[asimovDev]

it always gets a sad chuckle out of me to hear that some native linux ports run worse than the windows version under proton. i think valve games are like that (l4d2 for example) and recently I think Hollow Knight: Silksong was like that

[Gigachad]

I think at this point native linux ports are somewhat a thing of the past. The problem was that the ports were usually contracted out to a 3rd party and rarely updated or cared for that much. There was also the issue that they often relied on dynamically linked libraries provided by the distro rather than static linked libraries bundled with the game. So stuff that did work would break on distro updates.

The proton model has the benefit that bugs on linux can be fixed by Valve and the Wine community. While bugs in an official linux port can only be fixed by the game publisher which rarely happened. There also seems to be virtually no downsides to running a Windows game in Proton. These days I don't even bother checking the Wine DB or proton rating because unless the game is deliberately blocking linux via anti cheat, it will just work.

[pjmlp]

The irony that without Windows there are no Linux games, eventually Linux folks will learn about OS/2 history in regards to Windows compatibility features.

Linux will stay forever a headless operating system great for embedded, server rooms and containers.

We have all limited time on Earth, and eventually Valve won't be around as it used to be, might even be acquired, sold, whatever, then what in regards to Linux gaming?

[Gigachad]

Wine existed before Proton, Valve made it better but the project doesn't rely on Valve. Currently Linux is the best gaming experience. Zero bloat or nagware, everything just works. It's just ironic Wine/Proton ended up being the best platform for gaming on Linux. I don't think anyone expected it to run so well with virtually no performance impact.

Now with the Fex project, it might end up that running Windows games on linux on a modern ARM processor could be the best way to game going forward, especially for mobile platforms like the SteamDeck.

[pjmlp]

The best gaming experience are Switch, PlayStation, XBox, iOS, Android, the very definition of everything just works, and no kernel drivers to worry about.

[gf000]

You just listed concrete hardware (with the exception of Android). That's a category error, of course a fixed hardware with specialized software will have less inconsistencies.

[pjmlp]

You would be happier if I listed the respective OSes instead?