Do you remember the days when it was hard to imagine gaming on Linux? Thanks to the compatibility layer of Proton and the companies that focus on Linux, gaming on Linux has improved a lot in recent years. But, What exactly is Proton and why is it essential for Linux gaming?
What is the proton compatibility layer?
To understand what Proton is, first, we must understand two technologies: DirectX and Vulkan.
Think of them as controller apps for games. They are application programming interfaces (API) that help your computer communicate with graphics cards.
While DirectX is a closed source API developed by Microsoft and specific to Windows, Linux utiliza la API Vulkan open source. There are many other APIs like OpenGL, but let's focus only on Vulkan and DirectX.
Since DirectX is a unique Windows API and Windows is one of the most popular operating systems in the world, game developers focus on getting the most out of their games in DirectX. Since Windows games cannot be played on Linux, This is where Proton comes in.
In simple terms, the Proton made by Valve is a fork of Wine that uses libraries like DXVK (DirectX on Vulkan) to translate DirectX games to Vulkan. Think of it this way. Games communicate with your graphics card via DirectX. DirectX collects resources and allocates them to games. DirectX contains Direct3D (which is responsible for rendering 3D graphics in applications). Proton converts these Direct3D calls into understandable calls for Vulkan using the libraries.
The end result is a Windows-only game that runs on a Linux PC..
What can you play with Proton?
When Proton was launched in 2018, I could only play 27 games. Despite this, in three years, the list of supported games has increased to about 16.000.
Despite this, Proton is limited in the sense that it cannot play games with built-in anti-cheat mechanisms. As the name suggests, anti-cheat mechanisms in games prevent players from cheating. With the rise of cheaters, Gaming companies have partnered with anti-cheat vendors to boost the gaming experience. Some of the popular anti-cheat providers are BattlEye and Easy from Epic Games.
To find out which games are supported today, go to ProtonDB official website. At the time of writing this post, more than 77% of the 1000 main games can be played with Proton, in which more than 21% runs natively (no need proton), the 21% has a platinum rating (runs out of the box), the 56% of gold ( run after adjustments), 66% Silver (runs with minor issues and tweaks) and 71% Bronze (runs but hangs many times).
How to use Proton
To enable Proton, Head to Steam Settings> Steam Play> Enable Steam Play.
If you are looking for a detailed guide on how to run Windows games on Linux using Proton, we got it covered.
The Future of Linux Gaming with Proton
There is no denying that Desktop Linux has improved over the last decade.. Despite this, an area where GNU / Linux was very lacking were the games, until Proton appeared.
Proton holds the key to revolutionizing Linux gaming to the point where Linux could compete with Windows. A development that could also help boost gaming on Linux is the
Steam Deck, which was announced in July 2021.
To start, Steam Deck is a handheld game console from Valve that runs Arch Linux (SteamOS with KDE Plasma, to be precise) and uses Proton to run Windows games. The exciting thing is that Valve knows that games with anti-cheat features will not work on the console.. Due, is working with Easy and BattlEye developers to make it feasible to run Windows games that use the same anti-cheat mechanisms.
The fact that Linux is open source means that if Valve manages to get Easy and BattlEye support on SteamOS, the same could potentially be ported to other Linux distributions. That would eventually strengthen the overall desktop Linux gaming experience..
It's too early to predict exactly how things will change, But for now, the future of Linux gaming looks bright.
