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Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

The important part here is of course not just the Steam Deck support, but the fact that the Steam Deck is just a handheld Linux computer; if it works there, it will work on any Linux machine.

I recently switched (again) to Linux for gaming, and the experience is much better than the previous times I tried it. I don't think I've come across a game that doesn't work. Some games a few tweaks, especially non-Steam games, but quite often the solution is simply to check the "use Steam runtime" checkbox in Heroic. So non-Steam games still benefit from the excellent work by Valve.

I don't think I'll go back to Windows this time.

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> The important part here is of course not just the Steam Deck support, but the fact that the Steam Deck is just a handheld Linux computer; if it works there, it will work on any Linux machine.

Kind of but not that simple.. The 'secret sauce' if you can call it that is the "Steam Proton" compatibility layer for Windows graphics APIs using a combination of Wine and DXVK.

So 'any linux distro' is a bit of a stretch, in fact I'm not sure the public availability of the Proton as it was a partnership with Valve and CodeWeavers.

Edit: `DXVK` is DirectX over Vulkan which is fast becoming more performant and ubiquitous.

Edit2 : Proton's repo - https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton

Yeah, but that compatibility layer, and steam itself, is available for all (PC-based) Linux distributions, as far as I know. I don't doubt you'll run into problems if you want to use it on devices never meant to run games at all.

Even non-Steam games, installed through non-Steam platforms (like Heroic, which supports GOG), still have the option of using Valve's version of Proton, use the Steam runtime itself, or even apparently importing the game into Steam (I haven't tried that yet). Valve is not monopolizing Steam gaming, but sharing this support.

That does sound good and of course valve are interested in getting it more widespread and compatibility down.

[s] My only concern is that "out of the box" is what most people expect. Not all gamers would be knowledgeable about how to compile proton for their vanilla Ubuntu. Although who knows! [/s]

Still I would love something for MacOS but looks like this would be a pain to compile.

Edit: You can ignore 75% of that

> My only concern is that "out of the box" is what most people expect. Not all gamers would be knowledgeable about how to compile proton for their vanilla Ubuntu. Although who knows!

You just install Steam.

He (bilekas) obviously has no clue about the topic he's talking about.

Hmmm.. Well to be fair the last time I did was a long time ago.

Guess you can disregard all the above! My bad

I'm rather amazed at how well Steam and other game platforms have been integrated into Linux. I'm using EndeavorOS, not exactly the most common distribution, but installing Steam and Heroic is just a matter of a simple command to install. Works great. Documentation is great. Easy as pie.

This guy is clearly trolling

Have you actually tried setting up linux, downloading steam, and downloading a windows game?

Unfortunately there is pretty big differences between the states of the various GPU drivers on Linux which impacts Proton. A game playable on a Steam Deck is not necessarily playable on a system with an Intel Arc A770 or GeForce RTX 4060 despite those GPUs being more powerful.

From what I understand, NVidia used to have poor Linux support, but apparently that's been fixed. In any case, I haven't run into any serious issues with my RTX 4070.

I've been using proton for years at this point and have yet to experience such an issue.

Where have you actually ran into that issue?

Currently Arc cards don't support DX12 games at all through Proton. Nvidia issues are a little more random but they aren't hard to find. Call of Duty WWII ran like a slideshow regardless of settings on my Geforce 1660 but ran fine on my Steam Deck.

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