You Can Play Over 2,600 Windows Games on Linux Via Steam Play

[Lucian Armasu]

Steam's database of Proton-compatible games has grown to over 2,600 games in only two months and the number keeps rising by the day.

You Can Play Over 2,600 Windows Games on Linux Via Steam Play : Read more

 

[kenjitamura]

It's pretty amazing the work being done on these translation layers. A little over a year ago you couldn't get a single DX11 game to work in WINE and now the DirectX 11 to Vulkan implementation, DXVK, can be used to play practically any DirectX 11 title that doesn't use certain DRM software. To top it off it's done with at most a 10-20% performance hit and in some cases results in better picture quality through exposing Vulkan's own SSAO.

It was revealed earlier this year that DXVK's progress was kicked into overdrive with Valve funding the main developer.

 

[hannibal]

Yep!
Much better now... It may even become possible to abandon Windows and move to Linux even if you are PC game player. Stil you have to wait longer for the support and not every game gets it, but better much better than before!

 

[Peter Martin]

it's a good thing to see. I never thought they would do it.

 

[djmart666]

Cool but last week i try GTA 5 and it block on Social Club launcher and the game don't start. This is the game i play the most. Apparently Linux still don't want me.

 

[djmart666]

I must say i try Linux Mint 19, with latest nvidia drivers. I hope this project will continue, it's a lot better than before, but i still need windows for some games.

 

[ubercake]

If the performance isn't close, I can't see it catching hold. I can't imagine games made for one OS really are going to run great comparatively on another OS. But people like to tinker and that occasionally leads to progress.
Anyone doing any frame rate / frame time comparisons as a gauge of how effective this works? How's the sound? Does it support G-sync? Freesync?

 

[R_1]

is there a list of games that will work or is the trial and error of trying every game a game in and of itself?

 

[kenjitamura]

Cool but last week i try GTA 5 and it block on Social Club launcher and the game don't start. This is the game i play the most. Apparently Linux still don't want me.

That bug seems to occur because the game needs corefonts which is a copyrighted font package that Valve is not allowed to ship. The end user can install corefonts themselves but Valve is unable to ship it with their Proton build.

It looks like they are looking at implementing a workaround that substitutes open source fonts for the corefonts package: An Open Source Alternative to Corefonts #571,

 

[kenjitamura]

If the performance isn't close, I can't see it catching hold. I can't imagine games made for one OS really are going to run great comparatively on another OS. But people like to tinker and that occasionally leads to progress.
Anyone doing any frame rate / frame time comparisons as a gauge of how effective this works? How's the sound? Does it support G-sync? Freesync?

There seems to be a youtube channel with videos showing side by side the performance difference between Wine/DXVK/Proton and Windows 10.

GTA V

Battlefield V

WoW Bfa

Gsync is supported using the proprietary Nvidia driver and Freesync is supported on the proprietary AMD driver. However, the best performance on AMD cards comes from the opensource driver and the plumbing to support Freesync on the open source driver has yet to be included in the kernel. The kernel will support Freesync use with the open source AMD drivers with the first new kernel release of 2019: AMD FreeSync 2 HDR Coming To The Linux Kernel In 2019

 

[mitch074]

Cool but last week i try GTA 5 and it block on Social Club launcher and the game don't start. This is the game i play the most. Apparently Linux still don't want me.

That bug seems to occur because the game needs corefonts which is a copyrighted font package that Valve is not allowed to ship. The end user can install corefonts themselves but Valve is unable to ship it with their Proton build.

It looks like they are looking at implementing a workaround that substitutes open source fonts for the corefonts package: An Open Source Alternative to Corefonts #571,

... meaning that here, Microsoft doesn't want you to run GTA V on Linux. Who would have known...?

 

[Peter Martin]

microsoft has nothing to do with gta, nor do they give a rats arse if you play it on any other os

 

[irfbhatt]

Nice. Now we can play at work)

 

[lorendias]

Linux kernel is superior at low level functions like read/write, ram management and other operations necessary for the Server world. Because of this according to Phoronix some ported and wine games outperform their Windows counterparts already (eg: Gallium Nine games).

Of course it's not a landslide victory or snowball victory just yet but it's entirely possible that Linux will have superior backwards compatibility as it already has in games like StarCraft original.

For most pc gamers the experience is somewhere between good enough and great. A worthwhile tradeoff for the performance benefit of not needing anti-virus software, a more secure system, and freedom including the right to your digital privacy. In some cases a simple problem like having your photo library encrypted due to virus is reason enough already to ditch windows, depending on what kind of content a person stores on their computer.

 

[mitch074]

microsoft has nothing to do with gta, nor do they give a rats arse if you play it on any other os

You didn't read the quotes, and I was being sarcastic: GTA V won't start due to SteamPlay missing CoreFonts package, which is licensed my Microsoft to only run on MS operating systems.
So, MS is (indirectly, and somewhat unvoluntarily) preventing you from playing GTA 5 on Linux...

 

[kenjitamura]

Cool but last week i try GTA 5 and it block on Social Club launcher and the game don't start. This is the game i play the most. Apparently Linux still don't want me.

Just an update on this. Valve just released Proton Beta 3.16-4 and it includes a corefonts substitute so it might work now.