Valve have announced the release of Steam Play Proton 4.11, this is a pretty exciting one and it's pretty huge overall.
Firstly, it was re-based on top of Wine 4.11. So it brings thousands of improvements over, considering that's quite a version bump. Additionally, 154 patches from Proton were upstreamed directly to Wine!
The next exciting bit is that Valve are now funding D9VK (and have been since June according to developer Joshua Ashton), along with shipping it in Proton as part of this update. This Vulkan-based Direct3D 9 renderer is still experimental, so it's not enabled by default as you need to use the "PROTON_USE_D9VK" setting.
Additionally DXVK was updated to 1.3, your current display refresh rate is now actually reported to games, there's more fixes to window management and mouse cursor focus, VR users rejoice as there's support for the latest OpenVR SDKs, FAudio was updated to 19.07, GameMaker titles got a fix for networking and there's a joystick input lag fix and rumble support for certain games.
Possibly just as exciting, is that a bunch of Wine "modules" are now built as Windows PE files instead of Linux libraries. Eventually, this will help some DRM and anti-cheat systems as work progresses on it. Fantastic to see work on that being done!
Is that all? Oh no—there's more.
When Valve identified issues with multi-threaded games as Proton development was being ramped up, CodeWeavers worked on developing the "esync" patchset to address it. It worked well but it came with multiple issues. As Valve said it needed a "special setup" and can cause "file descriptor exhaustion problems in event-hungry applications", they also think it "results in extraneous spinning in the kernel". So, they're working on what they're calling fsync and suggesting changes to accommodate it in the Linux Kernel.
Valve also showed off some proof-of-concept glibc patches, to expose the Kernel patches as part of the pthread library to get it all working. They said that if it's all accepted, "we would achieve efficiency gains by adopting it in native massively-threaded applications such as Steam and the Source 2 engine". You can read more about all that work in this Steam forum post and fsync testing instructions here.
As always, the Proton changelog for Steam Play can be found here.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
rustybroomhandle Jul 31, 2019
Arehandoro Jul 31, 2019
Thanks to everyone, and Valve, for doing this effort.
Quoting: liamdaweAlso, sorry for the delay everyone. Yesterday was my 31st birthday so I took a rare 100% day off, I'm in catch-up mode now.
Well...
... we hope this was the last time!
Seriously: Happy birthday, young man!
QuoteSo, they're working on what they're calling fsync and suggesting changes to accommodate it in the Linux Kernel.
Valve also showed off some proof-of-concept glibc patches, to expose the Kernel patches as part of the pthread library to get it all working.
That's really great. For Linux gaming, Valve is improving Linux in general.
Quoting: liamdaweAlso, sorry for the delay everyone. Yesterday was my 31st birthday so I took a rare 100% day off, I'm in catch-up mode now.
I'm surprised you managed that! :D Well done! You should probably do it more often.
I'm particularly interested in this new release because it includes the updates needed to use the new Index controllers in games that have specific support for them. And now the temperature is dropping again, I can continue my VR adventures.
This is all very, very exciting news about SteamPlay Proton, of course, but I'm most excited by the inclusion of D9VK at last! Is the
PROTON_USE_D9VK setting done in Steam Launch option on a per game basis? (Please say yes.) Exciting news!
Quoting: NanobangFirst off, a very happy birthday to you Liam!You can do it per-game, yes. Do "PROTON_USE_D9VK=1 %command%" as a launch option.
This is all very, very exciting news about SteamPlay Proton, of course, but I'm most excited by the inclusion of D9VK at last! Is thePROTON_USE_D9VKsetting done in Steam Launch option on a per game basis? (Please say yes.)
Exciting news!
Quoting: liamdaweAlso, sorry for the delay everyone. Yesterday was my 31st birthday so I took a rare 100% day off, I'm in catch-up mode now.
Happy Birthday, young man!
Quoting: liamdaweAlso, sorry for the delay everyone. Yesterday was my 31st birthday so I took a rare 100% day off, I'm in catch-up mode now.Happy belated birthday also here in the forums! 31? Oh, you youngster :D
But don't stress yourself, the Linux community can handle a day without awesome news posted here.
BTT: Yep, Valve is showing what Gabe said back then: Linux is the future of gaming!
Quoting: liamdaweAlso, sorry for the delay everyone. Yesterday was my 31st birthday so I took a rare 100% day off, I'm in catch-up mode now.
Happy Birthday!
No need to excuse. We Linux people know what patience means, so take your time off :D
Great release. So nice to see on how many corners Valve sponsors development.
A true example for other huge companies.
Last edited by vipor29 on 31 July 2019 at 11:36 am UTC
It feels like all the work that is being done on VR, Proton etc is leading to some kind of product launch. I just hope whatever it is, they've learned from the mistakes of SteamOS and get it right this time.
One of the very, very few big games coming native to Linux...
Quoting: EikeWhat I dislike about their post though is they used Shadow of the Tomb Raider as an example for Proton.Which is almost a year old and Feral don't seem to have mentioned it again since initially announcing it. How long is everyone supposed to wait?
One of the very, very few big games coming native to Linux...
Quoting: liamdaweQuoting: EikeWhat I dislike about their post though is they used Shadow of the Tomb Raider as an example for Proton.Which is almost a year old and Feral don't seem to have mentioned it again since initially announcing it. How long is everyone supposed to wait?
One of the very, very few big games coming native to Linux...
So we can declare Game Over on native Linux gaming besides "retro-inspired"?
Quoting: EikeWe get far more than retro inspired games and you know that. The reality though is that we rarely got bigger games before anyway: Feral only did a few Linux releases a year, Aspyr mostly stopped and VP only recently did some pretty poor ports of less than popular racers. I will take 1000s of games thanks to Steam Play than continue to see less bigger games with no other option.Quoting: liamdaweQuoting: EikeWhat I dislike about their post though is they used Shadow of the Tomb Raider as an example for Proton.Which is almost a year old and Feral don't seem to have mentioned it again since initially announcing it. How long is everyone supposed to wait?
One of the very, very few big games coming native to Linux...
So we can declare Game Over on native Linux gaming besides "retro-inspired"?
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