Valve Introduces Proton Next

Proton Next has been announced by Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais on Twitter, as an easier way to check out and test the upcoming stable releases of new Proton versions for Linux desktop and Steam Deck. GamingOnLinux reports: It is mostly the same as the Release Candidate for Proton 7.0-5 that was put up in October. However, it's now its own entry in Steam as Proton Next. This makes it far easier to test, since you can set it to games individually, instead of opting into a Beta with the current main version of Proton. This new Proton Next will only become available when there is a new version of Proton ready for testing, and once stable it will be retired. So games you've set to it, would likely just get bumped to the main version of Proton since it would replace it. The changelog and patch notes are available here.

Bravo

[stikves]

Steam and Proton has done more for Linux gaming than many other companies combined. Of course, this all stands on the shoulders of giants, namely WINE. And many previous efforts, like CrossOver which unfortunately did not pan out.

Of course this was all out of necessity, but today I can play many latest games on my Steam Deck, without the "benefit" of rootkit anti-cheat software that would happen on their Windows versions. Every game in a separate docker like container is a great win. In fact, some games do play faster thanks to Valve optimizing the shaders for that platform.

Anyway, kudos, and thanks!

Re:

[DamnOregonian]

My experience with Proton is limited to my Steam Deck, but truly- it's fucking amazing.
It's what I wanted WINE to be so, so, SO many times in the last 2 decades.

And that is no fault of WINE's team- as you said, Valve stands on the shoulders of giants. What they brought to the table was money for developers who were focused directly on making games work.

Proton is hands down Valve's greatest contribution to humanity since Half Life 2.

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[gweihir]

Fully agree. Well said.

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[tlhIngan]

CrossOver is still around. It's the commercially supported version of WINE, and if you want to support the WINE project without making a donation, buying CrossOver licenses is a great way to do it.

Of course, I wish these efforts would combine - I mean, Proton is great for gaming, but it would be nice if all those fixes made it back into mainline WINE, thus improving application compatibility for everyone.

I will admit though how shockingly good Proton is. Plus, I'm certain the general availability of the Ste

Re:

[DamnOregonian]

Yup, I pay for a CrossOver license for precisely this reason. To support their development.

But as you said, Proton is just... shockingly good. I bought a Steam Deck expecting a high level of jank. There really isn't.

Re:Bravo

[DamnOregonian]

Also, I wanted to say Proton work is making it back upstream [codeweavers.com].

I can understand why Valve keeps their fork separate- the goals of the two projects have a high likelihood of conflict, and Valve doesn't want to fight with Upstream when that is the case.

That being said, the code is making it back upstream, and WINE has had some major improvements because of it

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[tlhIngan]

I can understand why Valve keeps their fork separate- the goals of the two projects have a high likelihood of conflict, and Valve doesn't want to fight with Upstream when that is the case.

Also because I believe Proton can only be launched from Steam itself - it's a library Steam launches and not an executable. So there's bound to be a few conflicts based on that. It's not actually possible to use Proton standalone, I'm told

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[DamnOregonian]

It's actually not. It's an executable just like WINE. It does however (in its default build configuration) require Steam to exist on the system- so your overall point with that is spot on. That's one of the conflicts I was referring to, as to why they'd want a fork.

You can of course build it without that requirement, which is where Proton GE comes in, but there aren't a lot of non-janky ways to pull this off, so people using it outside of Steam (say, via Lutris) still generally grab the executable from St

Re:Proton

[UPi]

I'm not sure why that was marked as troll. It is a fair observation that the article didn't say what Proton was. It might be something related to Steam and WINE.

It takes a duckduckgo search to discover a decent summary on protondb.com:

What is Proton?

Proton is a new tool released by Valve Software that has been integrated with Steam Play to make playing Windows games on Linux as simple as hitting the Play button within Steam. Underneath the hood, Proton comprises other popular tools like Wine and DXVK among others that a gamer would otherwise have to install and maintain themselves. This greatly eases the burden for users to switch to Linux without having to learn the underlying systems or losing access to a large part of their library of games. Proton is still in its infancy so support is inconsistent, but regularly improving.

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[Bob_Who]

I'm not sure why that was marked as troll.

Because sarcasm is such a wonderfully polite way to communicate.

Bah dum bump... ..cymbal Crash! Very funny!