It's not luck, there's a good amount of games that runs perfectly out of the box and it keeps getting better. Yes, it's not perfect, but for me the trade-off is worth it. I much prefer not having to use the native platform and be able to play using the operating system of my choice.
I am sorry but it really depends on the games you are playing.
1) Alt-tab out of a game without the game crashing.
2) Random Stuttering on Framerate.
3) Games crash at random
4) Can't stream games to discord without significant performance drop (I have a 3950X and a 1080Ti and a Unity game is struggling).
IME if it is a Unity Game the game will work fine but with significant performance issues.
The ProtonDB they have I find to be practically uselss as a lot of games that work "perfectly" don't.
protondb is a community project and is not official. It is still a good ressource though, but it's worthwhile to read comments.
1 - I'm actually surprised about that, it's working much better on Linux than when i had windows where it was really often a "crossing fingers experience". Granted, i haven't used windows for years, so i hope it's in a better state now.
2 - i had some suttering when i was using the llvm backend for shaders (i have an amd gpu). Since i switched to ACO (which is the default in mesa now) i just have one games with suttering, Heavy Rain.
3 - The only crashing game i had was C&C, it seems it was more an actual bug of the game, it was fixed after the game was updated, not proton.
4 - don't use discord so can't comment there.
I've finished quite a few games using proton/wine and what you describe is definitely not a generality at all (appart from discord which i don't use, so can't comment).
And? The information is incorrect and misleading. It doesn't get a pass because it is a community project. I would rather have no information than incomplete information.
the thing is, it will get better. your post will slowly rot & deprecate & grow wrong, while the parent's hope & optimism will shine through. and perhaps it might be even better than native. perhaps you'll be able to stream faster, load levels faster, run more interesting config than you could before. in my very very humble opinion i recommend a more unlimited perspective.
perhaps it will always be a struggle. even if we never make it, i believe it offers diversity & new chances at betterment. that project of betterment is one i for one would have us embark upon.
All you've just stated is platitudes. Platitudes are for children.
It will never be better than native because it is always going through a translation layer, that coupled with streaming not actually working particularly well means that it will not be an option for the vast number of people.
What people like yourself don't seem to grok is that a lot of people just want stuff that works and not a work in progress. I wanna relax and blow off some steam when playing games I don't want to have to work out why my game isn't working.
All I am giving is my accurate account of my experiences with this technology.
oh I get it I just don't care about those into not caring. i for one see too many interesting promising things as near at hand to let such willful unconcern reduce my gusto.
your assumption that the translation layer is all that counts assumes driver parity between os'es. both for 3d & game streaming, there are significant performance and capability differences between os'es.
but mostly, long run, i think it's important that the gaming ecosystem remain technically healthy. i see a lot of interest again in cross-platform tech like Vulkan. linux is thankfully in a great position to just run, very well, with modern engines. the long work building & optimizing compatibility systems has, thamlnkfully, given Linux a lot of experience to get fast & otherwise (audio, input, netcode, &c) capable, which all pays off again now that games run natively too.
your honest account is welcome. you are free to not care, to assume this would only ever be an ill fit for you. i'm not sure why you'd spend so much effort so loudly making your personal point about your expectations on a day when others are happy & revelling in the ongoing progress & hope & freedom & opening of possibilities that they want to see. it's, again, ok that you are opting out. but a lot of us are excited that cutting edge gaming can & is happening in more diverse places than it used to, & we foresee only better.
It not that I don't care. It that I am realistic about the situation. I would rather have Linux native options for my games rather than a translation layer. However for that to happen there has to be a viable market.
In some ways I think a translation layer will make it less likely there will be a Native port because devs will just rely on the compatibility layer. I am aware of counter arguments to my position and I could be wrong. We will fin out in time.
> your assumption that the translation layer is all that counts assumes driver parity between os'es. both for 3d & game streaming, there are significant performance and capability differences between os'es.
Nope I never said that the translation layer is all that matters. But given everything else being equal (it normally is btw) it will always have lower performance.
One native games Linux and Windows performance stats is roughtly the same framerate (if both games are using OpenGL or Vulkan). The difference in performance is 1-2FPS. If the game isn't native then then there will be a penalty in using a translation layer and compatibility issues. This aligns perfectly with what I have observed.
> i'm not sure why you'd spend so much effort so loudly making your personal point about your expectations on a day when others are happy & revelling in the ongoing progress & hope & freedom & opening of possibilities that they want to see.
I've left a comment on a website it isn't a huge effort. It takes me a few minutes to write a reply at most.
In any event it is important for people to be informed by the pitfalls. This is mainly because I've seen many people tout all the positives of alternatives without people informing people of the potential pitfalls.
> it's not that I don't care. It that I am realistic about the situation. I
imo you are perhaps realistic about the present situation, in a closed way where experimenting is not worth your time. I don't think you've made much affordance for the progress & success & accomplishment, and I don't think you've recognized any of the good points of diversity, of value at stake here. this isn't at all an unreasonable contemporary stance towards the situation, but it's also considering only the real & not the possible, not the fruits that open source & cross-platform has been working towards.
> In any event it is important for people to be informed by the pitfalls.
agreed that this is a value. but I don't think people should have to take such thesis (Linux gaming good getting better) and antithesis (Linux gaming bad will not do waste of time) & smash together their own synthesis. I'd like to see some recognition that you do think there are worthy & compelling reasons for Linux gaming and/or tech like proton. I have tried, amid my "platitudes" to accept some dings, but I have not seen any places where you acknowledge or realize that there maybe something good for humanity at stake here. is there anything you could offer that shows that your realism also has a sense of the possible & virtuous here?
Yikes and whoa, you can't do this kind of flamewar comment on HN! We're trying for something very different here.
Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of this site to heart? You're welcome to keep posting if you'll do that. We have to moderate and ban accounts that won't, however, because they destroy the community and curious conversation that HN is meant for.
> Good for humanity? We are talking about video games. It is just entertainment we are talking about. Get a grip!
I picture you decrying the same thing about the telephone, in 1949 when the us government sued at&t & forced them to sell off Western Electric, the maker of telephones. And again in 1959 when Carterphone was created & AT&T sued, forbidding anyone else from connecting their own devices. It's just a telephone! What harm is there in consumers being forced to use only no-fuss officially endorsed solutions. You can say whatever you want, do whatever you want, as long as you say it & do it with an AT&T product.
There are limits to innovation & diversity, & when left to rot, when too protected, systems ossify & stagnate. Beyond the scary platform wars afoot, I think Linux has absolutely cutting edge drivers in some places that can do things absolutely no other tech out there can. DMA-BUF & PipeWire are in early early days but already showing incredibly promising zero-copy streaming that few if any can replicate, for example. Linux drivers push advanced features to devices that mainstream support has moved past years ago, while increasingly offering best of breed implementations of cutting edge features & rapid adoption of Vulkan standards & extensions.
The other topic worth mentioning is systems like Stadia, which is Linux based. Maybe that wasn't necessary, but it is a strong indicator to me that Linux is an interesting & worthwhile place for gaming. That there's interesting stories of system utilization & decreasing latency that no other platform could have provided. New frontiers are possible, because the platform is not closed, and that enables new interesting gaming to emerge.
