Viewing topic When Proton is better than native

Title: When Proton is better than native

Linas 1 Oct 2020

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This one really grinds my gears.

I was playing Black Mesa yesterday, and it had rendering errors and would crash every time I tried to change the rendering settings, would not persist the said setting, and randomly reset the ones I haven't touched. I tried every possible workaround, including editing config files, running outside Steam, running inside Steam Linux Runtime, etc. Nothing helped.

In the end I just switched to Proton, and lo and behold no rendering errors and it is perfectly stable. Performs worse, but it works. On the same graphics drivers and everything.

And this is not the first time I had to do this. In multiple other games I experienced problems with input, rendering, not being able to go fullscreen, etc. All of that disappeared when running the Windows version.

How is that even possible? Do we need some sort of Linux compatibility layer on top of Linux?

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damarrin 1 Oct 2020

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The Windows version gets much more attention from devs and Proton (as in Wine/dxvk) is awesome. Nothing more than that.

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Linas 1 Oct 2020

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Quoting: damarrinThe Windows version gets much more attention from devs and Proton (as in Wine/dxvk) is awesome. Nothing more than that.

Yes, I realize that. What I have trouble grasping is how...

Windows binary -> Windows libs -> Proton -> Linux libs -> Linux drivers

...provides better experience than...

Linux binary -> Linux libs -> Linux drivers

...because both have to go through the same Linux libs and drivers in the end?

It's even funnier how you often cannot enable some graphics options (e.g. something like reflections) in the native version, but they render just fine in Proton. This means that you are perfectly able to render the effect in Linux. Why wouldn't it work natively?

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Liam Dawe 1 Oct 2020

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The problem is the same as always: 99% of the attention goes into the Windows build. Linux is done last, and cleaned up last. It doesn't really help that they're using a version of Valve's old DX -> OpenGL layer that they've tweaked.

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Linas 1 Oct 2020

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So it's not "native" in the sense that the same code is executed on both Windows and Linux, but they have a translation layer of their own that doesn't do a good job, right?

That's very unfortunate. Because when Windows users try their favorite games on Linux, and they get glitch galore, they conclude that it is Linux that sucks. Because it's the same game in their eyes, and Linux is the only variable.

Just makes me sad. :cry:

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Ehvis 1 Oct 2020

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Quoting: LinasSo it's not "native" in the sense that the same code is executed on both Windows and Linux, but they have a translation layer of their own that doesn't do a good job, right?

That's very unfortunate. Because when Windows users try their favorite games on Linux, and they get glitch galore, they conclude that it is Linux that sucks. Because it's the same game in their eyes, and Linux is the only variable.

Just makes me sad. :cry:

Same happens between console and windows and people seem to be perfectly capable of identifying the port as the problem there.

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Linas 1 Oct 2020

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Quoting: EhvisSame happens between console and windows and people seem to be perfectly capable of identifying the port as the problem there.

The difference is that both Windows and console users already regard their platform of choice as the epitome of perfection. So if the game doesn't work well, it is the fault of the game. Linux has no such luxury, because people come into unfamiliar territory, and more often than not with prejudices against it.

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damarrin 1 Oct 2020

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How true. It's always the fault of Linux and a reason to not use it.

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