This is just a vent post / unpopular opinion (? unsure if unpopular). Specifically on Steam. Linux native builds are so buggy and glitchy and never work right. Always some combination of:
- No sound
- Old outdated version missing content and incompatible online
- Controllers don’t work
- Crashes, doesn’t launch at all
- Horrific FPS
- Cutscenes don’t play
- Weird game breaking softlocks and logic errors, like critical items not spawning and dialogue not triggering
- Zero support and low priority from the developer
I have none of these issues with Proton. Proton works perfectly fine, I love it. This only happens when a game doesn’t use Proton. As soon as I change to Proton all issues are resolved. This problem has followed me across distros with fresh installs, so it’s not a config issue. Yes I have the correct drivers and such, NVIDIA proprietary unfortunately. It’s so strange, you’d imagine the native build would run better not worse.
The worst part is, it’s not easy to tell when a game will launch using Linux native as it’s the default priority. Games can even silently update and stop working when they gain Linux native “support”. You have to manually go in to properties and override compatibility to proton. Normally I do this when I notice a suspiciously large amount of bugs and I’m like hmm… oh look it’s Steam Linux Runtime 1.0 again.
I wish there was a way to just force Proton globally. Either that or people actually test and maintain their Linux builds. I’d rather there be no Linux build at all if they’re going to be so terrible.
Edit to add commented example list of games:
I couldn’t get a full list because I was relying on having set a flag forcing a specific version of Proton to identify which games were problematic to jog my memory… Unfortunately this data is local only and was not synced between computers, so it was lost when I changed distro. Just from my limited memory though, I can list some that I distinctly remembered when writing up my post, though it’s many more in reality. It’s also surprisingly hard to see whether a game even has a Linux native version, you usually have to wait for the store page to load and scroll down to compatibility, which is just annoying.
Games that worked well:
- Factorio
- Stardew Valley
- Baba Is You
- All Valve games (TF2, DotA2, etc)
Games that had issues:
- 1001 Spikes
- The Case of the Golden Idol
- Broforce
- Spiritfarer: Farewell Edition
- The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe
- Cook, Serve, Delicious
- Valheim
- A Game About Feeding A Black Hole
- Audiosurf 2
- Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
- Slay the Princess
- TIS-100
- Cassette Beasts
- Brotato
- Bit.Trip runner
- Don’t starve together
- Unpacking
- While True: Learn
- Fez
- Magicka 2 (controllers not working)
- One Shot (critical gameplay bug right at the end. Had to watch a let’s play to finish it. I messaged the dev who left me on Read)
- Just Shapes & Beats (no sound)
- Tiny Bookshop (no sound)
- HiveSwap (critical gameplay bug right at the end, and savefile bricked, had to watch a let’s play and the dev ignored me) (I’m not a “fan” I swear, please don’t lynch me)
I’m getting tired and I’m sure you get the point. Almost every game in my experience has been unplayable on Linux runtime. I’m glad it’s working well for you though.
Yeah that’s true as well. Nothing is perfect, I was just sharing my experience because even today I ran into this issue multiple times and got annoyed.
I noticed people here seem to attribute a lot more meaning to downvotes than other websites, and it’s even a bit taboo to downvote too often. Personally I don’t really think about it that deeply, there’s always people who will disagree with you. Also I noticed hyperbole isn’t appreciated either. Like to me if I read “Linux native is buggy and never works right” that doesn’t mean literally never, it’s more like the emotional never.
There are also people who hate on Proton, because it uses the Windows build and advocate for Linux builds only. They say its bad for Linux, because developers don’t need to understand and care about Linux in the long run anymore. This is not my opinion and I disagree with those statements. So when you say you hate native Linux games, they will downvote you because they disagree with you on that point. As always, there is a truth in all those statements, so I don’t want to discourage anyone for being against Proton.
One thing I want to mention is, that these games on Steam are for the most part proprietary. So having native builds isn’t as effective as having native Open Source builds. The reason we usually want native is, because we can change and adapt issues with Open Source tools and games. But that is not possible with proprietary games. Therefore having them on Proton isn’t losing much on that front.
Yeah that’s a good point. There’s a huge difference between Cities: Skylines and OpenTTD. I feel like those kinds of older style PC games are especially suited to native Linux builds.