It has been 7 years since Valve revealed Proton, their compatibility layer to run Windows games on Linux systems. What an incredible time it has been.
  • hallettj@leminal.spaceEnglish
    3·
    2 hours ago

    The article doesn’t specifically mention DXVK which was the real breakthrough innovation IMO. Consider that Wine predates Proton by many years, and vanilla Wine is also fantastic for gaming since DXVK’s introduction. But Valve did fund DXVK by paying its inventor for full time work. So thanks Valve! Thanks Philip Rebohle! Thanks Wine devs! It’s been amazing!

  • mintiefresh@piefed.caEnglish
    34·
    1 day ago

    Proton helped me switch to Linux full time. Before that I was always dual booting.

    It’s a game changer for me for sure.

    • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
      11·
      1 day ago

      Same here. For folks hesitant to switch because of games, I was too, but it really is at the “just works” stage for 99% of games. Even some big AAA competitive online games like Marvel Rivals work on Linux.

      The irony being if Microsoft allowed Windows 11 on BIOS boards I would’ve upgraded before the Recall stuff happened and not thought twice. Always a silver lining I guess.

    • Victor@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 day ago

      Chiming in, same for me. Dual booting for over a decade. Haven’t played on Windows for probably several years now.

    • davidgro@lemmy.world
      10·
      1 day ago

      That’s too bad really. Wine is an incredible achievement, even Microsoft spends a lot of effort to keep Windows programs running on new versions, and Wine goes above and beyond every update.

  • blx@lemmy.zip
    9·
    1 day ago

    I made the switch a few months ago with a Win backup drive just in case. It sadly saved my bacon on a couple occasions. Still, I (mostly) use Arch, btw.

    Relic released the Definitive Edition of Dawn of War last week. It ran with no issues until I started playing with a friend who’s on Windows. Then we encountered frequent game-breaking desync issues specific to Linux/Win crossplay. Not even a week after release, the devs pushed a hotfix for this (among other things).

    It’s a good sign that gamedevs have started taking Linux compatibility seriously, and that makes me very happy!