etc… as most will be leveraging proton via steam. And I reckon the other 10% are making use of proton via lutris or heroic… Or if they’re feeling particularly oldschool, just a wine installation.
IMO it doesn’t make sense for Devs to build games directly for Linux, as the long term compatibility is better via proton than it seems to be for native Linux releases. I have a catalogue of games that offer both installers, and I’d say around half of the Linux versions are fucked. (Tesla Vs Lovecraft is a prime example for me, as it even borked my soundcard for a while when it crashed, which was a real pain to sort, but the windows emulated version doesn’t have this issue.)
And I say this as a Linux enthusiast/Microsoft doomsayer. Using a compatibility layer unifies the way distros interact with games… It enables the wide diversity in Linux without sacrificing compatibility when choosing a distro.
Edit: I just pulled these numbers out my arse to make my point. I have no data on how many Linux users actually use steam.
I think you missed my point. The same song and dance of finding where the hell the game dumped its config files and saves still happens no matter what OS you use to play Windows games on. Adding native games to the pile is just that: additive.
Please note I don’t really care that strongly, certainly not enough to start symlinking a folder I’ll visit a single time ever to tweak a setting like another suggested lolol.
Since each windows game installed through lutris and steam run in their own sandbox where they are free to mess with things, I don’t see why the same couldn’t be done for Linux games. It’s not exactly an ideal solution, but it would abstract each game’s quirks in where they want to store files just like steam does with the compatdata folders. I know this is basically what flatpak does.
Oh definitely; and I don’t think there is a great deal of users that would argue for the use of snap over flatpak either, so flatpak would be an ideal unified compatibility solution.
Not sure if I’ve seen a commercial game with a flatpak release; and given the open nature of flatpak, a company (ie: steam) could theoretically implement their own gatekept repository to manage purchases etc…
The main hurdle with adoption is native compatibility with steam; if they started hosting and supporting flatpak installs, the concept would likely stand a better chance. I suppose you could run the whole application sandboxed, which would theoretically sandbox every game installed; but canonical try that, and well… If you search snap steam, you’ll see the issues that brings about.
Tbf the reality for like 90% of people gaming on Linux the path is something like
etc… as most will be leveraging proton via steam. And I reckon the other 10% are making use of proton via lutris or heroic… Or if they’re feeling particularly oldschool, just a wine installation.
IMO it doesn’t make sense for Devs to build games directly for Linux, as the long term compatibility is better via proton than it seems to be for native Linux releases. I have a catalogue of games that offer both installers, and I’d say around half of the Linux versions are fucked. (Tesla Vs Lovecraft is a prime example for me, as it even borked my soundcard for a while when it crashed, which was a real pain to sort, but the windows emulated version doesn’t have this issue.)
And I say this as a Linux enthusiast/Microsoft doomsayer. Using a compatibility layer unifies the way distros interact with games… It enables the wide diversity in Linux without sacrificing compatibility when choosing a distro.
Edit: I just pulled these numbers out my arse to make my point. I have no data on how many Linux users actually use steam.
I think you missed my point. The same song and dance of finding where the hell the game dumped its config files and saves still happens no matter what OS you use to play Windows games on. Adding native games to the pile is just that: additive.
Please note I don’t really care that strongly, certainly not enough to start symlinking a folder I’ll visit a single time ever to tweak a setting like another suggested lolol.
Since each windows game installed through lutris and steam run in their own sandbox where they are free to mess with things, I don’t see why the same couldn’t be done for Linux games. It’s not exactly an ideal solution, but it would abstract each game’s quirks in where they want to store files just like steam does with the compatdata folders. I know this is basically what flatpak does.
Oh definitely; and I don’t think there is a great deal of users that would argue for the use of snap over flatpak either, so flatpak would be an ideal unified compatibility solution.
Not sure if I’ve seen a commercial game with a flatpak release; and given the open nature of flatpak, a company (ie: steam) could theoretically implement their own gatekept repository to manage purchases etc…
The main hurdle with adoption is native compatibility with steam; if they started hosting and supporting flatpak installs, the concept would likely stand a better chance. I suppose you could run the whole application sandboxed, which would theoretically sandbox every game installed; but canonical try that, and well… If you search snap steam, you’ll see the issues that brings about.
Beyond All Reason ships as both a flatpak and appimage! https://www.beyondallreason.info/download#Download-Play
That’s really cool, and great to see. Thanks for sharing!