Second Face Software have announced that their incredibly popular Portal: Revolution mod for Portal 2 has dropped the Native Linux build.
They've had a Native Linux build for a long time, but it became quite problematic and they weren't able to solve the issues players kept encountering. So instead, they're going to ensure it works with Proton where the issues didn't happen.
As they mentioned in their announcement on Steam:
Portal: Revolution, from the start, has included a native Linux build. As some players have recently reported, it was broken because of recent Steam updates. To fix this we have decided to remove the native Linux binaries in favour of Proton. Don't panic.
Our native Linux build sucked. You may have experienced frequent hangs and stutters related to gel rendering or other strange bugs. This stems from a bug in our multithreaded rendering code for gel blobs, and despite our best efforts we were not able to fix it. To make matters worse, it only happens on the native Linux build. Windows and Proton are not affected.
Because of these two reasons we'll ditch the native build and run the game through Proton. Performance should be comparable, if not even better at times and stability is definitely improved.
Valve rated it Steam Deck Verified with the Native Linux version, so this means it will need to be reviewed again with Proton by Valve, otherwise it will cause problems on Steam Deck. For now, you may need to manually opt into using Proton for it in the properties -> Compatibility menu for the game on Steam to run properly.

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In related news, earlier this year they also announced Portal: Revolution 2 is in development, so there's more fun to come for Portal fans.
I'm aware that maintaining native Linux games can be nasty for game devs.
In my opinion, proton is the better technical choice with its modern proven vulkan-based rendering. The proton version might even outlast both the windows and the (theoretical) native linux version.
I recently got GZDoom and Raze compiled to run with Steam Linux Runtime using the official distrobox image...
As long as it's fully playable via Proton, I don't have any problems with that.In theory, I agree with that.
I'm aware that maintaining native Linux games can be nasty for game devs.
But I see one problem: What do devs actually do in case there is a bug in their game specifically with Proton? Do debuggers, etc. work normally through the compatibility layer?
Last edited by tohur on 6 Aug 2025 at 7:37 am UTC