Quoting: Purple Library GuyI'm afraid you missed my whole point. Proton, whether incomplete or complete, is a thing which reduces barriers to adoption. It cannot in itself drive adoption. With Proton, you can potentially say "If I switch to Linux, I can still have my Windows games." But people who stay with Windows can already have their Windows games--that's not a reason to switch.
If barriers are high, there can be drivers of adoption and people still won't switch--they'll say "I'd like to switch, but I wouldn't be able to play my Windows games." So something like Proton is important in its own way. But it is not in itself a driver of adoption, just an enabler if such drivers exist.

For people to switch, there need to be both few and low barriers to switching, and positive drivers, actual reasons why you get something out of switching. My point was that Linux people have tended to work very hard to reduce barriers, but have not put as much effort into creating actual incentives--and Proton is in the former category, not the latter.

That's difficult. People care so little about FOSS principles that DRM and microtransactions are rampant. They praise Microsoft, with the history being forgotten. The history of Microsoft force upgrading users or use D3D as leverage. Customizable and free, is Linux's strength.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyReading through the last bunch of comments I noticed a couple of things.
Some people are talking about the way "the community" behaved at certain times as though that's tactically relevant and we could choose do do that differently in future. It isn't because we can't. It is not a controllable factor. Any uncontrolled community bigger than a certain size will have some people in it who act like jerks. Period. Planning based on the notion that we can make that not be the case is entirely pointless.

Some people in the last few posts are also talking as though if we get Proton working well enough, that will actually cause Linux adoption. It will not. A lot of the story of Linux is about removing barriers to adoption--getting rid of the things that block people from switching. Many, many barriers have been removed, many others have been made much lower. Proton is one of those barrier removers, and a fairly important one. Removing barriers is an important thing to do. IMO, Linux developers have been really very successful at barrier removal, whether it's hardware not working or UI polish or software that does needed jobs. For a lot of use cases, there are no significant ones left.

And yet here we are at about the same market share we've always been at. Removing all the barriers is not enough to drive adoption. The big question coming out of the original article and some of the key discussion posts is, what can be done to create actual pull towards Linux, so that people are not just not blocked from switching but have positive reasons to do so?

You speak of Proton as if it's complete when reality is it's not. It still lacks support for anticheat, and VK3D is still not mature. How can Proton make a significant impact when it's still lacking? I am certain a completed Proton will drive adoption. But as I stated in a previous post, Linux's competitors aren't standing still. Xbox Game Pass, Game Bar (Personally I find it bloat), XCloud, Play Anywhere etc are ensuring people stay on Windows. Proton has already convinced people to switch or use Linux, and I can safely say I am not the only one who has noticed the surge of people asking for help before switching. /r/Linux_Gaming is also increasing in suscribers.
https://imgur.com/BWnpeOs [External Link]

Clearly Proton is having a effect as minuscule as it might be. And I remind you, Proton is not complete. It's still a work in progress. So how can you expect our market share to be 1% or more when Proton isn't complete, Linux gets no marketing or much vendor support?

Another barrier is performance, Vulkan does that. Before I switched to Linux I compared Windows and Linux performance and was disappointed at performance difference (pre Proton/DXVK). Why would anyone switch to a OS that doesn't allow you to play your favourite games or most games in general and the performance is poor?

What can be done is; Valve needs to offer incentive to gamers or developers to consider Linux. Us on the platform need to promote it; Linux Gaming In 2020 - You'll Be Amazed By What's Now Possible [External Link].
But I think it will be premature to promote Linux in mass until Proton has matured further (anti cheat). Because users will switch and find out Rainbow Six Siege and Fortnite can't be played and they get a poor experience. Though making videos informing potential switchers of what current situation is of gaming on Linux is good to do.

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Quoting: appetrosyanI agree to an extent. There’s always a way to politely remind people that their work is not quite up to scratch, and death threats for a job however botched is never warranted. That does not mean that trust cannot be lost and that there are no objective markers of quality. My issue with this debacle is both the immaturity with which we have made a fool of ourselves, and the extent to which the entire community was gaslighted. VP, have learned a valuable lesson about quality of work. We have learned that telling people to kill themselves is a bad thing.

To add to that, I don't believe it's wrong for a developer to rely on Proton at this point in time. My reasoning for that is that for some games or genres Linux isn't that profitable, and thus it's not feasible to do extra work to provide native. The extra work could be used to make more content for windows game.

Streets of Rage [External Link] developers provided keys to Valve so they could make it work with Proton. Ideally I would like native, but I understand that's not feasible and therefor I don't have any ill will against developers who decide to forego native release for Proton one. Provided their reason for doing so is warranted.

But it's important than when developers decide to go for Proton that they do it the right way i.e working with Valve and Valve's recommendations for Proton. Furthermore developers could be kind and give back X amount of money back in form of Steam wallet if players have played their game through Proton on Linux after X hours of played or something like that.

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Quoting: appetrosyanHopefully, we can reach critical adoption and every other proprietary application just becomes outmatched.

Vulkan needs to be dethrone DirectX. Vulkan isn't owned by Microsoft so it will be difficult for them to steer it into a dead end for Linux. Even if developers develop for Windows only, the games will run as good as native with Vulkan. It will make people switch over and eventually the marketshare will be significant enough (3% or more) that publishers can no longer ignore or neglect Linux. There will certainly be (and are already) developers who will rely on Proton as a easy way to earn cash from Linux users, but significant marketshare will surely make others choose more crossplatform software for development. And that will be a major victory in itself, developers choosing other crossplatform software (besides Vulkan) when they up to that point had not done that at all.

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Native ports aren't sustainable. Such releases are so volatile that you can't persuade someone to switch or stay on Linux. Even if we do get native releases, we have to wait much longer than Windows to play the games. With Proton, it's stable and we can play games from first few days they are launched. The reason Proton fails is because there are actors within the industry who's business is reliant on Proton's failure, and they will do things to stop it's momentum.

Linux gaming's opportunity to kick off depends on Proton's success and Vulkan adoption. Imagine Proton and Vulkan as two buddies stuck in a underground cave. Proton has made a straight, narrow and small line up to surface water which both Vulkan and Proton is sustained by. While Proton does that, Vulkan is digging a path up to the surface. If Proton dies, Vulkan will too. Their deaths will symbolize death of Linux gaming's growth.

I can't state it enough, native ports aren't sustainable in general. Despite many major games having Vulkan renderer (Doom, Red Dead, Cyberpunk, etc etc) publishers/developers won't release them on Linux. That is pure fact. And the only way to play these games are through Proton. And when games work on Linux, even if it's not native, people will switch and stay on Linux. Marketshare will grow and that will surely lead to developers and publishers deciding on a Linux port, especially if by that time Vulkan has become widely used in the industry.

That all is a ideal scenario though. Microsoft and other actors will surely do things that will hurt Proton or/and Vulkan.

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This means very little to desktop Linux. Correct me if I am wrong but isn't open source software different than FOSS? One is free (Linux), while other is open source with a restrictive license.

So them admiting they were wrong about open source is a matter of them going back on the decision to share their code. It's not going back on anything else. Many of their apps are either not supported or lacking on Linux. And they stand in the way for desktop Linux to progress. Do you all really believe DX12 Ultimate is a coincedence? In a time when Vulkan is being utilizied (Switch, Android, Proton, Stadia). Gaming is important aspect to get marketshare, and Vulkan being widely used on PC will power up gamng on Linux significantly. With more marketshare more games and apps will come to Linux.

They don't love Linux [External Link]. The notion that they do is bordering on propaganda. They simply love the parts of Linux that helps their business.

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Quoting: KelvinhboI'm only smelling shit here and I'm trying to clean up the smell a little bit, but sometimes people enjoy the smell of their on nastiness and there is not much you can do about it, my setup is irrelevant because I have been able to reproduce it on different cards and CPU's but if you must know my main is a 9900k, GTX 1080 ti at 3440x1440,150-300 fps nice dude! because the game is capped at 250 fps max.

I'm sure I'm not changing any of your minds, Linux purist are far too gone, but if a Window user that is curious about Linux comes here to learn about games reads all this nonsense about "native" ports then tries it out, then see how bad the games runs compared to Windows, That's the best way to keep a 0.4 market share forever.

For AAA and AA games 99% of "Native" Linux ports are garbage, you can confirm this by going into Protondb and seeing the comments on "Native" games there, on almost every game you will find the same advise, "Force the game through Proton, Much better performance", Deus Ex: Makind Devided just became playable for me because of Proton 5 and that's one of the better ports from Feral.

https://www.protondb.com/app/337000 [External Link]

There is no need to go about calling people Linux purists and calling this community shit. I know, you were shunned and mocked but those are actions of those respective users and is not representative of the community. I do agree though that games being touted as native is not a guarantee that they are of high quality.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Kelvinhbo

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Kelvinhbo

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: KelvinhboI wish they would just make sure the game runs well with Proton instead of focusing resources on a native port that would surely be abandoned in a couple months.

If that's how you feel, why are you even using Linux? Go back to Windows. It's one thing to want an old game to work in Proton; one that will likely never see a native version. But you actively wish that a publisher who has announced a native port should abandon it and concentrate on the Windows port. Completely blows my mind, and again proves to me that a lot of 'Linux' gamers only care about their latest fix rather than advancing gaming on Linux.

Native ports, announcements of such, etc, should be praised, supported and encouraged. And in the long run, the use of Proton, while necessary now, should be discouraged. Particularly for new games. It definitely has its place for older games, though.

I have been using Linux since Red Hat 9 kernel 2.2 buddy, you are the one that should be going back to Windows if you are this delusional. Almost every Linux native port that I have tried over the years have performed significantly worst than on Windows, only exceptions are Valve native ports and Feral's recent conversions.

About 90% of the Linux native ports I own have been abandoned for years, Examples: Both Borderlands, both Metros, Bioshock Infinite, Dying Light, etc... the list goes on and on, at this point you can get double the performance, on some cases even more when you force your native ports to run on Proton.

Even a game that wasn't abandoned until recently "Rocket League", performed absolutely horrible on the Linux native port, I could get around 120 fps on Linux, same settings on Windows gave me 250 fps, same settings on Linux with Proton D9VK gave me 250 fps.

Maintaining different ports of games is expensive and time consuming for developers, with this magical little software called Proton all of these hassles are bypassed and everybody wins, with some tweaking I can get almost the same performance as on Windows with Proton, on a few games even better and more stable, maybe when the market share of Linux gamers is over 50% then we can start talking about native ports.

I think native, or natively supported, is the only way forward. Games break between wine versions all the time too.

Support is the key word. And if GNU/Linux wasn't _now_ feasible for gaming, on a technical level, Stadia wouldn't use it.

I respect your opinion even tho I think is dead wrong, that's right support is important witch is why developers should make sure games run well on Proton from the start, instead of making a Linux native port and abandon it a few months later.

By the way! isn't Stadia a complete train wreck right now? I think you should catch up with the news.

Well without support, it's just gaming for Windows. Support doesn't mean "pure compiled native" by the way - wine is fine, so long as it's supported. Basically treating gaming the same as every single other platform.

Stadia doesn't appear to have technical problems with the games. Last I checked. Other issues, yes, but not technical problems with the games.

In other words you are fine by developers targeting native or Proton release as long as they follow the release up with support?

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Quoting: ShmerlOh, so here we see the outcome that was expected from better publishers. Once something is released for Stadia, they can release for regular Linux too. Good development. Would be even better if they released it on GOG too.

Hopefully we'll see more of these kind of developments.

Are you certain of this? It seems to me that Deep Silver have more experience with Linux (and crossplatform tech) and it is this that makes it possible for them to do a Linux release. I just found out Metro Redux will be available for Nintendo Switch 28 February. So they have experience with developing for Linux. They are porting Exodus to Stadia (Vulkan) and Redux for Switch (Likely Vulkan).

The dev I mentioned [External Link] who said Stadia and Linux is far to different. I hope I am wrong and that Stadia makes it far more feasible to port games to Linux. Can you imagine Cyberpunk 2077 on Linux with Vulkan? :O

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I wonder why they are doing this. Don't misunderstand me, this is great, but I thought Linux isn't feasible from a business point of view. I say this with what I heard from a developer, saying that Stadia and Desktop Linux is far to different. So apparently, it seems, the difference isn't that significant? A interview with Deep Silver would be nice.

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