into every single individual prefix instead of just once globally (Windows OpenTrack in Wine is better than Linux OpenTrack natively). Compound things like that with Reshade, mod management programs, Ultrawide fix programs, and a lot more, one of Valve and Proton's biggest strengths of prefix containerization is also one of it's biggest weaknesses. It would also help if that method would be smart enough to scan for added DLLs and add them to the overrides.

Individual games in specific scenarios, a lot of times it can be better than Windows. I'd say that's the case for 90% of my games. It's the 10% when it's not like the times when your esoteric hardware needs a 3rd party tool or a game uses shitty DRM that the flaws of Steam on Linux really rear their heads. The CoD and Ubisoft DRM is so strict that I can't run those games off my OpenZFS RAID mounted in WSL2.