Valve’s Proton compatibility layer allows Windows games to run on Linux. While Proton is built specifically for Steam Deck, it’s good for Linux gaming in general. But protons aren’t perfect. It cannot run all Windows games.
Fortunately, open source Proton allows community developers to make their own improvements. By far the most popular Proton community build is the Proton GE. It adds a bunch of patches to Proton to make gaming on Linux much easier.
Before understanding Proton GE, let’s take a look at how Valve built Proton GE.
Steam Deck and Proton: Valve Great Contribution to Linux Gaming
With the release of Valve’s Steam Deck, Linux gaming has reached previously unimaginable heights. Steam Deck is a powerful device that puts you in control of PC gaming, indie and AAA titles. Valve achieved this by developing SteamOS and Proton.
SteamOS relies on Valve on top of Arch Linux, a rolling release Linux distribution. Arch Linux is popular because it is lightweight, open to users, and has a high degree of control.
So Valve took advantage of Linux and Arch to create an OS that could get the most out of the Steam Deck’s hardware, a Linux OS for gaming.
Proton and its dripping effect on Linux
The Linux distribution on Steam Deck begs the question: how do you get all these PC games to run on Linux? While there are some native games for Linux, game developers build most PC games for Windows. This is where the Proton comes in handy.
Proton is a compatibility layer that allows Windows games to run on Linux. Valve built Proton in part from Wine, allowing users to run EXE files on Linux.
Steam Deck launched ahead of a huge wave of demand and hype. This encourages game developers to make their games compatible with Proton. After the launch of Steam Deck, Valve also continued to update Proton.
The Steam Deck lacked a lot of playable games on launch day. But six months after launch, Valve announced that more than 5,000 games were playable on Steam Deck.
What’s even more impressive about Valve’s accomplishments is that they benefit not only Steam Deck users, but the entire Linux gaming community.
Proton also works with all Steam clients running on Linux. If a game works on Steam Deck, it should also work on other Linux distributions.
With Proton, game developers no longer need to create separate Linux ports of their games. They just need to make sure their Windows games are compatible with Steam Proton.
While Valve has paved the way for Linux gaming to grow rapidly, it still has a long way to go before it becomes mainstream.
Proton is not a perfect software. There are plenty of other games that won’t run on Linux with Proton alone. Valve can’t improve games on Linux alone either. To do this, Valve needs to work with the Linux community.
The Linux world is full of developers and users who want to make Linux gaming a success. That’s why Valve released Proton as free and open source software. This allows Proton to be freely changed and redistributed.
Community developers have released their own improvements on Proton. These improvements allow more games to run on Linux. The third-party Proton improvement most used by Linux gamers is Proton GE.
What are GE protons?
Proton GE is Valve’s Proton redistributable or fork. It adds a number of bug fixes to improve Linux compatibility with gaming hardware and software. Some of the Proton GE improvements include patches for AMD media codecs and FSR. It also offers better NVIDIA CUDA support and more Wine patches.
It also includes a long list of fixes for games like Fallout 4, GTA V, Dark Souls, and more. Proton GE has more patches to make it easier to play games on Linux.
Installing and using Proton GE is the first thing Linux users recommend to newbies.
The Proton GE is based on the latest Proton Experimental build, which is Valve’s beta testing build for Proton. Many Proton Experiment and Proton GE fixes and patches are finally included in the stable Proton release.
While the Proton GE has excellent update access, it is subject to bugs and other issues. This makes certain games perform better on the Proton than on the Proton GE. To address this, the Proton GE is updated every two weeks to fix bugs and add more patches.
However, you may want to check that certain games will work on your Proton or Proton GE. You can also look up your games on ProtonDB to see which versions of Proton work with them.
The GE in Proton stands for GloriousEggroll. GloriousEggroll also known as Thomas Crider is a developer at Red Hat, one of the most famous Linux server distributions on the market.
Crider is a true gamer. Additionally, he runs various Linux projects such as the Nobara project. Nobara is a Fedora-based game distribution that brings Proton GE and other game fixes. With Nobara, users will be able to play games on Linux without tinkering.
GloriousEggroll also maintains Wine GE, which provides Proton functionality for non-Steam games. This compatibility layer receives the same bug fixes and updates as Proton GE.
Wine GE is used to run games on Linux using Lutris. This is useful if you have games from sources such as GOG, EA’s Origin, Riot Games, Epic Games, or Ubisoft.
Thanks to SteamOS and Proton, we can consider 2022 the year of Linux gaming. Developers like GloriousEggroll want to create a better future for Linux gaming.
Gaming on Steam Deck and Linux just got easier with Proton GE and Wine GE. Both are easy to use in many of your favorite games. They’re also easy to set up, so you’ll have very little time to have fun with Linux.