Proton has massively changed the game. I'd say the time since 2018 has had more advances in usability than the 25 years before it (for "normal" people), effectively making any "you've been saying this for X years" argument moot.
It is only a moot point for those "I feel good to use Linux kernel to run Windows on top" kind of feeling.
While ignoring it is still Windows games that are being written, by game studios targeting regular Windows deployments, and those same studios might even have Android games written in OpenGL ES/Vulkan, that they won't bother porting to GNU/Linux.
Have some consistency.
Proton is not an escape when it is still Windows software, using Windows APIs, written by companies targeting Windows customers.
The Steam Deck has sold millions of units (increase in audience) and now supports 89% of the top 1000 games at Silver and above (increase in use case). 2% is indeed an increase from where it started in 2018, but it goes to show how many Windows machines are out there that the % isn't higher.
I don't really understand your position. You're vehemently against any Windows code or games running at all and want to belittle, minimise or dismiss any progress that has been made. It feels like you're arguing in bad faith.
That Linux gamers are so starving for Linux native games that they have to contend with running Windows games via an API translation layer?
Not even studios that target other POSIX platforms bother targeting GNU/Linux natively.
SteamDeck sales are a drop in the ocean of Switch, Playstation, XBox, and Windows PC sales, if you feeling like going into war numbers.
But hey, enjoy your "Linux" games.
Few games actually get more fps than on Windows. What alternative runtime would you suggest and more to the point what problem would it actually solve.
If the game studio actually so much as tests on Proton (or more realistically Steam Deck) that’s great gold medal and as much targeting Linux as you can get.
Demanding anything more is not realistic given current market share, but also again what would you even gain.
The actual threat to gaming on Linux is any form of DRM.
It'll do fine. People don't want to re-buy their gaming libraries for an Xbox handheld and the OS integration for the other devices is pretty poor.
I keep reading this on the internet and I’m fully convinced that this is written by people with powerful machines.
Whenever I try to play a game that barely runs at 60 fps on windows in my basic system it invariably runs in the range of 45-55 fps on Linux.
This would be perfectly acceptable except that it eventually leads to stutters that I never experienced on windows..
Ps. Yeah I tried to troubleshoot this with everything google and ChatGPT had to offer: disable composers, different proton versions, different distros and different desktops environments. The matter of the fact is that there’s an overhead and if your system is barely running it on windows you will probably have performance headaches on Linux.
This is not a valid test. You need to compare Linux native vs. Proton rather than (Proton+Linux) vs. Windows. Otherwise you’re comparing at least three things at once.
Who the hell cares? Besides RMS I suppose, but he wouldn't want to run closed source games to begin with.