Steam Beta Enables Proton On Linux For All Titles (gamingonlinux.com) 29
Valve has quietly updated the Steam Beta Client to enable Proton by default for all Windows games on Linux, eliminating the need for users to toggle compatibility settings manually. GamingOnLinux reports: For some context here: originally, Proton had an option to enable / disable it globally. That was removed with the Game Recording update last year. That made sense, because people kept somehow turning it entirely off and now it's required by Steam. Currently, there's still an option in the stable Steam Client that you need to manually check to enable Steam Play (Proton) for "all other titles". This is something of a leftover from when Proton was initially revealed, and only worked for a specific set of games on Valve's whitelist. It now covers what Valve set by default for Steam Deck and SteamOS verification.
What's changed is that at some point in the recent Steam Beta releases, is that "for all other titles" option is gone. I've scrolled back through changelogs and not seen it mentioned. So now, Proton is just enabled properly in full by default in the Steam Beta like shown in the [image here]. This is a good (and needed) change that I'm happy to see. There's often confusion when people try to run Windows games on Linux and end up with no install button because Proton isn't turned on for all titles. [This] will soon be a thing of the past. To be clear, this is not setting Proton on every game by default, it does not override Native Linux games. It's just making Proton available by default.
What's changed is that at some point in the recent Steam Beta releases, is that "for all other titles" option is gone. I've scrolled back through changelogs and not seen it mentioned. So now, Proton is just enabled properly in full by default in the Steam Beta like shown in the [image here]. This is a good (and needed) change that I'm happy to see. There's often confusion when people try to run Windows games on Linux and end up with no install button because Proton isn't turned on for all titles. [This] will soon be a thing of the past. To be clear, this is not setting Proton on every game by default, it does not override Native Linux games. It's just making Proton available by default.
Vulkan windows, Linux, Macos, Android, iOS, switch (Score:2)
why cant we have a consistent base API rather than compatibility layers.... then custom depending on what the dev's want to show off now we just have DirectX and a complete monopoly that steam have to work hard to provide a layer for....
Vulkan exists and works on the majority of phones...
what are steamOS recommendations for game dav's ?
(do they have a equipment/dev pipeline recommendations like netflix do ?)
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Well Directx is a more complete package than vulkan, It might be nice if we could have an OSS solution like SDL or historically algegro etc be standard game engine API back-end but I am not so sure the current situation is bad.
Steam is a big enough market that it means developers even if they are not going to ship native binaries for anything not Windows they are probably going to at least test on Steam and Proton is open so stuff makes it way back into Wine and you can of course get proton on platforms oth
Re:Vulkan windows, Linux, Macos, Android, iOS, swi (Score:4, Interesting)
why cant we have a consistent base API rather than compatibility layers...
https://xkcd.com/927/ [xkcd.com]
We got here from somewhere else. But for the record, I blame Microsoft, and I blame 3dfx for enabling them. If 3dfx had done MiniGL from the start instead of GLIDE, then we would probably have never had Direct3D. Microsoft had a basic, software-only OpenGL renderer which was famously used for screensavers like "pipes" and would have likely gone with OpenGL if it was already dominant.
But in the early days of PC video accelerators, everyone had to have their own API, and there were a ton of competing GPUs. There were around half a dozen versions of Mechwarrior II which supported different video cards — I had at least two of them, as I bought a whole bunch of those different cards to try them out. Besides VooDoo 1 and 2 in their times, and then eventually tnt, tnt2, and a gf2mx which are all kind of after the period in which this story occurs, I had a Mystique (ugly), and a PowerVR (slow), and a Permedia 2 which was actually the best of all of them at the time but just a little slower than 3dfx. I know I'm forgetting another one that I had as well, and I didn't even have all of them! Now we have all of three GPU makers, and Intel is looking shaky again...
I'm super thankful that we have Vulkan now and didn't start going back to vendor-specific standards. I think you can chalk this up to complexity. Nobody wants to have to support such things when it takes so much work to switch APIs.
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Vulkan is just a graphics API. It's also a relative latecomer as well, being derived from ATI's direct API. It's why we have so many different graphics APIs like Vulkan, DirectX 12, and Metal. Though Metal also derived from the ATI API set, which is why there is a supported Vulkan to Metal translation layer (supported by Khronos, the group behind Vulkan).
But it doesn't encompass other things - like input, sound, disk access, etc. DirectX provides all that on top of the Windows API. Unix-like OSes have layer
Finally! (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been switching it on for each title - even "unsupported" ones - for a couple of years now. Rarely a problem. When I bought my new computer, about 1-1/2 years ago, I didn't even bother installing Windows.
Steam has brought gaming to Linux.
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Re: Finally! (Score:3)
There are a few. Destiny 2, fortnite. Destiny 2 will run, but they ban you. And fortnite wont run because of the anti cheat. There are others as well but mainly it is because of the anti cheat systems not set up to run with linux.
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And this is the problem.
I'm an, I don't know, advanced novice Linux user? Maybe more importantly, I'm not afraid to tinker and explore. I've run it on routers and my NAS. I just bought a new gaming PC and immediately installed Linux to see the state of things. I tried SteamOS but that didn't work so I went with Bazzite. Overall, it's honestly amazing how nearly seamless Lutris + Steam make things. Even got wireless VR to my kids' Quest 2 going. A few hoops to jump through here and there but for the most par
Valve needs to mandate Linux support next (Score:4, Interesting)
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And wouldn't they have to write a completely new anti-cheat system for Linux? Would it even work? It seems to me that in Linux you could fiddle with the kernel to make any anti-cheat think it was working.
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Why? Valve makes money selling games. I know it's something you want - a behemoth to swing its weight for an issue you care about, but it makes no business sense to do so and opens Valve up to some serious antitrust concerns by platform gatekeeping.
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There is no way switching to Linux is going to be a viable backup plan for Valve to tell its customers.
If Microsoft wants to go that Apple route Steam would pay before trying to get their users to switch, or more likely fight them in court over the issue.
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Doesn't matter if it takes years. Steam isn't going to get all gamers to switch to Linux overnight.
Understand - I like Linux. I first installed it in 1998 and have been a heavy Linux user since 2001 or so. Nobody would like to see Linux succeed as a desktop OS more than me, but Steam isn't going to be able to do that.
And frankly Microsoft isn't likely to want to go that route anyways. It would likely draw anti-trust penalties and they're already doing pretty well as it is.
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But how long and what price would Valve pay? If they have SteamOS they can tell users "30% cheaper on SteamOS" and it's fine. If they are depending on Microsoft they can't. And MS would know that and also increase the prices whenever they want. Only a Plan B for Valve allows them to have room to negotiate a good deal.
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No. Windows is long past the point where they can charge rent for anything. At least not unless if they want to keep the DoJ at bay.
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It makes a lot of sense together with SteamOS supporting more systems (just release it like a Linux distro for general PCs). They would instantly get a lot of Windows 10 users who don't want Windows 11 to switch to SteamOS. Currently everyone can fight the cognitive dissonance about letting Microsoft force them to buy a new PC with the old "But Linux has no games" argument, but when someone tells them "Linux has all the same games in Steam as Windows" they can't ignore it anymore and may put up with the inc
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You're asking Valve to cut itself off from sales, and make itself unfriendly. What makes Valve appealing to gamers and license holders alike is that games can be on it almost no matter what (they even allow adult games) and there are only some labeling requirements.
What would be more beneficial to me than banning games is to provide in-app compatibility information, so I don't have to go to protondb.
Re: Valve needs to mandate Linux support next (Score:2)
Re: Valve needs to mandate Linux support next (Score:2)
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I don't think they have to give them anything, more people will buy their game if it is certified. This has already been a thing for Steam Deck Certified titles, which doesn't even mean much.
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>"If your anti cheat is incompatible with Linux then you are not allowed on Steam."
I run 100% Linux everywhere (and have for an extremely long time). Yet I have little interest in games. But I see this would be a good move. Or at least start pushing vendors *hard* by giving discounts or preferential treatment for compatibility, and the opposite for not.
It would be in Valve's best interest to ensure that all games work on all platforms, especially since Valve is investing heavily in Linux systems for t
What happens if you run steam in WSL? (Score:1)
If I remember.
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Can you run WSL with Proton?
Are we there yet? (Score:3)
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Is 2025 the Year of Linux on the Desktop then?
More likely 2026, when Valve releases Steam OS for desktop PCs.