Submitted via IRC for Fnord666
Valve appears to be working on a set of "compatibility tools," called Steam Play, that would allow at least some Windows-based titles to run on Linux-based SteamOS systems.
Yesterday, Reddit users noticed that Steam's GUI files (as captured by SteamDB's Steam Tracker) include a hidden section with unused text related to the unannounced Steam Play system. According to that text, "Steam Play will automatically install compatibility tools that allow you to play games from your library that were built for other operating systems."
Other unused text in the that GUI file suggests Steam Play will offer official compatibility with "supported tiles" while also letting users test compatibility for "games in your library that have not been verified with a supported compatibility tool." That latter use comes with a warning that "this may not work as expected, and can cause issues with your games, including crashes and breaking save games."
Tools that let users run Windows apps in Linux are nothing new; Wine has existed for decades, after all. But an "official" Steam-based compatibility tool, with the resources and backing of Valve behind it, could have a huge impact on the Linux development space that could reach well beyond games. Assuming it worked for a wide range of titles, the Steam Play system could also help ameliorate one of SteamOS' biggest failings—namely, the relative lack of compatible games when compared to Windows.
With all that said, some caution is warranted before getting too excited about these possibilities. For one, we don't know what specific form Steam Play will take. Valve could simply be preparing a wrapper that lets users run existing emulation tools like Wine and DOSBox on top of SteamOS without actively advancing the state of that emulation directly.
Related Stories
Valve has confirmed the rumours that were discussed here on SoylentNews earlier.
Today, Monday, August 21, Valve has released a new beta steam client for linux. It includes a modified distribution of Wine, called Proton, to provide compatibility with Windows game titles. This goes hand-in-hand with an ongoing testing effort of the entire Steam catalog, in order to identify games that currently work great in this compatibility environment, and find and address issues for the ones that don't. (includes a list of 27 initial games supported for beta)
We will be enabling more titles in the near future as testing results and development efforts progress; in the meantime, enthusiast users are also able to try playing non-whitelisted games using an override switch in the Steam client. Going forward, users can vote for their favorite games to be considered for Steam Play using platform wishlisting.
To make this happen, 2 years ago, Valve started funding/supporting development efforts of Proton and DXVK (the Direct3D 11 implementation based on Vulkan.) Modifications to Wine are submitted upstream if they're compatible with the goals and requirements of the larger Wine project; as a result, Wine users have been benefiting from parts of this work for over a year now.
Also reported on GamingOnLinux.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @06:15PM (1 child)
Great! Let's celebrate by sending them a few bottles of WINE.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday August 16 2018, @08:31PM
Don't you think it would be better if they first would focus on getting Windows games to run on Windows first. Then worry about Linux.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @06:32PM (16 children)
That's what the whole SteamOS crap was supposed to do: Put major muscle behind porting games to Linux.
It didn't happen.
Actually, why is it so difficult to get Windows stuff running on Linux? It's all just bits, right? Is it a legal issue? Is it a philosophical issue?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @07:08PM (5 children)
I don't know .... so you are saying that all these thousands of people working at Microsoft for years on Windows OS, they do nothing? And it would be trivial to duplicate their entire effort (with bugs, I mean features) on top of another buggy system instead?
I think your question is pure ignorance.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @07:25PM (4 children)
You're the one who's ignorant.
Firstly, we're talking about games, here—you know, fullscreen stuff that is entirely under the control of the game maker. We're not talking about the latest trash Windows GUI elements; that's what Microsoft employees spend their time doing: Reinventing GUIs.
Secondly, Windows is famous for its backwards compatibility; that means there's a shit ton of interfaces that are GUARANTEED not to change, and are thus ripe for duplication. Why doesn't Linux support the PE binary format directly? How difficult could it be to make a Windows-translation layer in the kernel? Why is it so difficult to get game makers to use a cross-platform API?
(Score: 3, Informative) by urza9814 on Thursday August 16 2018, @08:08PM (3 children)
It's under the control of the game maker, but the game maker is not always under the control of Valve. They might choose to use Microsoft-exclusive technologies in that game, such as Direct X. You have heard of Direct X, right? One of the many things Microsoft employees are doing other than "reinventing GUIs".
Oh my god I almost fell out of my chair I was laughing so hard when I read that. Are you joking, or do you just not really know what "backwards compatibility" means? I've got dozens of Windows games that now run better on a fresh install of Linux than they do on Windows. Win98 software won't even run on XP usually, and trying on anything later than that is beyond hopeless unless the original devs release a patch themselves. And don't even bring up "compatibility mode", as I've tried that hundreds of times and never seen it make any difference at all (other than breaking things even more). Windows is "backwards compatible" only in the sense that that's a bullet point the marketing department uses to try to sell it. And that's one of the things with compatibility layers like Wine -- they DO work very well for the old stuff. The stuff that Windows won't even run anymore. They've caught up on those releases, and they work great, and even the bugs are replicated well enough to run the applications that are depending on them. It's the brand new games that rely on brand new features that don't work yet, because the devs haven't had time to reverse-engineer it all.
Plenty of game developers do. But plenty of others won't even consider using any technology that doesn't have a Microsoft logo on it. And it definitely doesn't help if they're planning an X-Box release, for example, as using Microsoft technologies is likely going to make that port a lot easier. And that's the problem that these kinds of compatibility layers are trying to solve. It's the games that are coded only for Direct X for example that cause problems. The games coded for OpenGL usually either have a native Linux version already or are pretty easy to support with compatibility layers like Wine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @08:23PM (2 children)
You've just been hoist by your own petard.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @11:16PM
lol, wow. Are you autistic?
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday August 17 2018, @01:45PM
I never claimed it couldn't. What's your point?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday August 16 2018, @07:36PM
I'm not too impressed either, however SteamOS wasn't about providing WINE/compatibility tools. It was about providing a Linux platform for gaming and improving game performance on Linux, so that developers would port games to Linux, as you say.
SteamOS gaming performs significantly worse than Windows, Ars analysis shows [arstechnica.com] (2015)
Since then, it should have gotten easier to support Linux gaming given the existence of Vulkan [wikipedia.org].
More should be done to ensure that Linux gaming is a thing and not a miserably tiny niche. The best thing about SteamOS is that Valve has not cancelled it yet. There's still hope, and the Windows platform is weaker than ever. Android is huge, ChromeOS is decent*, and Fuchsia might take ChromeOS a little further. PS4 is running a FreeBSD fork.
*Yes, I know that the Android and Chromebook platforms are typically underpowered for gaming, but the gap could narrow in some cases and you go where the money is (there are 1-2 billion Android phones). Nintendo Switch has gotten a decent amount of ports despite being less powerful than many PCs and consoles. It also supports Vulkan.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @07:43PM (1 child)
An analogous question to what you asked is, "why is it so hard to translate 'King Lear' into Chinese, they are all just words, right?"
Yes, they are all bits. However, there are fundamental architecture differences (notably DirectX). This is not correct, but imagine Windows represents the number one as "00001" and Linux represents the number one as "10001". Both are self-consistent, but it's complicated to translate between the two. You can emulate those differences with a translation layer (such as what WINE does), but that is imperfect, and it it adds computational overhead and slowness.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @08:02PM
Linux are the Irish, and Windows are the Scottish; both can read King Lear just fine.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday August 16 2018, @08:26PM (4 children)
> Actually, why is it so difficult to get Windows stuff running on Linux? It's all just bits, right? Is it a legal issue? Is it a philosophical issue?
Because the Windows system API is:
1. proprietary
2. an insane clusterfuck
3. changes regularly
A lot of things do run on Linux via Wine. Games are especially bad because they have a habit of relying on the obscure corner cases in the WIndows API, either for performance reasons or because game development happens on a tight schedule where developers can't afford to write non-buggy, correct code.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 16 2018, @08:33PM
> 3. changes regularly
That is why Windows must get tested frequently.
But really, it would be better to just avoid them and be safe with a stable OS.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @08:33PM
Maybe Linux would necessarily trail behind new developments in the API by, say, a year, but it should be possible to keep up. It must be the case that there is no money in it; indeed, Linux developers have their own game already: Writing file system drivers. etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @11:27PM
Like systemd, apart from (1) in theory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 15 2018, @12:51PM
be sued by microsoft ...
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Thursday August 16 2018, @08:57PM
DirectX. Marketshare. Games are distributed in binary form and one binary can work on multiple versions of Windows. How many Linux distros will the same binary run on? Maybe game devs haven't figured out how to use appimage.
There's also the fact that Steam is a piece of crap which some Windows users wouldn't even put up with, let alone Linux users.
(Score: 3, Informative) by forkazoo on Friday August 17 2018, @04:38AM
SteamOS was never really about Linux. It was about hurting the Windows Store. Valve saw the Store as a threat to Steam, so they suddenly got Linux religion. Except that they didn't really have a lot of internal experience with Linux. They just sort of assumed that if they started pushing Linux, they were big enough that everybody would adopt it with them. That ego didn't turn out to be justified. It basically surprised them to learn that there was a large community of people who already loved Linux, like web serving, VFX, etc., that were already quite happy with it and didn't need anything from Valve. And they were equally surprised to learn that the community of people who didn't care about Linux were quite happy with Windows or Mac and also didn't really need anything from Valve. Which left Valve with a lot of press releases, and a lot of people standing around wondering what problems Valve was actually going to be solving.
You saw a bunch of talks at Gamedev conferences from Valve developers who had spent their whole career writing code for Windows about how to write code for Linux, as if they thought they had some sort of insight. They mainly just had ego, and a massively inflated sense of self importance. And at the end of the day, Valve didn't really like anything about Linux, per se. It was never a technical solution for them. It was a business decision to fight Microsoft and Windows 10. Linux just wasn't under the control of a direct competitor. But it wasn't as if XFS made games more fun, or game engines needed to be able to ship dynamically loadable kernel modules, or the game industry was crying out for a platform with better symlink support than WinNT's festering rotbrained implementation. No unique Linux feature was ever really at play in the strategy -- just the general unfeature of not being a Microsoft thing. And merely not being one other specific thing isn't actually a specific reason to use Linux.
As for why it's hard to run Windows apps on Linux... Look at Wine. You can read the bug tracker to see the difficulties they have implementing the Win32 related API's. It's all open source, so none of that is secret if you want to dig around for a bit. There's not really that much demand among Linux users for native binformat support for .exe's in the kernel. Linux users mainly run Linux software, which is why they use Linux. Adding more support for Windows software doesn't make Linux better at being Linux - it just makes it more like Windows. But there's already an OS that's really good at being Windows. Namely, Windows. So if I really need to run Windows software, I'll probably just use that.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday August 16 2018, @07:12PM
Meh...Steam has been great for Linux gaming, and I particularly love the Steam Controller -- normally I play stuff like Factorio or Cities Skylines, but I've used that controller on everything from Warzone 2100 to Call of Duty with good results. And getting good results on an FPS by translating gamepad actions into mouse movements is no easy feat (and RTS games aren't much better usually, but those work alright too). It's not the *best* way to play, and I wouldn't want to use it for online competitive play, but turn the difficulty down a setting and it's just fine for campaign mode or skirmish battles.
Of course, CoD is already a Windows game. I run it through Wine, and it works just fine. I launch it through Steam, because that helps with controller setup, but it's not like it's difficult to set it up through Wine manually. Adding an official compatibility layer doesn't necessarily mean anything. Particularly when I've noticed a number of "Linux compatible" Steam games that won't actually run on my Linux system (had a craving for a Civilization game recently, steam had a Linux version, but I ended up just getting a refund after trying it on multiple different systems with different distros and a mix of Intel/NVidia/AMD hardware and it wouldn't even open nor give any error message or logs on any of 'em).
If they contribute some code back to Wine, that would be great. If not, then I'm not all that interested in what they do with this. Wine is already pretty good as far as I'm concerned, and their "guarantees" about compatibility don't mean a damn thing.
But really I wish they would work on making Steam more like a console. THAT is what excited me about Steam on Linux. It was never really about just playing games on my Linux box to me -- I can find a way to make those work if I really want to, even if that means dual-booting (although frankly, I'd just pick a different game if it got to that point!) But going back to Call of Duty -- I'm not the biggest FPS fan, and the only reason I play CoD is because my ex-girlfriend got a PS3 many years ago, and it came with CoD, so I started playing it there. Mostly I play RTS games and such, so a PC works far better for...but every once in a while there's a game that I just want to play console style. For CoD, there's co-op missions that I can't beat or can't even attempt because there's no split-screen multiplayer. It doesn't work as well with a controller because it's designed for a mouse and lacks the "auto-aim" features that console games use to compensate for the lower accuracy. The PC version is totally unplayable with a normal controller, and only tolerable with the Steampad. "Tolerable" is a rather revolutionary improvement all things considered, but still not ideal. Compatibility with Linux is not my main concern when we talk about Steam for Linux -- I want Steamboxes and console-style play. I wish Valve would try to do more about that, but it seems like they've pretty much given up on the Steambox idea and even the controller doesn't get much attention anymore...which is a shame, because that thing is one of the best devices I've ever purchased. It's permanently changed how I play games. And they could definitely sell me a few more of those things if they could actually give me a reason to use them...
(Score: 2) by turgid on Thursday August 16 2018, @08:20PM
SDL.
Back in the day I paid money for the Linux ports of Quake III, Descent, Heavy Gear II...
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Thursday August 16 2018, @10:19PM (5 children)
I wouldn't be surprised, if they're coming up with something similar to PlayOnLinux. Linux Gaming and User Friendly haven't really been in the same ball park until somewhat recently. Sure, there's WINE, sure there's DOSBox, sure you can run some stuff in a VM, but at what point is it just too much work? Especially, for something you want to do to unwind from a long day at work. As opposed to working on getting all the settings right, so you can even install the game on WINE. Then finding that there's actually a bug report that was submitted a year ago for the same issue you're having and it's still not fixed yet.
That doesn't mean I haven't seriously considered switching to Linux full time. #1 That's $120 that I don't have to spend on a new computer build. (Since, I usually buy an OEM version of Windows.) #2 Windows 10 is one giant Privacy Invading Pirate. #3 The lack of control over what your own system is doing. #4 Maybe it's time to jump ship, before they go all Windows 360 on me.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @10:37PM
Install
GentooLutris [lutris.net].(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @03:45AM (1 child)
It's not even worth it to me. I'd rather give up on playing most games than run some proprietary, privacy-invading, abusive, DRM-ridden piece of shit. Not to mention that most of these games are proprietary as well.
The software industry is an absolute abomination.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday August 17 2018, @03:32PM
Proprietary != Evil
Person's got to eat and I'm sorry, but Open Source Software is like an Artist who gives away their work for Free. Sure, there may be ways to monetize that, but most people can't and/or don't.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by MindEscapes on Friday August 17 2018, @01:45PM (1 child)
I've had decent success with PlayOnLinux, no need to bother with steam then. Of course, I tend to stick to games that are 6+ years old. I know I am getting old when I don't keep up with the latest and greatest. Games just aren't offering much more now than they did 10 years ago.
Need a break? mindescapes.net may be for you!
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday August 17 2018, @03:26PM
I wouldn't really chock it up to "getting old" necessarily. 30 years ago, games were really just getting their start. There was a lot of experimentation going on in games and as such we got to play the first games of a genre. Now, we get Clone 9999 that's not even as good as a 30 year old game in the genre. Ultima, Fallout, X-Com, Civilization, Doom, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Zoo Tycoon, Age of Empires, Wing Commander, Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem, Commander Keen, Starflight, Star Control, Sopwith 2, Spy vs Spy, Epic Pinball, and many others were great games in their own right. But, who needs a bad clone of Sopwith 2? Pinball is great, but after a while, it really does get old. Even Ultima VII, what might be called the pinnacle of the series has a finite number of things to do. The things that set some of these games / series apart is that they were the First to do what they did. Some, were truly great games, with so much story that a novel or two could have been made out of them or maybe an entire series of novels. Sure, there are some really good games coming out, but better than the old ones? I'm not so sure. Though, something like Dungeon Defenders is really a mashup of multiple genres and it Just Works. In recent years, Dungeon Defenders, Terraria, and 7DTD are the ones that have kept gaming interesting for me. Overwatch is just another FPS. Can we have some real innovation? Give me a Great Story and I won't care, if it's "just another" FPS/RTS/Etc. Too often, the story is so massively stupid, it makes your brain hurt. Give me an immersive world and I might forgive you for the focus on eye candy. Just don't screw it up with a stupendously stupid story.
Work on that cutting edge VR, because that's innovation. The potential for fun, immersive, exciting, fun, and great games in VR is astounding. Perhaps, the greatest potential, since the beginning of computer games. One of the funnest games I've played in VR was a Tower Defense game (Child of Ault). It reminded me somewhat of Dungeon Defenders, but they essentially skipped the motion sick issue by confining your movement. It's a tad too hard in some instances, but the game is pretty short and a whole bundle of fun. There's no real progression, hero lvling, etc, but this one's much more of a proof of concept than anything.
Portal Stories VR is the best Mod you could have asked for. It is fun and is a great introduction into the world of VR. Mainly, it doesn't have any of the same motion-sick inducing things that a lot of VR games have. You almost owe it to yourself to get a Vive or Rift, just so you can play this mod of Portal 2.
Fallout 4 VR is all you could have imagined it being, except it's definitely one of those motion-sick inducing games. You might be able to get over it, but don't push yourself. Any of the games you start to feel motion sick playing, stop for a bit, take the VR headset off, then come back to it in a bit. You may also have to tweak the responsiveness, etc in the settings. Part of it is just getting used to the idea that your character is moving while you aren't. Part of it is a learning curve on how to effectively use the controls. But, really I've not played it a whole lot. I'm one of those people that are prone to motion-sickness, so 'meh.
I also wear glasses and have to wear them with the VR headset. It does press your frames to your face a bit, but not uncomfortably so. It can be a bit tricky getting the VR Headset on / off, but has worked fine for me.
Some of the most fun can be had for free. Like with the Home thing in Steam VR. You can download a landscape thing that really gives you an idea of the size of the Mars Rovers. Also, some cool information about Mars.
(Removed from above paragraph.) FAIR WARNING. I dislike the horrible, pay-to-play, pay-to-win, and "free" game economic systems.
====================================================================
Even the likes of the Fallout series look poised to cash in on stupid business models. Assuming, we just totally ignore that Fallout Shelter game, which totally wasn't a cash grab. (Okay, I can't ignore it. Paying for virtual currency, virtual treasure chests, virtual power, is Evil. It's preying on those with addiction. It's preying on the innocent/ignorant. It's predatory marketing.)
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by boltronics on Friday August 17 2018, @03:14AM (3 children)
I hate having to have a separate wineprefix with a separate Steam installation for every... single... Windows game. Also having to do the 2FA thing all the time because you switched between more than 2 or 3 Steam installations gets annoying real fast. It also sucks that controllers don't work correctly under Wine, and the Steam controller doesn't seem to work at all when a GNU/Linux Steam build isn't running (and of course you can't be online in both at the same time). And now there's the whole Chrome sandboxing thing that Steam uses and doesn't work properly under Wine, and you'll see Windows Steam really is a mess on GNU/Linux.
If this provides a way for me to download and run Windows binaries under native Steam by calling my own compiled build of Wine, that'll be such a huge convenience that I might go back to PC gaming. This year I've primarily purchased and played console games - for the first time ever, just because Windows games on Steam is too inconvenient even when the Wine compatibility for the game is there.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday August 17 2018, @01:43PM (2 children)
Not sure about the downloading part, you might need to run Windows Steam to get it to let you install Windows games...but you can certainly run a Windows game through Linux Steam using Wine already. Just add a custom shortcut to the Steam launcher that triggers your Wine command. The games work, the controller works, the steam overlay works...worst case you might need to write a small shell script if you need to do some additional config for wine before it starts up, but otherwise it's pretty simple.
(Score: 2) by boltronics on Monday August 20 2018, @02:28AM (1 child)
So Windows Steam from within GNU/Linux Steam... But doesn't Steam log you out (from the GNU/Linux one in this case) when you fire up a different one? It used to as I recall. Also, what would happen when you press Shift-Tab? :)
I'm not sure it's worth the trouble.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday August 20 2018, @01:16PM
I was thinking you run the game itself from Linux Steam using Wine, not some kind of Steam-ception :)
You run Windows Steam the same way you apparently already do, by using Wine. That lets you download and install the game, since Steam presumably won't let you use a Linux version of Steam to download Windows installers. But once it's installed on your Wine drive, then you don't need that Windows version of Steam anymore because you can use a Linux copy of Steam with custom Wine shortcuts to launch the Windows games directly from the Wine C: drive. The Windows copy of Steam should only be necessary to download and run the installer.
I've never done this myself, as the few Windows games that I've run through Steam weren't downloaded from Steam, so I just installed with regular Wine and then made the shortcut...but once the game is installed it should all be the same. Maybe some kinds of DRM would block it, but in my experience you should have no problem running Steam games without launching the full Steam client.