So Valve just released an update to Steam that includes a fork of WINE called Proton that allows Linux users to play and install Windows games as if they were native.

About 30 titles are currently officially supported but more are planned.

Wait already?!

God damn that was quick

@lxmcf They probably waited until it was nearly completed, but that's still great! It even seems to be using Vulkan.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/...

@Jilano I'm not a PC gamer anymore but holy crap this is awesome!

A super mainstream example of Linux and Vulkan is a win for anyone, let's hope this does finally get people to listen about linux as a viable alternative.

@lxmcf Definitely! I would love for Vulkan to be widely adopted, especially since it's better than the old DirectX performance wise.

I wonder how much the Steam hardware survey would change, if Linux was as usable as Windows for gaming.

Nice
If they continue with that I will finally be able to fully switch to Linux.
The only thing that is keeping me at Windows is my Steam Library

@Jilano Well we have DOOM 2016 as a supported game that runs vulkan so ultimate stress test?

@lxmcf Doom runs better on Vulkan with both AMD and NVIDIA cards!

Source 1: https://pcgamer.com/doom-benchmarks...

Source 2: https://reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/...

@StopMotionCuber
Proton is open source as well, so anyone can make patches. If the WINE team likes the patch, they can then patch it upstream and everyone benefits. Open source ftw!

@RiderExMachina FOSS master race!

@lxmcf
Rise of the Tomb Raider has Vulkan, unless you're talking about the Steam Play support...

HELL YES

There is now an unofficial spreadsheet documenting what games currently work or don't. Link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...#

@RiderExMachina yes but Doom is by far the best Vulkan support in a game at the moment

Electron was already taken...

FUCK YEAHHHHH, FINALLY MACHINE REVOLUTION!!!!

FOSS FTW!

Valve is really trying hard to get rid of Windows monopoly. I wonder what is their motive ?

At the other side of coin, won't this make game developers go for DirectX even more ? Since their game will run tolerable on Vulkan / OpenGL, i fear that they won't support it directly :(

thanks for information

@Thib25 or with an own console, running linux as os...

@illegaldisease I can't remember the video but I agree with it when it says valve just like having there finger on the trigger when it comes to the dominant windows gaming platform.

Just to remind microsoft they don't control all games and valve could flick the switch and render windows gaming as just another platform at any time

I can't wait to play some titles that had no official Linux support. Tried workarounds, got laughable results at best.

It actually works pretty well already even with never games. Just for the fun I tried Monster Hunter World and it worked basically out of the box. Even with my Xbox 360 controller.

Here is a website that tires to collect compatibility reports for not officialy supported titles: https://spcr.netlify.com/

@rantOverflow
When I first posted this, Proton had just come out and we had no other information besides "well it's gotta be a fork."

But doesn't Linux have finky gpu support?

@chabad360 It used to have but it has come a long way. Especially the FOSS AMD drivers have become really good. In some games I can basically get the same performance as under Windows with them.

@flocke cool.

AMD, FOSS Drivers. Wow.

But what about Nvidia?

@chabad360 I don't have a Nvidia card, but as far as I know the FOSS drivers for them are not nearly as good. If you want to do gaming on Linux your are pretty much stuck with the proprietary drivers for Nvidia cards (someone correct me if I'm wrong).

The nice thing with the current AMD drivers is that AMD is actively developing the FOSS drivers themselves. The kernel part is actually the same for their FOSS and proprietary drivers and is included in the mainline kernel, so even if you use the proprietary drivers they are just a bunch of userspace libraries and you don't have to recompile a new kernel module every time you update them.
This is the reason I only buy AMD cards for my Linux machine.

@flocke but are the proprietary Nvidia drives any good?

@chabad360 in my case (laptop) I just use the intes "gpu" and disabled the nvidia card, as otherwise my laptop gets fucking hot and the battery is drained in like 30min... So out of my expirience, they suck balls!

@Wack A. Intel's integrated gpu sucks. B. Why would you try to have your battery and eat it at the same time?

@chabad360 never claimed it doesn't suck ;) next machine I'm going to buy will have an AMD card in it...

@chabad360
They're okay. A little bit of a performance loss from Windows and no HairWorks, but they're good enough.

@RiderExMachina what's HairWorks?

@chabad360
Basically an Nvidia thing that makes hair actually behave like hair. Some people care, some don't.

Video here shows it off https://youtube.com/watch/...