I had to go figure out what Proton is:

"Proton is a tool for use with the Steam client which allows games which are exclusive to Windows to run on the Linux operating system. It uses Wine to facilitate this."

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton

It is incredible how well proton works on the steam deck.

How is this different from Proton Experimental?

Valve's continual focus on Linux (SteamOS 1.0 was released eight years ago) is honestly incredible, Proton even sometimes works better than native Linux builds. Truly nobody else (in the gaming space) is doing it like Valve are. I saw a talk[1] from a KDE dev talking about features Valve sponsored to be added to KDE Plasma and it's things that are useful for everyone outside the context of the steam deck.

The only thing that doesn't really work I've noticed is when games have an online component, whether it's like easy anti cheat which I've heard should be just flipping a switch to enable but I haven't seen anyone actually do that, or some weirdness happening with whatever the new Microsoft Flight Simulator is doing that makes it seemingly a 50/50 coin toss as to whether it'll run with the exact same settings.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0gEIeFgDX0

Proton was instrumental in my move from Windows to Linux. With over 400 games in my back catalog, I didn't want to lose thousands of dollars not to mention thousands of hours on games which I enjoy.

Thus far, 92% of games have ran flawlessly for me on Fedora (4 failures in the last 50). The main issues have been related to games that have kernel mode drivers for copy protection or other exotic types of anti-cheat. Perhaps most amazing (to me anyway) is the fact that mods and workshop items work perfectly. In most cases, I could pop open a saved game and continue on Linux, custom mods included.

Performance-wise, I haven't noticed a difference but I generally run very modern hardware which works better with the DirectX to Vulcan implementation. I also swapped to an AMD chip/gpu when moving to Linux and I think that removed the headaches that people often have with Nvidia drivers. Overall, it's been fantastic.

Using Proton feels like magic. The fact that you can run games made for a totally different OS, which isn't even based on Unix or Linux is a big feat in itself.

Valve is just a single company pushing for Linux gaming and the results have been excellent.

Linux is the perfect candidate too. Efficient, open, easy to modify and adapt. I hope more companies follow Valve and realize the true untapped potential of Linux systems.

How much of Proton fixes go back to Wine and vice versa?

Proton is just a UI/service/convenience layer for Wine, right? So when there's specific fixes for games, are those actually Wine updates?

Thanks to proton, I have completely forgotten how to configure wine prefixes.

I thought this was something really new. TBH you can probably take advantage of many of these new features by using one of the Glorious Eggroll releases. It’s nice that it can be used from the interface though.

Is there something substantially new here or is this just a beta branch of the regular proton?

I want to buy a SteamDeck. But I don't think I have the spare hours. After work, taking care of the kids, and housework I _might_ have 1 spare hour a day to sit down with the wife. I'd rather watch something on TV with her. To have any kind of free time I have to stay up till 1am!

I could bring the SteamDeck when I bring the kids to the park, but that just feels like I'm cheating the kids.

I work from home.

8am-9am get ready for work/get kids ready for the day

9am-5pm work

5pm-8pm doing stuff with the kids

8pm-9pm eat, get kids ready for bed

9pm-11pm housework/watch TV

11pm-midnight miscellaneous stuff to prepare for the next day.

I almost wish I had a commute by train or something. Or a housekeeper, or an Au Pair/nanny.

How the fuck do other grownups do it? (I'm 49, and exhausted all the time)

Due to Proton I feel like coming back to PC gaming after almost 20 years, great stewardship by Valve there.

The last "rig" I built was for Doom 3 after which I'd never bothered with keeping a NTFS partition again.

Apple silicon just doesn't seem to get to the levels needed for a state-of-the-art Cyberpunk 2077 experience even on pricier high-end Macs. I'm also still not willing to buy any "next-gen" consoles for the first time either (trend of maybe efficient but still glorified PC architecture continuing).

Would anyone have a list of well tested Linux + Proton compatible components?

Nvidia or AMD? Which drivers are better maintained at this point? It would still be cool to run some machine learning workloads for fun of course.

Any pointers would be appreciated.

Gamepass is a gift and a curse, on one hand, it makes Windows gaming dirt cheap. But it also makes Linux Gaming like this pointless.

If half the games I want to play are locked to Gamepass, I'm not having fun with Linux. Now, if Gamepass could run on Photon, we can talk.

Why doesn't Apple put this much effort into bring MacOS into the same realm as Windows in terms of gaming?

You would think they would invest more money and time taking away one of the last major advantages of Windows vs. MacOS.

Microsoft obviously sees gaming as one of the big advantages to Windows, hence why they have been buying up gaming studios and combining Xbox and Windows into the one gaming platform.

I wish there was proton for MacOs. We do have access to a number of games, but nowhere as many as on windows

I remember using Wine to play pretty much any game on linux back in the early 2000s, even before 64bit was a thing. We had wine hacks, we had a rudimentary dx9 compatibility layer, we had hardware acceleration, and we could just pirate crossover over torrent or dc++ for that one pesky microsoft game that won't load. (of course we don't do that anymore!)

I feel like Proton is just a repackaging of what we already had, which is the culmination of the hard work of the Wine team for the past 20 years, coupled with an online distribution system which could take back your "digital assets" at any time.

    We reserve the right, but are not obligated, to remove, disable or suspend your or any user's access to any Content or the Services, at any time and without notice

Reference: https://store.steampowered.com/eula/471710_eula_0