Quoting: Perkeleen_VittupääI saw a video about ProtonDB and its current issues by Jason Evangelho https://odysee.com/@LinuxForEveryone:9/the-wrong-experience-for-new-linux:f

A very interesting video, thanks. I, personally, don't mind investing time in making my games work, so protonDB is fine for me. I use it to find workarounds mostly. On the other hand, I do see some problems with it, and in general having an alternative to something never hurt. So, best of luck, Liam.

P. S. Is Jason Evangelho from this video is Jason Evangelho ? I do read his articles sometimes...

Hi, yes, we are doing something. No timeline on it, working on it as and when I have time as an experiment. People everywhere I go complain about ProtonDB, so I'm doing our own thing as an experimental alternative. However, their video was incorrect on one thing: we do not use any data from ProtonDB - what we showed them is demo data.

You can see an example with demo data here. Edit: and yes, you should be able to play with it and submit your own demo reports to try it out ;)

I'm also tracking what's left to do / plans and such over here. Unlike other sites, GOL is 100% open source.

Feel free to let me know what you think. Still entirely unsure about it.

Last edited by Liam Dawe on 18 October 2020 at 3:08 pm UTC

I stopped submitting reports to ProtonDB when they brought in the Steam account-linking requirement. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Having a better repository of information to point people to would be useful, I think. I hope one day it will end up as just a very short list of games that don't work, and everything else is either native or works without intervention.

Something that would share Wine and Proton reports would be even more useful. Wine AppDB is somewhat archaic at this point especially since it's primarily focused on upstream Wine and at most staging. ProtonDB had a reverse problem - it was for Steam games only.

While I prefer upstream Wine, a lot of people are using Proton, so it's good to have a shared database.

Last edited by Shmerl on 19 October 2020 at 2:39 am UTC

Quoting: ShmerlWhile I prefer upstream Wine, a lot of people are using Proton, so it's good to have a shared database.

The issue there would be the same one complained about in the video for ProtonDB, I think: that it would tend towards a bug-tracking and tinkerer's repository.

For Proton, you want to be able to know before you buy the game whether you'll be able to just press the button to play. As I understand it, that's what Liam's going for here.

For upstream Wine, you have that in Lutris: you hit the play button and the runners take care of how that happens.

In addition to those, having a central bug-tracking and tinkerer's repository for submitting reports would be useful, to drive development of Wine/Proton, and to inform the creators of Lutris runners or those that want to do it themselves. That should come from CodeWeavers, really, I'd say, as the people that are involved in both Wine and Proton. That's a different audience than the one this initiative is aimed at, though, and the way people want to be able to use ProtonDB.

Quoting: CatKillerThe issue there would be the same one complained about in the video for ProtonDB, I think: that it would tend towards a bug-tracking and tinkerer's repository.

I think you totally need both. Some games require tweaks to run, and the database showing how to do it is a valuable resource (that's what Wine AppDB is doing). But my point stands for having a resource for all flavors of Wine in one place.

QuoteFor upstream Wine, you have that in Lutris: you hit the play button and the runners take care of how that happens.

I find solutions like Lutirs to be poorly maintained. As the number of games grows, the quality of the scripts goes down and they fall out of date faster. Same happens with PlayOnLinux. It's a lot more clear where there is a database entry which shows workarounds and also says when the report was made last. So you can figure out it can be stale if it was years ago. With solutions like Lutris it's very obscured.

So I'm personally not using Lutris or POL anymore but simply install games and refer to database reports for needed configuration if something doesn't work.

Last edited by Shmerl on 19 October 2020 at 3:07 pm UTC

Our solution is just for Steam+Proton, it's part of the point. Keeping it simple. We can look at perhaps doing other things for native+wine somewhere else but for now our reports are just for Steam+Proton.

If you have feedback, feel free to make new topics on it for me to follow as this is already full of talk about what we're not doing...

Quoting: Liam DaweOur solution is just for Steam+Proton, it's part of the point. Keeping it simple. We can look at perhaps doing other things for native+wine somewhere else but for now our reports are just for Steam+Proton.

Thanks. I think Wine AppDB already covers it (not perfectly but OK) for reguluar Wine. I thought it could be an improvement to have something combined which so far didn't exits.

Quoting: TriasP. S. Is Jason Evangelho from this video is Jason Evangelho ? I do read his articles sometimes...

Yep! It's the same guy!

Quoting: Liam DaweHi, yes, we are doing something. No timeline on it, working on it as and when I have time as an experiment. People everywhere I go complain about ProtonDB, so I'm doing our own thing as an experimental alternative. However, their video was incorrect on one thing: we do not use any data from ProtonDB - what we showed them is demo data.

You can see an example with demo data here. Edit: and yes, you should be able to play with it and submit your own demo reports to try it out ;)

I'm also tracking what's left to do / plans and such over here. Unlike other sites, GOL is 100% open source.

Feel free to let me know what you think. Still entirely unsure about it.

Already now it looks more useful, coherent and clean in comparison to modern protondb. Nowadays on protondb: one really cannot tell what means what!

I'm sure many would love to see this project taken forth. Should you guys run a crowdfund? Ask ppl to get your merch? Something else? Little bit of "competition" obviously would not harm in this case. I mean, protondb was brilliant at start and then something happened in their approach.

Gold used to mean: a little tinker effort required; launch option or similar and that's it. Now gold seems to mean you must install a custom proton +whatnot to get a "gold" game even launch. It's all in that Linux 4 Everyone video. No. Just no. This is not the way to go much longer. We need simplicity and clarity whether a game works on Linux OOTB or not.

And already are the new comers to Linux gaming in a total state of confusion..