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Update: There's a hotfix out. It has some media foundation fixes to install properly.


Original article

There's no need to wait for Valve and CodeWeavers to update Proton for Steam Play, if you're willing to do a little bit of extra work with a custom build like Proton GE.

Proton GE is one of the unofficial builds of Proton briefly talked about in a previous article, with it just recently getting a rather big update.

Proton-4.15-GE-1 was released a few hours ago updating it to the recently released Wine 4.15. Additionally, it adds in Wine's Vkd3d for running Direct3D 12 games through Vulkan, which you can turn on using "PROTON_USE_VKD3D=1 %command%" as a launch option. There's also an update to D9VK which is on by default, use "PROTON_NO_D9VK=1 %command%" as a launch option to turn it off. On top of that there's also various gamepad updates, fsync was updated and a bunch of Media Foundation work went into it too.

It might sound a little scary using a custom build of Proton for Steam Play but installation is easy though. Close Steam, download the Proton-4.15-GE-1.tar.gz file and place the extracted contents into:

~/.steam/root/compatibilitytools.d/

For the newer Linux gamer: a folder with a dot at the start is hidden. Press CTRL + H to toggle hidden files and folders on/off.

When you re-open Steam, it will then show up as an option to force onto a game. Do so by right clicking the game in your Steam library, go to Properties and then this is at the bottom:

Easy as that.

See the full release notes and download here.

What's the benefit over using the Valve provided official Proton? Custom builds might come with fixes you need right away. Say a game is updated and breaks with the official Proton in Steam Play. You might wait weeks or a month but a custom build like Proton GE could come a lot sooner. It's possible in future, that some custom builds might even do things Valve won't or can't officially. It's just another option to get your games running directly in the Steam client on Linux.

I think it's just awesome that Valve has enabled the use of such custom tools. Just like Boxtron for DOSBox and Roberta for ScummVM, there's a lot of fun to be had.

Hat tip to Bogan.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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36 comments
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trawzified Sep 2, 2019
Wait, the installation is that easy? Lol, I thought I had to compile the whole package myself so I followed all of the steps to set up a virtual environment and it took like 2 hours to compile <.< Glad to know about the faster way, thanks for mentioning it.
Liam Dawe Sep 2, 2019
Quoting: trawzWait, the installation is that easy? Lol, I thought I had to compile the whole package myself so I followed all of the steps to set up a virtual environment and it took like 2 hours to compile <.< Glad to know about the faster way, thanks for mentioning it.
Happy to help. That was initially what I thought when being told about these tools originally but nope, extract the folder and put it in the right place and job done. Lovely stuff. Happy to spread the word.

As always, just here to provide interesting news, what people do with it is their choice :)


Last edited by Liam Dawe on 2 September 2019 at 8:27 pm UTC
gbschenkel Sep 2, 2019
One more thing to try out!
massatt212 Sep 2, 2019
With this hopefully we can run Gears of War 5
Torqachu Sep 2, 2019
Media Foundation protonfixes added for:
-Darksiders Warmastered Edition

Try it I must :D
TheRiddick Sep 3, 2019
Does it include FAudio that works with bethesda games?
gustavoyaraujo Sep 3, 2019
1.4GB? Isn't it a little big?


Last edited by gustavoyaraujo on 3 September 2019 at 3:06 am UTC
0ttman Sep 3, 2019
Quoting: TorqachuMedia Foundation protonfixes added for:
-Darksiders Warmastered Edition

Try it I must :D

Its plays great! 120-140 FPS



I have been messing with different proton settings with Monster Hunter World and triggered the stupid #@%#@$@#$ Denuvo. I hate DRM. Now I can't play it for 24hrs.
elmapul Sep 3, 2019
"It's possible in future, that some custom builds might even do things Valve won't or can't officially"
maybe cough cough, now i can finally play the intro video and the other videos on guilty gear...

its interessing to note that retro arch is coming to steam, looks like we will have an almost complete launcher


Last edited by elmapul on 3 September 2019 at 4:30 am UTC
Spirimint Sep 3, 2019
Because of Proton GE Enderal works perfect. :)

Edit: The new version still works perfect, just the loading Times are much higher in Enderal as with the newest Version of Proton.


Last edited by Spirimint on 3 September 2019 at 4:46 pm UTC
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