Valve have released the latest big update to the Steam client, after a good while of Beta versions bringing with it some major new features - especially on the Linux side. If you are opted into the Steam Client Beta, you will have already seen and probably used a bunch of what's new but this is for everyone sticking with the main client.
For fans of the Steam Play Proton compatibility layer, it's the big one that brings with it support for CEG DRM, making many more games playable that weren't previously. However, that currently needs you to use Proton Experimental, at least until Proton 6.3-8 rolls out (currently in testing).
Other Linux specific improvements include the "scout" and "heavy" runtimes getting better compatibility with recent Let's Encrypt TLS/SSL certificate chains, a startup crash fix was also solved for experimental versions of Mesa. The shader pre-cache system also saw improved performance and reduced disk I/O when updating Mesa caches on Linux.
There's even more for Linux! VA-API hardware encoding is now supported, with an option to turn it off if you need to. There's support for DMABUF PipeWire capture, fixes for some streaming crashes and timeouts when Linux is the host system and support for capturing up to 4K using PipeWire.
Plenty more for everyone was added including improved sync times for Steam Cloud, improved offline support for Steam Input, new Steam Deck icons in the Steam Input API and a visual update to existing icons, various fixes and improvements for connecting to the Steam servers, an update to the Chromium version used and more.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
questioner9 Nov 22, 2021
Does this news about CEG DRM mean all DRMs used for those games are now working with Proton? Or are there more DRMs still?
Quoting: questioner9Last month or so Liam did an article on the top 100 most popular Steam games working status on Linux and some games did not work because DRM was not supported on Proton.
Does this news about CEG DRM mean all DRMs used for those games are now working with Proton? Or are there more DRMs still?
Quite a few DRM systems work on Proton - Steam's, obviously, and Denuvo. CEG DRM caused a lot of problems and while I don't think these fixes are a blanket "CEG now works", it's a big step towards that.
Anti-cheat, however, remains a sticking point. While EAC and BattleEye now "officially" support Proton, developers still need to jump through a few hoops to add that support to their titles, and so far, none have bitten that particular bullet. The recent delays to the Steamdeck announced by Valve have probably only made that situation worse. I doubt we'll see proper anti-cheat support until the New Year now (although one title, I forget which, does have it activated in beta already).
Quoting: questioner9Last month or so Liam did an article on the top 100 most popular Steam games working status on Linux and some games did not work because DRM was not supported on Proton.None of the top 100 used CEG, as it's an older DRM.
Does this news about CEG DRM mean all DRMs used for those games are now working with Proton? Or are there more DRMs still?
Quoting: GuestQuoting: questioner9Last month or so Liam did an article on the top 100 most popular Steam games working status on Linux and some games did not work because DRM was not supported on Proton.
Does this news about CEG DRM mean all DRMs used for those games are now working with Proton? Or are there more DRMs still?
I'll admit to being curious about this too. There's precisely one game I'm interested in running, specifically the multiplayer aspect from the CEG supported angle, and it's been quite stubborn on the matter. Space Marine.
Works AFAIK. Singleplayer works, I haven't tried multiplayer, but there's a positive report on protondb from 2 days ago.
I think CEG DRM used to work via wine, but not via proton (being Valve's DRM, I think it used to communicate with the steam client, which is precisely where Proton differs from regular wine).
But I ended up changing side for an amd card.
Are amd also concerned by this dmabuf or is it specific to nvidia ? If not specific to nvidia, am I correct to assume the openness of radv helped getting it supported ages ago.
And when it's said up to 4k capture via pipewire, are we talking x11 or Wayland (and xwayland) or both ? Or graphics server is irrelevant ?
(And how well is OBS supporting all those latest treats?)
Last edited by a0kami on 22 November 2021 at 2:40 pm UTC
Quoting: a0kamiI know DMABUF was quite a big deal for a while on nvidia GPU.PipeWire capturing works on all DEs that support xdg-desktop-portal, regardless of display protocol.
But I ended up changing side for an amd card.
Are amd also concerned by this dmabuf or is it specific to nvidia ? If not specific to nvidia, am I correct to assume the openness of radv helped getting it supported ages ago.
And when it's said up to 4k capture via pipewire, are we talking x11 or Wayland (and xwayland) or both ? Or graphics server is irrelevant ?
(And how well is OBS supporting all those latest treats?)
And OBS has implemented that months ago, it works OOTB on Wayland.
Last edited by Hooly on 22 November 2021 at 5:28 pm UTC
Quoting: a0kamiI know DMABUF was quite a big deal for a while on nvidia GPU.
But I ended up changing side for an amd card.
Are amd also concerned by this dmabuf or is it specific to nvidia ? If not specific to nvidia, am I correct to assume the openness of radv helped getting it supported ages ago.
Nvidia had work a decade ago on dma-buf, but kernel developers decided that they wanted that interface to be GPL-only. So then Nvidia spent a couple of years reworking it to use fences, which wasn't GPL-only, and then kernel developers decided that they wanted to make fences GPL-only as well. I'm not sure exactly what happened after that.
Comandante Ñoñardo Nov 22, 2021
Comandante Ñoñardo Nov 22, 2021
Quoting: GuestQuoting: Comandante ÑoñardoFinally WH40000 Space Marine is legally playable on Linux!
Does multiplayer work?
"Proton" fails entirely to launch anything whatsoever on my system. So I can't play it at all (didn't work through wine either last time I tried, for DRM reasons).
Is playable with PROTON experimental and yes, multiplayer works.
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