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Steam Gets Built-in Tools To Let You Run Windows Games on Linux -- Now Available in Beta (pcgamesn.com)

Posted by msmash on from the bridging-the-gap dept.

Steam Play -- Valve's name for its cross-platform initiative -- is getting a major update, adding built-in tools that would allow users to run Windows games on Linux. It's now available in beta. From a report: The new tools run on Proton, which is custom distribution of the widely-used Wine compatibility tool. In the most practical terms, this means you can now download and install Windows games directly from the Steam client without any further fuss. Valve is currently checking "the entire Steam catalog" and whitelisting games that run without issue, but you can turn off those guidelines and install whatever you want, too.

Proton should provide enhanced performance over Wine in many cases, according to Valve. DirectX 11 and 12 implementations are now based on Vulkan, and performance in multi-threaded games "has been greatly improved compared to vanilla Wine." You'll also see better fullscreen and controller support with Proton. It's also fully open source.

4 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. This might be the dealbreaker for me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Iâ(TM)ve been flirting with Linux for years, but using windows only because most games donâ(TM)t run on it. If this works and works well, iâ(TM)ll probably switch

  2. If the dev tests on Wine by tepples · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Wine is a layer in the middle that adds some inefficiency, compatibility issues and bugs of its own.

    How much more so than GTK+ as "a layer in the middle" between an application and Xlib?

    The biggest issue with companies ignoring "native" Linux is they'll tend to stick with the tools for the platforms they target and they will tend towards the most modern APIs particularly for graphics where modern generally means faster and with more features.

    How much of this issue goes away if a developer instructs quality control to treat Wine as a fully supported platform alongside Windows 7 and Windows 10? That's how BGB (Game Boy debugger), FCEUX (NES debugger), OpenMPT (sample based sequencer), and FamiTracker (chiptune sequencer) work: the developer ships Win32 binaries tested on both Windows and Wine.

    1. Re: If the dev tests on Wine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      How can you be so stupid.GTK and QT and Motif are widget sets. Precanned libraries containing styling for drop-down lists and buttons and so on, drawn as bitmap on your screen. On windows you get only 2 - aero and GDI and with Windows 10 only one style again... wine is a completely different beast

  3. Better compatibility than Windows... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...for older games. I've tried many old windows games that no longer work in the later versions of windows, but work out of the box in Steam Play on Linux. So for classic gaming, Steam Play on Linux could become the platform of choice. Some of the games have been removed from the steam store because they no longer work in Windows. It would be funny if they were added back to the store as Linux only games after this is out of beta.