Wine on Wayland year-end update: improved functionality and stability | Hacker News Reader

Wine on Wayland year-end update: improved functionality and stability

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135 pointsmfilion43 comments

Along with Proton, Steam Play, the Steam Deck, Easy Anti-Cheat support for Wine, Battleye suppport for wine, FSR and a bunch of other stuff, this means that gaming is getting more viable on Linux.

It isn't there yet, but it's close.

It is there now. I play all sorts of games on Linux, including VR. Some AAA titles are still a no-go but perfection should cannot be the enemy good. I'd say that linux is more useful than any console. Every console can only play approved games, limiting each to a subset of the total number of playable games in the world. Linux, via proton/wine, can today play more games than any console. So if gaming on consoles is a thing today (it is) then gaming on linux is too.

I have read that "gaming" now requires more than just playing games, that you also need to be able to stream and edit videos in order to "game". I think that definition goes to far as I am certainly a gamer but have never felt any desire to stream.

It's on a per-case basis I think. I will call it 'ready' when I can pick up a Linux PC or a Steam Deck off of the shelf with zero fiddling, install and boot up a {Steam, Multiplayer, Non-Steam, comes-with-own-launcher-on-PC} game without any fuss and just play.

Proton has made more games playable than ever before, but there are still those that won't run [0].

EAC and Battleye have announced official support for both Linux and WINE, but still many games are unplayable due to anti-cheat not being supported for those particular games [1].

Steam Deck is coming, but is not out yet.

The Steam Deck UI and SteamOS 3.0 looks like it will be a better replacement for Steam OS 1-2 and Steam Machines by an order of magnitude, but they aren't there yet [2].

Linux active users on steam are at the highest they've been since the release of proton, but still haven't pushed through 3% (and currently around 1%) [3]

So all in all, all the elements are coming together and a LOT of investment is going into it. 2022 will be an exciting year for Gaming on Linux.

But it isn't there yet

[0] https://protondb.com

[1] https://areweanticheatyet.com/

[2] https://boilingsteam.com/steam-deck-developer-kit-impression...

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Steam-Li...

I probably mostly agree with you, but the standard you are holding Linux/Wine/Proton to in your first paragraph is definitely not met even by Windows (any version).

I mean that's fair. I think even getting to Windows parity, warts and all, would be good.

>> when I can pick up a Linux PC or a Steam Deck off of the shelf with zero fiddling, install and boot up a {Steam, Multiplayer, Non-Steam, comes-with-own-launcher-on-PC} game without any fuss and just play.

That is today. Buy any linux PC from any number of vendors. Download KSP and play. Download the steam client and play Factorio. Or install wine/proton and play Subnautica.

My brother owns an Xbox. He wants to play star citizen but cannot on xbox. In fact there are thousands of games that don't run on xbox. That doesn't mean that xbox isn't a fully-fledged gaming device.

> Buy any linux PC from any number of vendors

I choose Currys [0]

> Download KSP and play

I choose Fortnite

> My brother owns an Xbox. He wants to play star citizen but cannot on xbox. In fact there are thousands of games that don't run on xbox. That doesn't mean that xbox isn't a fully-fledged gaming device.

True, I guess it will be up to the gaming community as to whether Linux needs PC/Windows parity in order to be worth using or whether it can be considered its own platform which is worthwhile despite not having any of the games from the links in my above post.

[0] https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/search-keywords/xx_xx_xx_xx_xx...

>> it will be up to the gaming community

No. It is up to gamers. I don't care about Microsoft, RockStar or PewdiePie's position on the state of linux gaming. All the matters is the people who actually play the games.

By "the gaming community" I mean gamers.

Can you pick up a new Windows machine and play my Super Tux Kart binary?

Seems so

https://supertuxkart.net/Download

then they're equal to me

>Valve claims enabling it for Proton is as easy as sending an email.

and the megacorps can't be bothered to send and email and let users fix their bugs, be their test dummies, pay for their software in the name of chicken or egg?

By that standard it will definitely never be ready. But that seems like a really specific and high bar that, for example, Windows won't ever meet. I mean, even ignoring Playstation and Switch exclusives, Windows support of, for example, 10 year old Windows games can require tweaking and fiddling.

The whole business model of https://www.gog.com/ is that you can just buy old games and they work on Windows.

Linux has always played some set of games well enough, usually enough to keep a person busy I'd argue, but the experience has remained subpar and excludes the most common games which is what people mean by viability. E.g. of the 10 most popular Steam games the only 3 that are green (and they are all Steam exclusives which bumps their Steam numbers a bit), the rest either don't launch at all or have severe bugs/limitations. Similarly "nothing has every game" doesn't mean "everything with a game is equally comparable", Steam on Linux is missing significantly more of the top 10 titles than those same 10 titles on console for example. This also largely extends into the top 100 or outside of Steam.

It's almost there though, one of my friends is finally able to play some of the games with us via his Linux install but he still has a Windows install he boots to for most games. A couple years ago he didn't even bother and just ran all gaming from Windows because it was giving too much trouble for too few games. As long as it keeps moving in this direction it will be good!

>> but the experience has remained subpar and excludes the most common games

Minecraft. KSP. Factorio. Counter-strike. Rocket League. Among Us.

>> E.g. of the 10 most popular Steam games the only 3 that are green (and they are all Steam exclusives which bumps their Steam numbers a bit)

Which list are you looking at? Sales or how many people are actually playing these games? I couldn't care less about which games sell the most. What matters is which games are actually being played, something very different than sales. According to this list, the bulk of the most popular games run fine on linux, several natively.

https://newzoo.com/insights/rankings/top-20-pc-games/

Rocket League has been officially unsupported for linux since the beginning of 2020[0]. One can still play it via means others in the thread have mentioned, but for me it’s more notable in this conversation as a popular title that had native linux support and lost it later on.

[0] https://www.rocketleague.com/news/ending-support-for-mac-and...

Minecraft is only supported on the legacy version not the new version you need to play with Xbox/Android/iOS/Switch/PS/Bedrock users, same for Minecraft Dungeons. Rocket League used to be natively supported and now must be run through Proton (though at least Epic hasn't blocked it via DRM like Fortnite), Among Us barely makes the top 100 now and is regularly broken/subpar but it is one my friend was able to play with us when it was popular (with a bit of fighting), Counter Strike works great but is one of the 3 Valve titles I was talking about.

> Which list are you looking at?

ProtonDB https://www.protondb.com/ which uses Steam's live statistics https://store.steampowered.com/stats/Steam-Game-and-Player-S.... I think that site you linked is just republishing Steam's page in a static version (but without the information on which that ProtonDB adds).

If you want to go beyond Steam the numbers only get worse as Valve has been leading the push for Linux gaming, even making their own Linux gaming devices for many years. E.g. Fortnite from Epic typically peaks around 20-30 million active players each day (which is around the same as the peak number of Steam users concurrently logged in whether playing the game or not - albeit not all PC obviously) and you can't even join a match on Linux.

> Sales or how many people are actually playing these games?

The latter, a lot of the most popular games are F2P now so it wouldn't even be possible to do the comparison by sold copies.

I don't stream on twitch but I'll regularly show off a game or something to friends by streaming on Discord.

More than half of the top played games are still silver or worse on ProtonDB so I really don't think we can go around saying Linux is a viable option for most PC gamers. It's good on a case-by-case basis.

Does it? Isn't this just re-implementing stuff that works in X11 to work in Wayland now?

Yes, but the vast majority of games on Linux now run through WINE and the world is moving to Wayland. (notably Valve's Gamescope which will be used in the Steam Deck[0]).

[0] https://github.com/Plagman/gamescope

The only piece not there is the anti-cheat software support.

Most games run perfectly fine, even better than Windows usually. Players just get kicked from online games because of the anti-cheat software recognizing the OS as Linux distribution.

This is mostly on lazy companies who can’t seem to make a simple update to support the proper anti-cheat binaries.

Have any games actually enabled EAC or BattleEye for Wine/Proton yet? So far it's feeling like they put in a whole lot of work for nothing.

Planetside 2 comes to mind. Although the performance in big fights is usually terrible.

https://areweanticheatyet.com/

Also, the Steam Deck isn't out yet, which is what this work has been building towards. There's no reason to say "for nothing" yet

> Easy Anti-Cheat support

Only the newer of two types of EAC: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/01/easy-anti-cheat-not-as...

Oh I love the Chrome example, that could mean that one can watch Netflix in 4K under Linux.

I'm not sure that will work, as Wine will probably break the DRM, which is the reason that non-Chrome OS Linux doesn't get Netflix 4k in the first place.

I tried it on Amazon and it works, but only for their in-house productions. Anything outside of that, you'll get 720p because it can't verify the HDMI chain or something.

I get the same issues under normal usage (MacOS).

I pay for prime, watch a movie I can only legally view there, but I'm not able to plug in a monitor/TV to watch it.

I get an error about DRM not being supported by the monitor and/or HDMI cable. They make some excuse about cables not supporting some ultra 4k setting, but I think that's BS. I can pirate the same resolution content and play it fine on VLC.

I'm paying but still can't watch what I'm paying for. This is why people pirate.

This is why I tend to pay for the movie on whichever service they are on and then go ahead and download the pirated copy for actual consumption. It is important for me to find a way to fund the creators, but the user experience with non-pirated media is quite bad. I just wish there was a way to pay the creators and artists while also hurting the DRM-pushing middlemen.

Wish someone could pull a humble indie bundle on it. Pay per title, download DRM free, most of the $ go to creators, less money pumped into DRM platforms.

Works well with thousands of tiny studios, nearly impossible with the few large ones we have though...

What's the point of going through all this trouble when all content available on Netflix can be obtained more easily without silly restrictions?

Creating and preserving the idea that, generally, individuals ought to be able to view and experience content however they wish, especially if it's legitimately paid for.

But you're supporting the opposite idea by paying for DRM content.

Due to the monopolistic nature of copyright/IP, there is no option to avoid it.

But technically, nobody pays for it. They pay to access an on-demand and at-will service which provides the content. The content itself is never bought (by the consumer, that is).

Sure, but we've been at this for years. It's rarely an all-or-nothing thing. Netflix strikes me as a very reasonable, non-deceptive, consensus solution for the issue. A non-deal-breaking preference would be for me to use my computer just as I use the Roku.

I don't think Chrome supports Netflix in 4K under Windows.

Ah you I right, I assumed it's only a Linux issue.

this looks like this will help apps other than games as well. nice. really hoping for wine to shine so that more software can be used in a linux environment helping with reducing windows dependence.

Oh right. I was having trouble getting Cyberpunk to work nicely with Wayland when it came out and switched to X where it worked, baring some background sounds. I should revisit that and switch back to Wayland and see how it does. Note: the background sounds thing got fixed in a few weeks.

Man, I remember running Cyberpunk on release. Single digit framerates and kernel panics, on a 5700 XT. It became playable within a couple of weeks.

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