Has it really been that long? Apparently so. Valve originally announced their rebranding of Steam Play with Proton back on August 21st, 2018. Seems like a good time for a quick reflection being halfway to a decade old now with the tech that gave rise to the Steam Deck.
I feel like attributing this to Valve is really disrespectful to the folks who developed wine for decades (and more recently also Vulkan). The real game changer is Vulkan, which made Linux graphics to be competitive with DirectX. (OpenGL interfaces to DirectX was simply not competitive)
The kickoff meeting for Vulkan was hosted by Valve. Like everything it’s not only Valve, but they had their fingers in this too. Valve is just one of the companies/groups that is pushing linux ports and vulkan support.
Valve is mostly moving interests of big game companies with steam machines and steam deck. Steam machines flopped, but initially they made companies consider ports. The success of steam deck will likely result into them paying more attention to not break wine/proton.
What exactly do you mean by “this”? The post is about the 5 year anniversary of Proton. Also, why do you consider crediting the developers of Wine disrespectful? I just can’t follow.
It’s a collaborative effort. The Wine and Vulkan projects have all done a lot and deserved credit for doing massive, amazing things. But for Linux gaming specifically, Proton has absolutely changed the landscape, and if Valve continues down this path, will make Linux an ever better gaming platform. So I don’t think it’s unfair to say thanks to Valve.
Not only have they sunk significant resource into making Linux gaming more viable, they’ve released Proton under BSD and seriously pushed developers to make Linux-compatible binaries. If Linux continues it’s slow upward trend in popularity, Valve will be in large part to thank.
what is vulkan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulkan
still dont understand, eli5 please?
You’re right. So many people to thank here. One thing you cannot deny is that Valve is one of few companies that loves gaming on Linux and it deserves a huge credit.
Valve is a corporation, what they really “love” is money. All their Linux strategy is simply future-proofing. They know that if gaming kept being restricted to Windows, they could have been destroyed overnight by Microsoft, especially since MS start betting hard on gaming and built their own Steam competitor.
Well, they certainly do. I, for one, am grateful, since I’ve been using Linux for over 20 years. But I know they’re in for the money, and that’s ok.
Valve does not love gaming, they refuse to listen to TF2 fans, they never build games, they brought out studios, criminal cases, Antitrust lawsuit and branding loyal fanbase that keeps defending Valve awful actions in gaming. This is not love, this is toxic community and a toxic company aiming to be profitable at all cost.