I'd just stick to gaming on regular Linux.
But I suppose it can be useful for arguing that Linux gaming market is expanding, so developers who like to excuse lack of Linux releases with market size will have less excuses now.
But I suppose it can be useful for arguing that Linux gaming market is expanding, so developers who like to excuse lack of Linux releases with market size will have less excuses now.
Why bother with official Linux support when you can just check that your game runs via Proton and push the burden of support onto Valve and the Proton community?
And it's probably not always the case that Windows games perform better on Linux through translation than on Windows.
Besides, Wine has to play constant catch up to all kind of NIH stuff that MS will produce. Direct storage is the new one that doesn't have any translation implementation yet. So value of native releases won't disappear.
Do you have a link? Everything I found suggest that it's the other way around, but Linux comes close.
* https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/linux-graphics-x-org-d...
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo1khMYMO5c
The above is for AMD. And I saw people with Nvidia reporting it performing better on Linux as well.
Ultimately if it becomes popular enough, Proton could execute the embrace, extend, extinguish strategy on Windows itself. We'll know it succeeded if one day Microsoft gives up NT kernel development in favor of shipping Linux/Proton, just the way they ultimately gave up on Trident and started shipping Blink/Chromium. Today Windows is a relatively small and shrinking percentage of Microsoft's revenue so maybe it's not out of the question in a decade or two.
Linux userspace API has no promise of long term compatibility, and in fact there's a lot of churn, especially nowadays as we approach the Year of the Linux Desktop and technologies come and go as they're improved.
The Windows API instead is known for its long term compatibility. Microsoft goes out of their way to ensure applications keep running a decade later, and using that as a base for gaming is a win-win, as developers can target two operating systems with one API, and gamers have more guarantees their game will still be playable on Ubuntu 2030 edition.
The last few times I played native Linux games I had to fish for old and unsupported libssl and libjpeg libraries that my distribution doesn't ship anymore. I can blame the port, but nowadays I just try the Proton version first.
So I agree with your point that long term Wine offers better support than Linux native ABIs.
I doubt Windows ABIs are better than Linux native ones on their own long term wise (i.e. without Wine).
That said, it would be cool for someone to develop Wine-like wrapping of historic Linux ABIs into modern ones so you could have the same preservation effect.
There was for example such project for older SDL over new one.
Lots of games from the early 2000s still run as-is on Windows 10/11, and many games have updated versions on Steam or gog.com as well.
However, the real question for Linux is: is there any comparable long-term stable distribution format for Linux games other than Windows binaries?
If so, how popular is it?
Only Steam provides such a runtime, but outside of Steam you're out of luck.
Example: https://www.gog.com/game/vampire_the_masquerade_redemption
GOG doesn't list recent Windows as supported. But it works in Wine.
In this sense, the long term way to run old Windows games is Wine on Linux because Wine translates old Windows ABIs into modern Linux ones.
But there is no comparable translation of old ABIs for native Linux ones.
Actually, it's the other way around. Old windows games run fine in Proton, and have weird issues in Windows.
The so-called steam runtime can be targeted by devs to prevent this.
Now install the game.
Just keep using DirectX and Win32, and let Steam handle shipping an Windows layer on top fo Linux while calling it "Linux gamming".
Right now Steam is only targeting higher end Chromebooks that make up a small fraction of its market share, but I’m sure they’ll improve that over time.