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Valve are preparing to ship the next version of Proton, their compatibility layer that runs Windows games on Steam Deck and Linux desktop with Proton 7.0-4 having a Release Candidate ready to test.

This only went up a few hours ago and you can try it and report feedback to Valve. As usual for testing releases, the current list of changes may be different to when it's out officially. To test it out you need to opt into the Beta on Proton 7 directly. So search for Proton 7 in your Steam Library, go into the Properties, Betas and select the "release-candidate".

Here's what's new / improved:

  • Now playable:
    • Aquarist - My First Job
    • Trove
    • Chuzzle Deluxe
    • Zuma's Revange!
    • Karmaflow The Rock Opera Videogame - Act I & Act II
    • The Rising of the Shield Hero: Relive The Animation
    • Disgaea 5
  • Support automatically bringing up on screen keyboard on Steam Deck in Final Fantasy XIV launcher.
  • Fix Final Fantasy XIV launcher exiting silently when there's not enough space to download the update.
  • Fix The Ball displaying error message on the first launch.
  • Fix video playback in: POSTAL: Brain Damaged.
  • Fix Hardspace: Shipbreaker failing to connect to online services.
  • Fix music in Let's Build a Zoo.
  • Fix Azur Lane: Crosswave hanging on a black screen for some users.
  • Fix Dokyusei Bangin' Summer showing only flickering black window.
  • Fix Bloons TD 6 crashing on touch input.
  • Fix Sid Meier's Civilization IV crashing on world creation.
  • Fix Assassin's Creed Origins hanging during gameplay after recent game update.
  • Fix Call of Duty: Black Ops II - Zombies and Call of Duty: Black Ops II - Multiplayer crashing after connecting online.
  • Fix graphical glitches in Cossacs 3.
  • Fix garbled audio in Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak.
  • Fix Elite Dangerous and other launchers not working properly when cloned displays are present.
  • Implement Vulkan other process rendering (used by nw.js games).
  • Improve performance of HROT.
  • Improve video playback for many games that previously required targeted hacks.
  • Reduce space used by game prefixes if filesystem supports copy on write.
  • Update dxvk to v1.10.3
  • Update vkd3d-proton to v2.6-1-gc05900da

If you wish to try it and give feedback, Valve are mainly interested in issues that are directly new in the release candidate builds. So if you find something is broken between Proton 7.0-3 and Proton 7.0-4, Valve need to know about it. A lot of the changes are coming over from previous builds of Proton Experimental.

You can report issues on the GitHub page.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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15 comments
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STiAT Aug 5, 2022
I am basically on experimental for all games without hickups except the one or two bad releases which got a fix within an hour.

And often they carried fixes I wanted rather sooner than later, as the ffxiv launcher or stray performance improvements.
CyborgZeta Aug 5, 2022
Dokyusei needs its audio loop fixed more than anything else.
Purple Library Guy Aug 6, 2022
"Karmaflow The Rock Opera Videogame"
Huh. Isn't Brütal Legend the rock opera videogame?
dos Aug 6, 2022
> Reduce space used by game prefixes if filesystem supports copy on write.

Oh, that's something Deck users are going to like.
Phlebiac Aug 6, 2022
Quoting: dos> Reduce space used by game prefixes if filesystem supports copy on write.
Oh, that's something Deck users are going to like.

I don't think Steam Deck supports it? If I understand correctly, it uses ext4.
Nick Aug 6, 2022
Quoting: Phlebiac
Quoting: dos> Reduce space used by game prefixes if filesystem supports copy on write.
Oh, that's something Deck users are going to like.

I don't think Steam Deck supports it? If I understand correctly, it uses ext4.

I do wonder if Valve is considering converting the file system to Btrfs or even ZFS, though. Copy-on-write plus compression might be beneficial on the Steam Deck (at least Btrfs will not use compression on a noncompressable file by default)
furaxhornyx Aug 6, 2022
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Quoting: Purple Library Guy"Karmaflow The Rock Opera Videogame"
Huh. Isn't Brütal Legend the rock opera videogame?

I had to check on the box, but no, it only mentions "Brütal Legend (a game by Tim Schafer)"
dos Aug 6, 2022
Quoting: PhlebiacI don't think Steam Deck supports it? If I understand correctly, it uses ext4.

It uses Btrfs, but I forgot that it's only for / - the library is on a (case insensitive) ext4 partition, so yeah, not applicable there.
RichardYao Aug 6, 2022
Quoting: Nick
Quoting: Phlebiac
Quoting: dos> Reduce space used by game prefixes if filesystem supports copy on write.
Oh, that's something Deck users are going to like.

I don't think Steam Deck supports it? If I understand correctly, it uses ext4.

I do wonder if Valve is considering converting the file system to Btrfs or even ZFS, though. Copy-on-write plus compression might be beneficial on the Steam Deck (at least Btrfs will not use compression on a noncompressable file by default)

It likely refers to reflinks, which are not supported by ZFS:

https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/405

Both btrfs and XFS support them. It is a shame that they used ext4 instead of XFS on the steam deck.
RichardYao Aug 6, 2022
Quoting: Nick
Quoting: Phlebiac
Quoting: dos> Reduce space used by game prefixes if filesystem supports copy on write.
Oh, that's something Deck users are going to like.

I don't think Steam Deck supports it? If I understand correctly, it uses ext4.

I do wonder if Valve is considering converting the file system to Btrfs or even ZFS, though. Copy-on-write plus compression might be beneficial on the Steam Deck (at least Btrfs will not use compression on a noncompressable file by default)

ZFS does not use compression on incompressible files either.

It would be awesome if they switched to ZFS, although ZFS does not support the reflinks that Valve likely meant by copy on write:

https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/405

That said, the prefixes already used symlinks, which give similar space savings.


Last edited by RichardYao on 6 August 2022 at 7:29 pm UTC
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