Now that the huge release of Steam Play Proton 7.0-1 is out, work begins again on Proton Experimental as it pulls in all the latest changes for you to play with. What is Proton? It's a compatibility layer designed to run Windows games from Steam on Linux. See more about it in our full guide.
As of Proton Experimental updated on February 18, here's what's changed:
- All changes from Proton 7.0-1.
- Fix STAR WARS: Squadrons displaying warning about outdated drivers.
- Fix Dead Cells hanging on launch.
- Fix Devil May Cry 5 and Capcom Arcade Stadium crashing when scrolling through videos too quickly.
- Fix Uplay / Ubisoft Connect reliably failing to update with fsync enabled.
- Fix GTA V randomly crashing on certain window managers.
- Fix Teardown randomly crashing.
- Fix Melty Blood: Type Lumina hanging on the intro video.
- Fix Arma 3 launcher.
- Update file distribution method to save disk space.
- Update dxvk to include the latest development work.
- Update vkd3d-proton to include the latest development work.
See the Proton Experimental changelog to see all the current differences to the normal Proton releases.
Need to know how to actually use Proton Experimental? Here's a simple HOWTO (as it's not complicated!). Make sure it's installed by searching for it in your Steam Library, then select it from the Compatibility menu in the Properties section of a game. See our quick video below:
For an explainer in text form:
- Search for Proton Experimental and install if not already.
- Right click any game on Steam and go to Properties.
- Select the Compatibility menu on the right side.
- Ensure the "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool" is ticked.
- From the dropdown box that appears select Proton Experimental.
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The comments on this article are closed.
fenglengshun Feb 18, 2022
QuoteFix Melty Blood: Type Lumina hanging on the intro video.Yep, looks like video codecs are finally getting fixed. That'll enable a lot of the Japanese games I play. I should check BlazBlue again sometimes.
3 Likes, Who?
Well.. that ship has already sailed. Few studios want to do Linux ports of games and there is no carrot that will make them want to. We had basically nothing for a decade (since the good old days of Icculus). I'd also have to question how much money is in it for third parties porting games, like Feral. It's not like they get paid to do it, they pay for the privilege under license, hoping for a return on sales. In many cases they don't even get that, existing owners of the game just get a free download of the Linux port.
I thought that way too. I was vehemently against Wine, to the point of admonishment, for those reasons. I scoffed at Valve's SteamPlay at first too, until I actually tried it and saw how much running games under wine had improved.
Now I'm just glad to be playing almost every game I'd ever want without having to keep a Windows install around. To blazes with philosophy.
I thought that way too. I was vehemently against Wine, to the point of admonishment, for those reasons. I scoffed at Valve's SteamPlay at first too, until I actually tried it and saw how much running games under wine had improved.
Now I'm just glad to be playing almost every game I'd ever want without having to keep a Windows install around. To blazes with philosophy.
5 Likes, Who?
Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: hephaistionYeah, yeah, but you know what they mean.Quoting: IvancilloI don't like all of this emulation things.
Proton is not an emulator.
For me, while I get their point, I think it's shortsighted. The problem is, Linux gaming hasn't been going anywhere. Without Valve it would have been far more nowhere than it is. At our size in the market, it's a major chicken-egg problem: Few were going to release their games for Linux unless there were more Linux buyers, and few were going to play games on Linux unless there were more games released for it. And as a side note, few would be likely to use Linux as their desktop at all if they couldn't play their games. At best, the status quo undisrupted sees Linux dragging along with a few decent games and stagnating market share; at worst, even the level we're at turns out to be a long-tailed artifact of the failed "Steam Machine" push and we gradually get fewer and fewer games released, trickling down in the general direction of where we were before Valve's initial Linux push.
So. Here's Valve, trying to break the cycle. They back Wine and DXVK and use 'em to make Proton, with the potential to allow nearly all games to be played on Linux so close to native as to make no practical difference. And yes, in the short term that means fewer games actually developed for Linux natively.
But they also release the Steam Deck, a mass market game machine running Linux, which would not be practical without Proton. If it goes well, suddenly the market share for Linux gets far larger, making Linux a much more noticeable development target. If they succeed, the chicken-egg problem will be, if not broken, at least seriously weakened. And Linux gaming in general becomes significantly more practical for a wider variety of gamers, making growth more plausible off the Deck as well.
So yeah. If the Steam Deck fails, and market share doesn't grow, then Proton could turn out to be a long term net negative. But the status quo is not tenable anyway.
Exactly this. Let's get the Linux user base up to a reasonable amount first, then we can talk about native vs wine. Until then, that whole discussion is completely moot. It's like being trapped in the middle of the desert and arguing of you prefer Perrier over Evian.
8 Likes, Who?
Just tried Dying Light on experimental (both for the first time). Oddly the native port wasn't working for me, so I'm glad it was easy to switch (not sure why Steam needed to redownload the while game, but I'll live).
Buttery smooth and kinda fun to boot.
Buttery smooth and kinda fun to boot.
0 Likes
Comandante Ñoñardo Feb 19, 2022
Something is wrong on the Valve version of Gstreamer...
This was from Chronos: Before the Ashes (that uses some mp4 videos at startup)
Now, if I use some of the GStreamer files from Proton Ge, everything works fine.
winegstreamer warning: videobox1: not negotiated
winegstreamer warning: videobox1: ../src-gstreamer/libs/gst/base/gstbasetransform.c(1431): gst_base_transform_reconfigure_unlocked (): /GstBin:bin3/GstVideoBox:videobox1:
not negotiated
winegstreamer error: decodebin4: Your GStreamer installation is missing a plug-in.
winegstreamer error: decodebin4: ../src-gst_base/gst/playback/gstdecodebin2.c(4719): gst_decode_bin_expose (): /GstBin:bin4/GstDecodeBin:decodebin4:
no suitable plugins found:
Couldn't set avdec_h264-2 to PAUSEDCouldn't set avdec_valve_h264-2 to PAUSED
winegstreamer error: decodebin6: Your GStreamer installation is missing a plug-in.
winegstreamer error: decodebin6: ../src-gst_base/gst/playback/gstdecodebin2.c(4719): gst_decode_bin_expose (): /GstBin:bin6/GstDecodeBin:decodebin6:
no suitable plugins found:
Couldn't set avdec_h264-3 to PAUSEDCouldn't set avdec_valve_h264-3 to PAUSED This was from Chronos: Before the Ashes (that uses some mp4 videos at startup)
Now, if I use some of the GStreamer files from Proton Ge, everything works fine.
0 Likes
furaxhornyx Feb 19, 2022
Quoting: Purple Library Guy[...]
So. Here's Valve, trying to break the cycle. [...]
It seems that Microsoft is also trying to break the cycle, seeing the increasing number of people being p*ssed off by Windows 11 (like I was with Windows 10)
4 Likes, Who?
Quoting: furaxhornyxQuoting: Purple Library Guy[...]
So. Here's Valve, trying to break the cycle. [...]
It seems that Microsoft is also trying to break the cycle, seeing the increasing number of people being p*ssed off by Windows 11 (like I was with Windows 10)
Ah, so this is what they wanted to say...! :D
3 Likes, Who?
Quoting: IvancilloI don't like all of this emulation things.
It's OK for old games that doesn't make sense for the developer to port, because don't worth.
But at the same time desincentivates them to make native Linux version of new games.
Yes, that's right. But the vast majority of developers have proven they don't know how to develop natively for Linux. Proton is not ideal but is the best option we have for Linux gaming. Most games runs better on proton than natively.
5 Likes, Who?
Quoting: TheBardMost games runs better on proton than natively.[citation needed]
Note that there are 9,612 native games on Steam today, so you need to show that at least 4,807 of them work better through Proton on all hardware.
Last edited by CatKiller on 19 February 2022 at 2:57 pm UTC
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Quoting: CatKillerQuoting: TheBardMost games runs better on proton than natively.[citation needed]
Note that there are 9,612 native games on Steam today, so you need to show that at least 4,807 of them work better through Proton on all hardware.
I think he meant the native ports. And he is right there. I have had better experience with a number of games using Proton than using the native port.
Most current example for me is Valheim.
As a benefit of Proton save files and configs are in the proton pfx, which are not on my system harddrive, so I do not have to bother backing up configs and savegames when I do something to my system.
1 Likes, Who?
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