5 years ago Valve released Proton forever changing Linux gaming
5 years ago Valve released Proton forever changing Linux gaming
Has it really been that long? Apparently so. Valve originally announced their rebranding of Steam Play with Proton back on August 21st, 2018. Seems like a good time for a quick reflection being halfway to a decade old now with the tech that gave rise to the Steam Deck.
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/4952617
Happy birthday, Proton!
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It's important to remember that it's based on wine, which has been around for 30 years.
That's true for sure, but that doesn't mean that it's valve didn't do an absolute fuckload of work to get proton to be actually functional.
Getting direct3d and vulkan working with actually useful performance was the turning point for Wine being useful for games in addition to just standard applications.
They definitely spent an ass-load of money on that and the fact that Wine was around for 25 years before that just goes to show that no one else was willing to do that.
Getting direct3d and vulkan working with actually useful performance
They definitely spent an ass-load of money on that
[citation needed]
I'm not aware of Valve or Doitsujin ever revealing how much they paid him to make DXVK. I assume they paid him reasonably well, but I doubt it was an ass-load.
the fact that Wine was around for 25 years before that just goes to show that no one else was willing to do that.
Or maybe that Wine was a lot more work than the direct3d-to-vulkan shim that was done mainly by one person (now two people).
Valve definitely helped by funding a few key projects, and packaging them in Steam made them convenient to use, but I think exaggerating their role unfairly diminishes the much larger body of work (done by other people) that makes it possible at all.
Proton stands on the shoulders of giants.
I mostly agree with your comment, but...
the fact that Wine was around for 25 years before that just goes to show that no one else was willing to do that.
Remember that Wine is built by community of volunteers (afaik, tell me if I'm wrong), and they don't have as much resources as company worth billions USD.
A lot of the development for Proton has also been community-based. Aside from whatever Steam has done to directly improve Proton, just creating the Steam Deck, and SteamOS has brought so much more attention and focus to improving it to an extent that probably wouldn't have happened otherwise. It gave people a reason to volunteer their time to improve it.
direct3d Direct3D 11 and Direct3D12, to be precise. Direct3D9 was working fine before - and there even was native driver support for it in Mesa, that could be used together with a patched WINE.
The unsung hero that everyone needs to know about!!!!
Wine is the shit. Just dont call it an emulator.
Wine is not an emulator, surely.
I'm calling dem folks. 😅
Wine is the best emulator.
(It would be a mistake to call it a hardware emulator, but that's not the only kind of emulator.)
You guys are too much. 😁
I will never. I don't want to be assassinated.