> I later got a hankering to play Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. This time, the game would not work and Steam wasn't really forthcoming with showing logs. I figured out how to see the logs, and then did what you do these days - I showed the logs to an AI. The problem, slightly ironically, with MD is that it has a Linux build and Steam was trying to run that thing by default. The Linux build (totally unsurprisingly) had all kinds of version issues with libraries. The resolution there was just to tell Steam to run the Windows build instead and that worked great.

I've heard it said in jest, but the most stable API in Linux is Win32. Running something via Wine means Wine is doing the plumbing to take a Windows app and pass it through to the right libraries.

I also wonder if it's long-term sustainable. Microsoft can do hostile things or develop their API in ways Valve/Proton neither need nor want, forcing them to spend dev time keeping up.

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danielheath 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

MS _can_ do that, but only with new APIs (or break backwards compatibility). Wine only needs to keep up once folks actually _use_ the new stuff… which generally requires that it be useful.

	▲	Grimblewald 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Plus if it does happen, folks need to laern a bunch of new hostile stuff, given how linux is taking off, why not just move to treating linux as the first class platform.

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pkulak 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'd love to see a world were game devs program to a subset of Win32 that's known to run great on Linux and Windows. Then MSFT can be as hostile as they like, but no one will use it if it means abandoning the (in my fantasy) 10% of Linux gamers.

	▲	cyberrock 10 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That's basically already happening with Unity and Unreal's domination of the game engines. They seem dominate 80% of new titles and 60% of sales on Steam [1], so WINE/Valve can just focus on them. Most incompatible titles I come across are rolling their own engine. [1] PDF: https://app.sensortower.com/vgi/assets/reports/The_Big_Game_...
	▲	ehnto 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I am seeing that number increasing soon with The SteamDeck and SteamMachine (and clones/home builds). Even the VR headset although niche, is linux. The support in this space from Valve has been amazing, I can almost forgive them for not releasing Half Life 3. Almost.
	▲	bryanlarsen 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I believe it's already happening to a minor degree. There is value in getting that "steam deck certified" badge on your store, so devs will tweak their game to get it, if it isn't a big lift.

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scythe 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>I've heard it said in jest, but the most stable API in Linux is Win32.

Sometimes the API stability front causes people to wonder if things would be better if FreeBSD had won the first free OS war in the 90s. But I think there's a compromise that is being overlooked: maybe Linux devs can implement a stable API layer as a compatibility layer for FreeBSD applications.

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tjpnz an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

>I also wonder if it's long-term sustainable. Microsoft can do hostile things or develop their API in ways Valve/Proton neither need nor want, forcing them to spend dev time keeping up.

Not while they continue to have the Xbox division and aspire to be the world's biggest publisher.