Proton is able to run just about anything now, not just games. Stop using Microsoft Operating Systems where you can and mark them as needing replacement with real software in all your reports.
From my experience, it's still not a 100% replacement. For example, there are no drivers for a pretty common steering wheel (Logitech G923). There is a driver for an older version of the wheel that kind of works, but no TRUEFORCE support. And even then, you have to mess with some low level details to make it work, send magic values to the hardware on plugging it in.
I also noticed that games from Steam end up taking up substantially more disk space to the point where I can have only a few games installed on Linux.
And even the games without any special hardware dongles don't work so well as you imply.
I am new to steering wheels-not sure if this is the exact version because they mention xbox)? Try a distro with a very recent kernel (6.11; like Nobara for a gaming focused distro).
> I also noticed that games from Steam end up taking up substantially more disk space to the point where I can have only a few games installed on Linux.
Shouldn't be substantially more disk space. Would you provide stats?
Proton makes a Windows environment for each game as it installs those 3rd party libraries in the environment and that is used for disk calculations, while on Windows those libraries may be installed directly to the OS. Each 3rd party library and the shader cache is stored separately. This is my guess-I do not work on Proton.
> And even the games without any special hardware dongles don't work so well as you imply.
Anticheat and a few obscure Windows libraries are an issue. River City Girls needs some media foundation library or it does not show cutscenes. Valve is working on them.
I wish anticheat/multiplayer was universally an option on install. I don't play multiplayer games online, and often I'd like to be able to cheat in single-player, because I'm time-constrained and would like to cut out some part of the game I find less fun. Anticheat only makes my experience worse.
My steam system is somewhat questionable. it is netbooted, everything is nfs. This... well, it sort of sucks, I would not recommend it. But I love having the "one good drive" my NAS and then using that for everything, I am patient So I am sticking with it. But the "rebuilding shader cache". what is it doing? why does it take so long? why does it do it every time a launch a game? why am I offered a choice to skip it? why do I not notice any difference if I skip it?
I have a 10G connection to my nas but things are still much slower than I think they should be. I think it is related to poor interaction between nfs and a lot of small files. Otherwise, linux and proton are working great for games. When running games on windows I used iscsi for my games, and that worked well, I should probably do that on linux but I like having a filesystem on the far side instead of an opaque block device so I thought I would try nfs.
There are some weird artifacts in the system, I have to start steam twice, The first time it fails to connect to the webhelper, once everything is cached, it starts faster and thus works the second time, the shader cache takes forever and a day to rebuild, I can manually empty it which helps the next rebuild, I suspect many small files, having to check and replace them one by one, but I don't know, nfs tuning is somewhat of a dark art. Steam does not get along with my favorite tiling window manger(spectrwm) so I thought I would try that other openbsd floating window manager(CWM), steam is happier, but still has a few artifacts with menus, I suspect the CWM zero sized borders are the cause.
Overall, The experience is much worse than on windows, but that is because I made it that way, and so I am much happier than when I am on windows.
> But the "rebuilding shader cache". what is it doing? why does it take so long? why does it do it every time a launch a game?
Does that happen for every game, or just specific ones?
Asking because this is a behaviour I saw for a short time (week or two?) a few years ago, but these days it'll just do the "rebuilding shader cache" thing once for a game. Mostly after upgrading the Nvidia driver to a new release.
> I have a 10G connection to my nas but things are still much slower than I think they should be. I think it is related to poor interaction between nfs and a lot of small files.
That sounds more like your NAS is using hard drives (slow, especially in an array) rather than ssd's. Is that the case?
> There are some weird artifacts in the system, I have to start steam twice, The first time it fails to connect to the webhelper, once everything is cached, it starts faster and thus works the second time ...
Yeah, that really does sound like your storage isn't set up optimally, so is timing out as Steam loads into cache on your NAS. :(
With regard to the shaders, I actually started steam instead of going off memory, it is any windows game, so proton is involved, and the message is "processing vulkan shaders", This take a long time to finish(5 minutes for simple game "CW4", Long enough I always skip for larger game "satifactory") I just checked and opposed to my memory it does appear to cache them correctly, that is, only run the process one time. I cleared the cache at one point as nothing was progressing(too many skips, corrupted cache?), I just deleted everything under "steamapps/shadercache" and this appeared to help.
You are probably correct about the nas, it is full of wd reds, that is, the very slow supposedly reliable drives. I was prioritizing cheap bulk space when I built it, hoping the infamous zfs cache would save me. On your not quite advise I will probably add a ssd pool and see how that affects the whole system.
The nas is a 5 year old home built clone of a IX systems truenas box. 32gb memory.
Thank you very much for your kind words on the subject. It is more than I deserve for my screwball system.
No worries at all. I've used TrueNAS before, and you should be fine with adding an ssd pool. That'll work well with a 10GbE connection. :)
There's one thing you might want to try first though, which is to create an iSCSI volume from your hard disk pool and try running your Steam library from that instead of NFS.
iSCSI is a "single user at a time" access thing (unlike NFS), but the caching acts differently to nfs so you might get a better result. Or not. ;)
Am suggesting that as it could be useful to try prior to spending money on ssds. :)
The actual mounting of your TrueNAS iSCSI volume from a Linux box just needs the installation of "open-iscsi" (on Debian anyway).
You run the appropriate iscsiadm command to log in to the iSCSI portal, then mount it:
Heh, and now I just noticed your earlier message had this:
When running games on windows I used iscsi for my games, and that worked well ...
Ahhh well. If you want to try iSCSI for the Linux side of things too, then the above might help. :)
Using an ssd pool on the nas will be your best bet though. With a 10GbE connection it'll feel like a natively attached ssd, which sounds like it'd be a massive improvement for you. :D
I think the point OP was trying to make is that there's still a large amount of programs and devices that don't work on wine. Probably for at least as many people that "everything just works" for, the opposite is true in my experience.
I still don't get why wheels even need drivers at this point. It's 2024 and even with a legit version of Windows, there are all kinds of problems with all different wheels and all different games. We have a couple of axes and a bunch of buttons and some feedback. Steering wheels have been around for at least 30 years.
And if you DO have a driver, why does the fucking game have to have a list of supported steering wheels? Shouldn't that be abstracted away from the game? Isn't that the whole point of all those gaming and device APIs that Microsoft has built?
The experience with racing games isn't great on Windows, it's going to be worse on Linux where manufacturers put exactly zero investment into making it work and the crossover between sim racers and Linux developers is very small.
> From my experience, it's still not a 100% replacement
if it were a perfect replacemente, there would be no Windows.
for some it's good enough to endure the rough spots.
if you want to replace Windows and give yourself a gray area, and you can afford it, get a computer with 2 gpus and use a VM with VFIO and looking glass and you can contain its naughtiness away while enojoying it at native speed for gaming or whatever you want at 4k@120hz in a window or fullscreen inside Linux.
I recently set up my gaming rig dual booting Win 10 and Linux. I've spent almost all of my time in the Linux side, and when Win 10 is EOL I am no longer dual booting - Windows can live in a GPU passthrough VM under Linux with only Steam and whatever Windows software won't run under Proton/Wine.
Windows can see what I want it to see and not the whole machine. It has completely broken my trust.
For many graphics professionals, that's like asking if you'd consider replacing C++ with Rust.
There's one answer you might provide when you've the luxury to start things over and ramp up on all the differences, but practical reality is that you rarely have that luxury. Fluency and confidence in the tools you already use provides strong resistance to switching, even if alternatives promise they're ready to meet your needs.
Imagine if no C++ compiler existed for your operating system. Even if most of the code you write is Rust, would you be able to use this operating system?
Yes, I already have. Unfortunately, all the best tools for photography (my hobby) are Windows and Mac only. So I migrated to Mac. Linux is not an option because my software simply won’t run.
If you'll give me a proper alternative that can compete to Adobe and run natively on linux, sure. But there is none. Adobe dynamic link or After Effects do not have competition. Affinity don't work on linux.
Maybe one day Okular will finally enter the 21st century and start supporting signing pdfs with digital cert signatures and become a viable replacement.
Seems like a downgrade, and I doubt it can handle Premiere. Honestly I'm looking to move off of Adobe stuff anyway, but I will have to do that before ditching Windows
I run it on Linux everyday with Steam on Proton. It is my go to game on steamdeck and my Fedora desktop.
By default steam wants to download the old old old Linux version that doesn't allow online play, but if you enable proton it will download the Windows version and run fine. I am pretty sure it doesn't have a real anti-cheat included.
I'm pretty sure Fusion360 is built with QT tool kit for the GUI, and uses Python for the scripting engine. Of any of the modern professional paid 3D CAD programs, it seems to be the least tethered to Windows. It would be nice if they released a proper Linux version, like Autodesk does for some of their art industry programs. NX used to have a UNIX GUI recently, but it would take a pretty major company to move off Windows to bring that back.
Solidworks made its name by being the first mainstream CAD built for Windows back when all the other 3D CAD was running UNIX workstations that cost more than a new pickup truck. Both Solidworks, and the Autodesk competitor to it, Inventor, are Windows API through and through. It is disappointing, but unsurprising that they don't do well in WINE. They went all in on Windows to their core from the very start.
Valve Index. I currently dual-boot Windows for VR. This is the rabbit hole I went down (to be clear: SteamVR, specifically the compositor, is completely broken).
1. Install Monado with libsurvive.
2. Discover that libsurvive doesn't have the "smarts" that SteamVR has, and that calibration can be wonky (and was wonky for me).
3. Learn that you can import SteamVR calibration data. I can't do this in Linux because, well, SteamVR doesn't work.
4. Dual boot Windows with the intention to copy over calibration data.
Well, I got Monado and libsurvive running some time ago (Valve Index, X11, Nvidia), even for Beat Saber. It sadly was unplayable, because reflections were wrong in VR apps, it felt like both eyes using the same reflection angle instead of adjusting it to each eye. For close objects this was bearable, anything further away would look "wrong" and cause VR sickness. Also the FoV was wrong, it felt like a vignette around the screen edges, a good bit narrower than in SteamVR. Oh yeah, and the latest version did not build for me, used a previous one.
Performance, especially in Beat Saber, was great and better than SteamVR!
I would expect SteamVR to at least work enough for calibration. You could try switching to beta or other versions.
My guess is they focus on Proton for Steam Deck, which can not run VR comfortably (but, it can run it via USB-C docks/dongles, the power of a full Linux PC!). So we get constantly better Proton compatibility, including work on anti cheats, but VR is low to no priority. The market is pretty small, especially if you mostly worry about Index and related PC-tethered headsets. Also developing VR for Linux can't be an easy task.
I am especially annoyed that they more or less dropped the ball when it comes to Beat Saber via Proton. Beat Saber was an official launch title for Proton, but was unplayable for months [1].
Overall, if you are willing to deal with some annoyances, give it a try, it might cover your use cases.
SteamVR is playable, but not at Windows level and rough around the edges. I personally run an Index on a 4080 Super (previously 3080) via the SteamVR runtime. System details in case it matters: Arch Linux Zen kernel, X11 (i3), Nvidia drivers, SteamVR Beta, usually a recent Proton GE version. I remember playing Beat Saber, including modded [1], Until You Fall, Pistol Whip, Raw Data and After the Fall without issues. Non-steam applications outside Steam can also work, I have a launch script that sets up the env vars for Proton, should be easier via Lutris.
I see some problems however. VR itself is not as smooth as it should be, 100% playable, but not as smooth as I remember it ages ago on Windows or using a FOSS VR [4] stack (which has other issues). I don't really use SteamVR home, it sometimes takes a while to load. SteamVR window on the monitor has weird flickering issues, usually I can't get into its settings, likely i3 related. Firmware updates are mostly broken. No (I think) standby for the Lighthouses, I toggle them via Home Assistant and smart plugs.
Shout out to steamtinkerlaunch [2] for making certain settings easier to apply and ProtonDB [3] for tweaks if needed.
I don't know about Revit, but Inventor and Solidworks are WIN32 API right to their very core. Basically everything in them is available on the COM interface as objects, which is awesome for writing extensions to the programs on Windows. I suspect the trade off is that they are so all-in on WIN32, that they just touch way more of the API than games do, so they probably expose much more of missing API. They both rely on Microsoft Office for a variety of functionality, particularly Excel to manage tables of data. They rely on SQL server for the Vault and PDM products. They are Windows based through-and-through.
