There are the obvious options that can't work due to the general mode anti cheat software, but over the past 1.5 years, I've only had a couple of steam games where I had to tweak something because it didn't work out the gate. Every major title I've played worked first try.

I tried Linux a couple times over the bast 20+ years and it was still too raw for me. Now, it just works for me. I'm by no means a Linux guru but I am a computer smart guy. I setup a laptop with Mint for my brother who knows the bare minimum about computers, and he's had no issues using it. The progress made over the past decade has been wildly positive.

Proton is the reason I daily drive Linux. That is a simple, unequivocal fact.

This is what finally let me transition to Mint :3

I never said it did.

macOS is free because they don’t charge for it.

Maybe, because I haven’t looked into it in a few years.

Well, then show me a receipt where you (or anyone) paid for macOS. Should be interesting.

Ok, that makes a bit more sense then.

eGPUs got pretty good support on Intel Macs in the years leading up to Apple Silicon. And that transition started 5+ years ago. And now all Apple Silicon Macs have no eGPU support.

I find it weird that you cite eGPU support since hackintoshes almost always have PCI slots. And the eGPU support still comes from Apple (at the driver level) even on a hackintosh. AFAIK.

I think if Valve would release SteamOS 3.0 for PC that would make a bigger dent in Windows. TurboTax just announced they will not support Windows 10 for the new version and that's probably just the start for Win10 abandonment.

Proton developers are working on Wine code. Their patches go upstream. If you are using Wine, you have benefited (massively) from the sea change that has occurred (directly and indirectly) as a result of the development of Proton.

I remember the naysayers predicting that Gabe would never in a million years make the required investment because the state of Linux gaming was (in their assessment) that terrible.

And now we're having argue about whether it actually did anything for us? In the comments about an article about how much it did for us?

That's not an argument I'm having, I watched it happen.

does turbotax support linux?

Not me! I switched in 2017, right around the time Windows 10 "telemetry" (read: spyware) was getting backported to Windows 7.

It was a rough first couple of years, gaming-wise, but I managed to get by playing mostly Linux-native games and using PlayOnLinux with pre-Proton WINE for the one or two games important enough to justify the hassle.

(INB4 "weird flex but OK")

I gotta admit, I was pretty conflicted about Proton when it was first announced, since there was a lot of fear that it would reduce developer impetus to make proper Linux-native games. I'm not actually sure whether that came to pass or not, but I feel like the issue is a lot less important than it seemed at the time.

Ah cool, thanks for looking all that up. I knew Proton pre-dated Steam Deck, I just wasn't sure exactly where in the timeline it fit between the original Steam Machine launch and the release of the Steam Deck.

It's kind of a shame that Steam Machine failed, but in many ways it was a little too ahead of its time and its failure brought us to the Steam Deck which is a much more sensible approach.

Ultimately none of this would have existed without Wine and ironically the Microsoft app store (or whatever they're calling it these days). The threat of MS getting a stranglehold on program distribution on Windows the way Apple does on OS X and iOS was enough to spur Valve into putting significant effort into making Linux a viable gaming platform, something we're all benefitting from greatly.

People seem to be downplaying somewhat how significant an achievement this is for Linux. The thing is, for most programs you can find alternatives because the point isn't the program it's what you do with it. People don't use Photoshop because they enjoy Photoshop, they do it because they want to create something, which means if you can create that same thing using a different program then you don't need Photoshop. On the other hand games are an experience. The point is the game. Sure you can play a different game, but that's not an Apples to Apples thing as the experience however similar isn't the same. That means games are uniquely placed as a roadblock for migrating away from a platform, something consoles with their exclusive releases have known for a long time. Giving people the option to play the exact same game under Linux as they can under Windows is massive because there really isn't any other way to solve that problem.

As they need to be installed on Apple hardware, there's an implicit cost associated with it.

If you want to be super pedantic for no reason, you're correct, it is technically free.

Well, credit to Steam then.

I didn't know one way or the other if Proton development ended up in Wine or not, much less if Steam was or not directly participating in Wine development, all I knew is that Proton was forked from Wine in the beginning.

This is a dumb argument. Apple does provide you the OS upgrades for free but getting an ISO file and installing it on a non-Mac computer is impossible so no it's not really free

I can show you many receipts where I bought a Windows laptop without a trace of any Windows licence on it.

Same, you can't really install macOS on anything else than a Mac.

Sure you can do a Hackintosh, or run Windows without a proper licence (you can buy a Windows for like... $2 on the grey market). But you won't have any support...

What does any of that have to do with the fact that macOS is free?

Really? Did you pay for it? Because it’s free for me when I download it.

Sounds like you got scammed

I don’t understand this argument. It makes no sense. Just because a piece of software is included for free with an Apple computer doesn’t mean you’re paying for it. It’s like you see the word “free” and just decide it means something different than what it really means.

Blizzard used a cheat detection system in wow that allowed their server to send arbitrary code for clients to run. The code failing to return an expected result was a sign that there was tampering going on. Emulating windows api to run on Linux is a form of tampering, though obviously not necessarily a sign of cheating. Guessing they used some code that didn't work on Linux and banned everyone who failed before realizing that some failed due to Linux, and then were able to separate the Linux users from detected cheaters by how it failed (either that or they had to undo all bans from that round).

Though it does make me wonder if it meant they can't/don't detect cheaters on Linux. Probably not, because my guess is they start out by looking for any cheats they can find, install them on test machines, then work at detecting the differences between those test machines and ones without the cheat. So they'd know about Linux-based cheats, too. They might even be able to use timing-based attacks to detect kernel level ones, too.