88 out of the 100 top Steam games are not representative of desktop gaming in general, even less "crushing" windows, where games run out of the box, and as intended ("platinum").

The value 88(%) is also misleading. It represents games running at least at bronze level (the lowest quality of a playable game). The percentage of perfectly running games (via Proton) is 15%.

I support Proton as a shortcut to release Linux-compatible games, but there's no comparison, in the big picture.

But running out of the box with no tweaks includes Gold, Platinum and Native which is far more than 50%.

I'm less about trying to imply that Linux is "crushing" Windows and more about it being seen as a viable option (i.e. " not a million miles away").

I think I'm against out of hand dismissal, which your post and the post I responded to are without qualification or balance.

To be clear, I don't dismiss Proton/Wine at all.

I didn't intend "shortcut" as derogative (bad word choice :)); rather, given the limited resources of game development, it may make Linux ports possible (as opposed to native ports, which take significantly more resources). John Carmack actually supports this approach.

My criticism is that while there is the impression/hope that at some point the "emulation" will be completed, based on my experience (with Wine and ReactOS), it never will - it's a virtually infinite amount of new hacks/tweaks/small additions.

My conclusion is it a type of work that will require continuous employment of (development resources), and will be more of a workaround, than a solution. (regarding the "crush", this was actually in reference to an ancestor post)

Including native ports in the discussion, or excluding them, is a tricky discussion, which I consider separate - my points were about Wine/Proton specifically.

I actually do play games, but even if my O/S is Linux (and essentially all the games are on Steam), I still run games in a VM.

Thanks for the clarification, that makes a lot of sense.

I think the above poster was more talking in terms of market share. I only use free software, so I don't really have an incentive to shill against Linux here, but it's worth noting that among the premiere desktop gaming platform, more people use PC VR than Linux. Linux isn't winning here, despite its better...everything, because Windows has two major advantages: It's already installed, and games are marketed to kids who more often than not probably don't have a choice in operating system!

Markets don't optimize for efficiency in computing.

That's true, I don't think it will be exploding without either of the blockers you mention being overcome.

I do think the above poster hasn't made it clear the experience they're speaking to. A lot of "anti" sentiment I see is based on things that aren't really true anymore. If all were informed and were giving their considered opinion that despite recent advances they still don't foresee a large gain in marketshare then that's fair enough. I think my main issue is with uniformed generalisations being stated as if fact backed up by recent and relevant experience.

Having said that I do agree with your post, so please note that my criticisms don't apply to you!

Also, Linux isn't better everything, it is a pita.

It's not as good as the evangelists make out, it's not as hopeless as the detractors make out.

The "news" is that in the last 5 years it has gone from "absolutely not viable for gaming" to "good enough for a lot of people".

Hardly, when the solution is to emulate the ABI of another OS.

OS/2 was also a great platform for games by that measure, thanks Win-OS/2.

I'm not really sure what you mean. You can play games on it. That's good enough for a lot of people. I don't really see why it being due to a compatibility layer or being native has much to do with my claim.

The Windows compatibility layer for OS/2 was one of the reasons why at the end of the day no one cared to create OS/2 applications, providing zero benefits to acquire it versus the real deal.

Same applies to GNU/Linux, hence Windows continues to thrive, while the 1% of the desktop folks get to taste Windows games with an ABI emulation layer.

I think in contrast Linux has plenty going for it, especially in the context of Windows being increasingly buggy, bloated, advertising-ridden, telemetry sending behemoth which has frustrated users universally with mandated update policies.

Linux is mostly not being used because people don't have all the software they need and translation layers solve that.

We're entering a different space in desktop OS usage. Windows is changing the desktop metaphor to be more similar to macOS and mobile computing is being used by an increasing number of people as a daily driver.

In short, I don't think ABI emulation layers are the reason Linux is only at 1%. Indeed it was at 1% before Proton was released.

It's not even close, it does not play most recents games.

Thankfully thanks to ProtonDB we can see exactly which games run and what the caveats are.

I think "it does not play most recent games" is untrue without qualification.

Importantly CS:GO runs better on Linux than on Windows on my hardware (and that is after tweaking Windows for max performance.)

CS:GO is far from a "recent" game. It still gets regularly updates sure, but it's nearly a decade old and the engine hasn't evolved in that time in a way that would make it comparable to a current-gen game.

> CS:GO is far from a "recent" game.

It is however one of todays most well known games.

Sure, but that's not what was up for debate in the comment chain you were responding to. That was specifically about how well it handles "recent" games. Not how well it handles old but still popular games. WoW also runs great under Wine for example afaik.

I'm not diminishing the value of games like that running well under Wine, I think it's great. But it's not the same as "recent" games running well.

As one of the GPs points out anti-cheat is unfortunately another big hurdle. CS:GO works great because VAC runs in user-mode and Valve go out of their way to specifically detect Wine and adjust behavior as appropriate (I reverse engineered it extensively some years ago). I think EAC has a native Linux client, but many of the big names are still unplayable.

If you try to play Valorant, Apex, Siege, Warzone, PUBG, etc. my understanding is they'll barely even launch, let alone allow you to join a multiplayer match.

And yet it is barely over 1% Linux desktop usage.