Valve Software, best known for the Steam game distribution platform and smash hits such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life and Dota 2, released Proton 8.0 earlier today.
Proton is a compatibility layer for playing Windows games on Linux devices. Steam is the largest game distribution platform for PCs. Windows is the dominating platform on Steam, but it is also available for Linux and Mac systems.
Valve launched Proton back in 2018 as a way to improve its platform on Linux. It allows Linux gamers to run many Windows games, for which no Linux version is available, directly from the Linux Steam client.
Proton 8 is another milestone release of the compatibility layer. The official changelog, available on the project's GitHub repository, lists several games that are now playable on Linux devices. The list of games includes Forspoken, Nioh 2, Dead Space 2023, and several Atelier games.
The new version introduces support for new features. This includes support for multi-touch support, which requires access to a display and games that support the functionality and support for nvapi for many games. Valve improved support for certain games, including The Last Blade 2 and and Company of Heroes III, which got multiplayer support enhancements.
The list of fixes is equally long. Games like The Witcher 3, Dead or Alive 6, or Mortal Combat X have fixes included in the release. Last but not least, several libraries were updated to newer versions.
Proton 8.0 requires a graphics processing unit that supports Vulkan 1.3. Vulkan is a cross-platform 3D graphics and computing interface. It launched in January 2022 and introduced new features. The release group noted back then that any graphics adapter that supports Vulkan 1.2 should also be able to support Vulkan 1.3.
If you want to learn more about Proton, you may want to check out mike's guide on using Proton on Steam to play AAA games on Linux.
Using Proton on Steam is straightforward:
- Open the Settings on Steam.
- Go to Steam Play.
- Select the latest Proton version under Under "Run other titles with".
Games may also be set to a specific Proton version; this is useful, if a game has issues with a specific Proton version. The option to change the compatibility option is found in the game settings on Steam.
Closing Words
Proton improves gaming on Linux significantly, provided that Steam is used.
Now You: do you play games on your devices?
Thank you for being a Ghacks reader. The post Linux gamers rejoice: Valve releases Proton 8.0 appeared first on gHacks Technology News.
0 Commentaires