Quoting: Cyba.Cowboy

Windows games with no Linux version currently available can now be installed and run directly from the Linux Steam client, complete with native Steamworks and OpenVR support.

So how does this work?

Is it in reference to Microsoft Windows-based games bought through Steam, or can I run any old .exe file and Steam will setup it up via WINE for me?

Bought through Steam. As I understand it, if you just have some program from elsewhere you still have to run Wine the old fashioned way. People have been speculating how one might get around that but I don't know if anyone's come up with anything.

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One thing that occurs to me is that this may be a boon to the Wine project in a way. The Winehq platinum/gold/etc list was kinda notorious for getting out of date. With all these people playing on Steam, already on a single centralized platform with easy feedback methods, the picture of just what works and what doesn't and how and why may become a lot firmer, allowing faster improvement. It may also attract new people to work on Wine because it will be right in view, front and centre for a lot more people, and perceived as more important.
There's always been a perception that Wine would never really be "done", but at the rate it's been developing lately and at the rate it may develop now with even greater focus on it, that perception may turn out to be mistaken. Well, at least for people with AMD graphics, where the community can make sure it all works.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: no_information_here(...)

Thank you very much, that West Area Computers story is very interesting and quite uplifting. A bit like the story of R. Admiral Grace Hopper.

But it is not what i have in mind. The story i had heard (which may be false) described an army of people doing extremely basic operations. People selected with no mathematical education so an not to be distracted by it. Extreme mathematical Taylorism. Maybe it is an urban legend.

I read a science fiction novel where they did that. "Souls in the Great Machine" and sequels, by Sean McMullen. It was pretty good.

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Quoting: baccilus

Quoting: NeverthelessIf this doesn't help then what will?

That is right. If this doesn't help, nothing can.

Nonsense. I already mentioned some other things that could help in my wall o' text a few posts ago. One thing that would most certainly help is mass marketed retail desktop and laptop computers running Linux. I love System76, ZaReason etc. but they are small companies with small retail channels selling mostly to the already converted at arguably uncompetitive prices. I mean mass marketing by big companies with big retail channels, like if someone bought a computer at random they'd have a decent chance of happening to hit a Linux one. Basically, OSes will mainly be used in proportion to how many computers with those OSes on them are sold. Microsoft's stranglehold on pre-installs has always been the key to their dominance. Breaking it directly would absolutely work--it's just very difficult to arrange.

That's why Chromebooks are important. They are in fact a computer with a Linux OS slowly breaking the MS retail stranglehold. Note how they've been succeeding by defining a niche which can be seen as only quasi-desktop-computing and are now starting to expand out of it. Thing is they've got an established retail channel now, so stores aren't going to laugh at them when they want to expand/diversify it a bit.
Steam Machines were an attempt to do a similar thing, define a niche (a potentially quite large niche) that was not exactly desktop computing, and populate it with Linux boxes. It's a tough niche though, and both Valve and Linux weren't really ready. Linux at least is pretty close to ready now though, and this Proton thing is a significant piece of that readiness.

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Quoting: adolson

Quoting: mylkahave you thought linux would ever have AAA titles like tomb raider or hitman?

...yes. During the first big wave of Linux gaming, starting around 2001, we had a bunch of great games, including some pretty big titles, years before Steam even existed.

Here are just a few of what I played back in the day: Civilization: Call to Power, Descent 1-III, Neverwinter Nights, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament (and 2003, and 2004), FreeSpace 2, Heretic II, Soldier of Fortune, Heroes of Might & Magic III, Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns, Majesty Gold, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Postal 1+2, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Railroad Tycoon II, Rune, Serious Sam: The First/Second Encounter, Sim City 3000 Unlimited, Sacred: Gold Edition, and more.

I still have most of my game discs, too. Some are Windows versions with binaries released after the fact, some are ports published specifically for Linux (usually by Loki or LGP), and some had the binaries on the disc alongside the Windows version.

The Sims was also available for Linux, ever so briefly, thanks to Transgaming's "WineX technology" (later renamed to "Cedega" ). They even bundled it with Mandrake Gaming Edition... Nobody remembers this shit but me?

Yeah, I remember. I can still get my Alpha C disk to run if I tinker more than I'm normally used to, although I think last time there was no sound.
I do think you have a point. This is clearly a play by Valve intending to grow Linux marketshare, because they fear Microsoft's moves may at some point kill their business, and if you take some of Gabe's statements at face value, because they like open. But, it might not work. I remember when Linux suddenly went from a few moldering Loki ports to somewhere close to as many games as Mac, I thought for sure that would be enough for a significant influx of the more casual gamers, especially since where people hate Windows 10 now, they hated Windows 8 then. That shift does not seem to have happened in numbers big enough to nudge Linux market share visibly. So this, too, may not be enough of a push to make a huge difference. In the end, maybe nothing short of some of the big computer sellers, like Dell and Acer and all the other hacks, preinstalling Linux on half their stuff (as in, half the boxes being sold on store shelves), will actually work--and MS has had fixes in there for a long time.

At the same time, I suspect Valve has some other shoes which it is positioning to drop. And then there is the side question of Chromebooks. Chromebooks have been quietly selling quite well for years now, but in the last year or so Google have started to quietly migrate them up the value chain. They're not all tiny toy laptops any more. At the same time, Google seems to have been somewhat sidelining the original "everything in the browser" gimmick in favour of letting ChromeOS be, to some extent, the real (Linux) OS it always was under the hood. Soooo . . . at some point, Google is going to be selling appreciable numbers of Chromebooks capable of playing actual games. Steamplay anyone? Voila: Mass marketed computers with a Linux OS preinstalled, capable of playing most Windows games (and of course a lot of native Linux ones, and Android stuff as well).

I don't think Steamplay is a slamdunk, particularly not all by itself. It lowers the barriers to switching (again) but the crowd who have any idea what switching even is remains comparatively small. But it is a good move, a fair number of people on the fence may well switch, and above all it does not strike me as something which is likely to be an isolated move. Add in Steam Machines redux, Chromebooks at the higher end, some other retail play, Sony going with Vulkan . . . there are lots of moves that could go with this. What's that overused buzzword--synergy. This is the kind of thing that can have synergy with other stuff.

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Quoting: dubigrasuNaive question, what's with the name Proton? Must be some reason behind this name. Just curious.

Whatever the reason, it's a pretty positive name.

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Quoting: aFoxNamedMorrisLiam, I'm pretty sure that only whitelisted Windows titles count as Linux purchases. Could be wrong, but I was under that impression from their initial announcement.

I'm pretty sure no. What they said to Liam was, "Playing on Proton counts as playing on Linux". Seems pretty unambiguous. I don't see why it would matter whether the thing you played on Proton was whitelisted or not, you're playing on Proton.

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Quoting: silmethRegarding the Linux ports… I find it pretty ingenious that Valve released the Proton-for-Steam-Play now. If they had done this – provided their own Wine for launching non-native games – when they launched SteamOS, I think what would have happened would be lack of native Linux releases – most developers would be happy they are on SteamOS thanks to translation layer, perhaps they would put some effort to ensure their Windows game is Wine-friendly, but that’s all. Perhaps SteamOS could gain a bit more popularity that it did in reality, but I don’t think it would be a great success in this scenario either…

Instead, Valve kept Steam on Linux without an easy play-Windows-games-on-Linux mode for 5–6 years, during that time they’ve released SteamOS which did not provide any easy way to install non-native games (one had to manually install Wine and separate Windows version of Steam for that), and that forced quite a few developers who did not want to be left out of Valve’s new platform to actually start properly supporting Linux. It also made Feral and Aspyr focus on porting to Linux.

And only now, after releasing native Linux version became a pretty standard practice (at least for some game publishers) and stopped being a weird exotic exception to overwhelming number of Windows-only releases, only after over 3 thousand games on Steam have native versions, they release built-in Proton that allows one to install and play the remaining Win-only games.

Valve already brought some publishers to Linux, in doing so proved that porting to Linux is technically feasible, that games do work on Linux, and that distros diversity isn’t really a problem.

Only now, when porting to Linux is an established practice, thanks to this feature – which seemed obvious to me already around 2013–2014 that it’d be needed to convince more people to use Linux / Steam Machines – Valve, I believe, will actually bring new players to Linux. How many will be convinced, though, remains to be seen. But I think the future is bright.

I think the timing isn't quite so ingenious as you suggest. This may be good timing . . . but it's more making a virtue of necessity. Back then it simply wouldn't have worked. It's not just that Wine wasn't ready, graphics drivers weren't ready, Vulkan wasn't there. Pieces have been coming together gradually, some of them with strong encouragement from Valve, and now they're in place--or, close enough that getting this thing going is less a disappointment and more an impetus to making it more solid.

I still think there could be a re-release of Steam Machines in the works--although given Valve time, probably not right away. Imagine if Steam Machines had had this Steam Play feature and games running Vulkan--there might have been quite a bit more uptake, although there were other issues.

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The googly eyes make them look a bit like Kerbals.

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Quoting: GuestI'm sure I will get attacked for this, but here goes. As per usual, disclaimer, my thoughts are my own and not that of VP, etc..

A big issue here is, does Proton really mean "Linux support" ? I don't think it does. Here's why.

When you get a port to Linux, even if it's by a third party, a lot of work has been done to bring that game over to the platform... even if a D3D wrapper has been used etc (i'm not going to go into the "lazy wrapper" argument). The porter is selling you a product that is certified by them to work with Linux, and has official backing of the original developer/publisher. If something doesn't work, or breaks, there is an official support method available. It is someones job to provide help on getting it working, and to fix that if it doesnt.

With Proton, the original developer and/or publisher doesn't have to do anything - that includes support the game running in any way on Linux. It is effectively the same situation has it has been for years with Wine - if it runs, great.. if not, it's not the original dev/publishers problem. They wont support you. As far as they are concerned, even if you bought on Linux, and it shows up on their ticker that it was a Linux sale, you bought a Windows product, and you are not running it via an officially supported method.

Nor will it be Valve's problem. There is no way they are going to provide support for every issue running every game on Linux. Nor will they be any more able to deal with bugs in those games on Proton than the Wine developers are. It could be years, or never, before you get a fix for a particular game not working. Or the next build of Proton could break a previously working game.

So, while I can see how Valve thinks this is a good thing for getting games on Linux, and getting gamers over to Linux, it in turn has a big impact to those of us who were bringing games over to Linux officially. I don't see how Proton is going to help us with the big issue of getting publishers interested in Linux as a platform... in fact, I see it doing the opposite.

You're absolutely right, but none of it matters. The question, the only real question, is whether this maneuver (and perhaps other related maneuvers) can actually drive an increase in Linux use. Network effects ultimately rule over the sort of issue you bring up--if Linux has a strong desktop marketshare, publishers will ultimately release on, or want to port to, Linux. Even if there's a solution of sorts through Wine, the sales will be stronger with a real Linux release. If Linux does not have a strong desktop marketshare, publishers will ultimately not release on Linux. Bigger marketshares get paid attention to, smaller marketshares do not.
The only reason desktop/gaming Linux gets as much attention as it does is its very large marketshare in most computing areas other than the desktop. It is a niche gaming/desktop OS, but not a niche OS overall. But that only takes us so far.

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