With the Legion Go S, we can now directly compare performance between official builds of SteamOS and Windows
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The big thing though about Proton is that it's not an additional translation/emulation layer. It doesn't translate into Spanish for Linux, as that would be slow, it makes Linux talk English.
So in your example, imagine you, the English speaking program, want to catch a taxi in Madrid/Linux but all taxi drivers speak only Spanish. An emulation layer would be "translating", so you would have an additional guy in the taxi that you could talk to that talks to the Spanish driver. Proton is not that, it's an English-speaking taxi driver.
Proton uses Wine, which is a Windows system call API translation layer for Linux. In other words, it translates commands for the Windows kernel into calls for the Linux kernel.
So it's kind of an emulator and kind of not, but regardless the metaphor of a translator is fine. As a lightweight translator, you might say it's like using Google Translate on your phone to translate back and forth quickly and automatically, rather than having a person in the middle who needs to think about it.
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I think it's what Valve has branded their fork of Wine. It translates win32 calls to Linux ones, and DirectX to Vulkan. Probably some other stuff too idk
Proton is Wine plus DXVK and VKD3D, as well as a big pile of little tweaks and out of tree changes that Valve maintains to specifically maximize game compatibility and performance.
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Yeah its wine/proton and linux together. Wine/Proton efficiently handles translating the Windows programmes API calls into POSIX calls while Linux seems to offer a lower OS overhead so there is more system resource available for the games.
I do think Proton gets a little too much credit. Its wine plus faudio, dxvk and other open source projects combined. Proton is great but it is standing on the shoulders of giants.
Agreed. Proton is important as a bit of an "iPhone moment" where all this tech comes together in a way where non-techies "get it" in the sense where they understand why it's useful, even if they'll never bother to learn the details of why or how.
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Pretty much everything will run on Linux now. It's just the companies behind the games being dumbasses and blocking it with their anti-cheat.
There is plenty of software that doesn't, and plenty of games that don't run on Linux, even beyond anticheat games. If it wasn't true, we wouldn't need protondb telling us what is and isn't. You can advocate for Linux all day, but you have to admit there is still software that is 100% Windows only.
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While proton enables that, that's still just vulkan outperforming DirectX.
So technically proton isn't improving performance here, it's just allowing the game to run on better performing systems (like Linux and vulkan).
It's just Vulkan outperforming DirectX by translating DirectX to Vulcan. If you're comparing the default experience with Windows and Linux, how can you say Proton isn't technically improving performance? What would you call that if a performance increase is caused by running through Proton?
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Source is this video:
Windows Was The Problem All Along - Dave2D
We could obviously compare performance between windows and steamOS before on the steam deck, or between windows and Bazzite on other handhelds. But this is the first time we have had official windows and SteamOS builds for the same hardware.
Windows Gamers (who will never switch to Linux): Linux still isn't ready for mass adoption
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So I'm not insane. Monster Hunter Wilds and Helldiver's II both run better on my Ubuntu image with the same hardware than my Windows 10 image.
Does that mean that Proton and Vulkan are far more efficient than Direct3D?
I think there's in play also background activity from Windows' bloat.
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Sorry, what's this got to do with Sony?
Read the charts?
Notice any difference in the results?
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Valve did a lot of work to tune the APU in the steam deck for efficiency. It's custom silicon at the end of the day.
AMD just kinda took one of their existing laptop APUs and threw it into handhelds instead of laptops.
The Deck also has a weaker but lower wattage chip and worse display, that makes a big difference.
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A performance uplift plus double or tripled battery life compared to running on Windows.....hot damn that's impressive.
Get rekt Windows.
wrote last edited by [email protected]What's nice is that Microsoft today doesn't have capability to improve in the short or even medium term. They could drop a billion dollars into it and it would still take them years to improve their offering, if they can at all.
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What's nice is that Microsoft today doesn't have capability to improve in the short or even medium term. They could drop a billion dollars into it and it would still take them years to improve their offering, if they can at all.
And why would they? They're printing so much money, this niche probably doesn't make a dent.
It doesn't matter if Windows is the best system for gaming. It just matters if people believe it is.
You can always justify using Windows. "How do I get Game Pass to work on my handheld?" is probably something people care about.
Granted this is an expensive way to lock customers into your platform, but they're already doing it anyways, so no need to pour money into the OS experience when you can just sell services building on customer data.
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Proton uses Wine, which is a Windows system call API translation layer for Linux. In other words, it translates commands for the Windows kernel into calls for the Linux kernel.
So it's kind of an emulator and kind of not, but regardless the metaphor of a translator is fine. As a lightweight translator, you might say it's like using Google Translate on your phone to translate back and forth quickly and automatically, rather than having a person in the middle who needs to think about it.
I'd say it's something like a babelfish. You speak English, I hear Spanish.
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Windows Gamers (who will never switch to Linux): Linux still isn't ready for mass adoption
Windows Gamers (who will never switch to Linux)
So you accept that Linux is not the problem.
We are litterally at the point where it will get mass Adoption in the next few years.
That is what this post is about. That you can litterally go out and buy a fully complete gaming system preinstalled with Linux that performs better than the same system with Windows.We are very close to the point where the only thing holding Linux gaming back is marketing.
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I think there's in play also background activity from Windows' bloat.
Probably this. Especially on low end hardware that doesn't really have a lot of background resources to give.
Just open task manager and see all the shit windows thinks is essential to run all the time. Scanning the drive for viruses, downloading updates for shit you've never even looked at...
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Source is this video:
Windows Was The Problem All Along - Dave2D
We could obviously compare performance between windows and steamOS before on the steam deck, or between windows and Bazzite on other handhelds. But this is the first time we have had official windows and SteamOS builds for the same hardware.
Back in ~2010, my first dual boot was an Ubuntu. It was fairly easy to run WoW from Linux and it gave me a solid >15fps while Windows ran at less than 10fps.
I was very young at the time but still aware that this was super impressive with extra compatibility layers. That definitely took part in selling Linux to me.
