Portal: Revolution drops Native Linux support to focus on Proton

@Purple Library Guy

Quite true, but I suppose the difference is it puts some distance between them and "real" FLOSS Linux applications.

We get tens of thousands of games that run and run very well, and developers can spend more time actually building their games instead of focusing on fixing up issues for our (let's face it) tiny user share. Proton is a good great thing for gamers.

Yes, YES!!! Keeping our (gaming) future tied so closely to Microsoft it's good great!

So is that a statistic or an anecdote? Because my anecdote is, nearly all the games I play are native, and I never have any problems. When I have problems it's nearly always with a Proton game not working, even though I play far fewer Proton games. Although lately my main annoyance is for some reason my Dosbox Steam games are just not starting at all. I haven't played MOO2 in ages now because of that.
So I'd be wary of this kind of generalization. We both have anecdotes pointing in different directions, but I doubt either of us have data.

You can go to any gaming-based forum with some Linux users and you will always see many people say that they've had issues with native games that were solved by switching to the Proton version.
Last Epoch, TW Warhammer (the Feral versions just performs straight up worse, is months behind thus destroying mod support, etc. ), tons of Adventure Maker games (or Adventure Studio? You know, the one everyone and their mum use to create point & click games) have severe issues on Linux especially with windowing and input, Ark, Rust; and the list goes on and on.

That's not anecdotal but confirmed by all the error reports you see for issues and the suggested solution 9/10 times being "switch to Proton".
It is also confirmed by devs shutting down their Linux version because they don't want to deal with the Linux-specific issues (meaning they did have enough of those to be bothersome).
"Works for me" is always anecdotal and no argument when obviously lots of people are having issues.


Funny enough, one thread I've seen throughout all of this is that often the issue isn't actually in the stuff related to graphics (which is arguably the main focus of the work being done on Proton, dxvk, etc), but in the native libraries used for windowing & window refreshing, input, etc.
Surprisingly often, it comes down to usage of ancient SDL1 (which, please devs, just don't. Ever.).
So switching to Proton will solve the issues not because of some graphical bug, but because the native libraries used for the native Linux version are, frankly, crap - or outdated.

There are undeniably lots of cases where it does not work well for people - and then Proton becomes an option.
The other way around just doesn't happen because if Proton is the default already, there IS no native version to switch to.

When you look at ProtonDB and the games that are reported to not work there, they are overwhelmingly of the multiplayer variant. That's probably 70-80% of the less than 10% of games that are reported as worse than Silver - and we all know the issues there are not Linux, but devs opting for the blunt hammer to their cheating issues.

In other words, the chance that your (non-MP) game will work fine on Proton is way over 90%.
The chance that the native version will work just fine? Hard to say without official data (which I doubt anyone has), but given the amount of reports and sentiments you generally see, I doubt it is better than the Proton stats.

Of course I wouldn't recommend going for Proton straight away if there is a native Linux version - because most likely that will work just fine and it will also perform better in that case.
But the approach to just switch to Proton always to get a higher chance at having no issues at all seems at least understandable to me.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 7 Aug 2025 at 7:57 am UTC

Yes, YES!!! Keeping our (gaming) future tied so closely to Microsoft it's good great!

Just a reminder to people that this forum has an ignore feature, in case you want to get rid of sideline ragers who never contribute anything of value to discussions they inject themselves into, are really just annoying everyone and should probably go outside to take some deep, relaxing breaths.

Click on the profile -> block button.

The state of affairs in Linux community saddens me as of late. So much to say but I am clearly in the minority. Never mind...

The state of affairs in Linux community saddens me as of late. So much to say but I am clearly in the minority. Never mind...

You're not alone.

We used to point out games not working well natively on Linux for what they are: bad ports.

We used to ask for ports for each and every game we wanted to buy.

Nowadays not only "I can run it." seems to be enough for most people.

They even started to actively ask developers to not port games.

They even started to attack fellow Linux games asking for ports.

Using Proton will always be being second class citizen.
Proton will always have to chase whatever Windows comes up with.
Proton can at most be on par, but never ahead.

If that's what floats your boat, ok.

But how about letting others have it their way?

> I have plenty of Native Linux games that no LONGER work native out the box but swap proton on and works great.. also have TONS of native ports that run MUCH better in proton then native..

This is why linux native gaming fucking sucks and has done for a long while. Who knows if glibc will break it. Who knows if the distro you run will change how things are compiled and break something obscure. Who knows if the compiler version change will do the same.

Linux on desktop/gaming needs a single source. Not the absurd amounts of random shitty distros and ways of building them with different compile flags, libc versions, kernel and driver versions held back or whatever.

Been on Linux for 25 years and I've grown to dislike it a lot :( Absolutely over the drama of packaging and no flatpak is not the answer, it's just a further abstraction of the same issues and brings *more* bloat.


Last edited by Luke_Nukem on 7 Aug 2025 at 9:52 pm UTC

Nowadays doesn't everyone just target the Steam runtime? And before that, didn't everyone just target Ubuntu, and then maybe add others if they thought about it?

I do think it might be worth having a project that basically reproduces some relevant old libraries and stuff so as to run old Linux games and other older, not-updated software. Presumably it could be as simple as a Flatpak with some old stuff in it. Maybe you'd also want some kind of layer for translating sound and things. You could call it LINE.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 7 Aug 2025 at 11:11 pm UTC

We used to point out games not working well natively on Linux for what they are: bad ports.

We still do.

We used to ask for ports for each and every game we wanted to buy.

... which basically never worked for obvious reasons.
Even now, with a share quadruple of what it was it still wouldn't.

Devs either do a native port for intrinsic reasons or they don't - outside pressure from an absolute minority is a complete futility.

Nowadays not only "I can run it." seems to be enough for most people.

I am going to assume the first "not only" is too much, otherwise I don't get that sentence.
If you can run your game without issues, you can run your game without issues. If the performance is good, it is good.
Everything else is secondary at best.

They even started to actively ask developers to not port games.

If a dev already shows clear signs of not being up to the task of doing and supporting a proper native port, that's an extremely good suggestion.
We've had plenty low effort, zero support ports.
And we had plenty good intentions of devs, who then realized there is actually some work to supporting an additional platforms, and as a consequence stopped. I'd argue it objectively would have been better if those never even tried, because their failure story is guaranteed to carry more weight than any success story (negativity bias & media echo).

Devs already comfortable with Linux are very welcome to do a native port.
But those who never even touched Linux, have no real intention to, and only push the "export to Linux" button? That's a huge risk likely to come back to haunt Linux gaming as soon as a platform-specific bug arises.

They even started to attack fellow Linux games asking for ports.

Yeah, I doubt that - at least no more attacks than anywhere else on social media for any given topic or opinion.
People are people, the social climate is what we live in, it is what it is.

Using Proton will always be being second class citizen.

A clear improvement over what Linux used to be: no citizen at all, and third class or worse often enough even if there was a port.

Proton will always have to chase whatever Windows comes up with.
Proton can at most be on par, but never ahead.

Nice platitudes. But:

What more than "on par" do you need when it comes to video games?
What do you actually want to be ahead of?
Run them faster? Video games are mostly platform agnostic code, any kind of serious performance bottleneck will be cross-platform. At the bottom of it all is usually a C/C++ (or other low-level language) core that is standardized and will thus also behave the same no matter where. MSVC, gcc, Clang, etc all perform within 5-10% of each other, with differences only showing up in (surprise!) platform-specific code.

Features, like eg certain GPU techniques? May be thinkable, but that, too, is mostly hardware-bound.
But nobody would develop such a thing Linux-first, with a 2-3% share.

The gist of everything is that for anything serious to happen, the share has to rise.
That "No Linux support, no buy" crap didn't lead anywhere. Neither did the friendlier variant, the "Linux port pls" begging.
As Valve and years of dedicated work on compatibility layers has shown, you rise the share not by pestering devs with minority demands, but by ease of adaptation and support. And good hardware ideas.

But how about letting others have it their way?

Nobody is stopping you.
You'll just have to live with most people in the Linux community having realized by now that blind idealism leads nowhere and consequently calling others out when they show just that.
Somebody telling you to "just use Proton" is not an attack.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 8 Aug 2025 at 5:56 am UTC