It appears that Valve aren't stopping their push to improve Linux gaming, as they just recently hired another developer to help improve open source graphics drivers.
The new hire is Tony Wasserka, a programmer with a lot of experience. Looking over their resume, Wasserka previously worked for the likes of Imagination Technologies where they worked on the Vulkan driver for PowerVR graphics chips. Additionally they also help to found the Nintendo 3DS emulator Citra, they're a contributor to the GameCube and the Wii emulator Dolphin, they also contributed in the past to the Wine compatibility layer and more. It's pretty safe to say they know their way around some complicated code.
After posting for help on Twitter only a few days ago, today Wasserka posted a surprising new update to mention this:
It's settled: Going forward I'll be working with Valve on improving the state of open-source graphics for Linux, starting with the RADV AMD driver!
Note - RADV is the Vulkan driver for AMD GPUs with the open source Mesa drivers.
Considering all the resources Valve are putting into Linux gaming across a number of developers to work on the actual graphics drivers, the ACO shader compiler, the Steam client on Linux, the Linux Steam Runtime container system, working with CodeWeavers on the Proton compatibility layer for Steam Play and more they must be pretty confident in their plans for Linux gaming as a whole. No matter what, everyone on Linux ends up benefiting from all their work since it's largely open source.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
gradyvuckovic Jul 28, 2020
A user asked to implement deduplication of Proton prefixes and the reply is:
We are working on this. Should be in an upcoming major release. Stay tuned.
Currently the implementation uses symlinks, so it should work on all filesystems which support symlinks.
Last edited by Shmerl on 28 July 2020 at 6:28 pm UTC
There's also this juicy news here about Proton: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/4093.I hope the feature is optional. Even though it uses lots of space, I prefer each game sandboxed in its own wine instance. I find it more manageable because many of these games have special requirements.
A user asked to implement deduplication of Proton prefixes and the reply is:
We are working on this. Should be in an upcoming major release. Stay tuned.
Currently the implementation uses symlinks, so it should work on all filesystems which support symlinks.
for those games you can copy the files.
the issue is if you apply an script to fix the game, and the script isnt aware of the sym link, because it was made prior to valve implementing this...
then this will cause an headache in the mean time between the migration of such scripts to an new model and the new scripts being made to take this feature into account.
Great news that valve keep investing in linux, I would love to know what the return is for valve corp on linux investment. Do we spend enough for them to retain profit even after monthly wage bill and investments, in graphics compatibility and innovation or do they make a loss on it each qtr banking on the long game.
They are probably burning money.
ElectricPrism Jul 28, 2020
all hail Gabe!!!
When you first saw Gaben, were you blinded by his Majesty? Paralyzed? Awestruck?
Last edited by ElectricPrism on 28 July 2020 at 10:47 pm UTC
TheRiddick Jul 29, 2020
PS. Gabe is currently in New Zealand and has lost quite a bit of weight!
Last edited by TheRiddick on 29 July 2020 at 12:16 am UTC
Maybe valve can get some push going on NVIDIA working under Wayland? surely there is a way to do it without a whole new driver?
PS. Gabe is currently in New Zealand and has lost quite a bit of weight!
nvidia is closed sourced. nvidia doesnt even care about linus saying FY NVIDIA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_36yNWw_07g
i dont think anybody can tell them what to do. just make sure to get AMD next time
Maybe valve can get some push going on NVIDIA working under Wayland?
That's a futile expectation. The only way this kind of problem could be fixed is Nvidia starting using open source kernel driver (either their own or Nouveau). Until that happens, don't expect progress. It would take them decades to support anything modern. That in theory could happen, but Nvidia is clearly not in a rush to do it.
oldrocker99 Jul 29, 2020
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