Valve fixes Baldur's Gate 3 issue on Steam Deck / SteamOS

From the couple of games where I've been able to compare; frames per second are exactly the same, but the CPU runs a great deal less hot. No concern on desktop, but that would make a difference on the Steam deck.

(Mark Of The Ninja has a deadlocking issue on native that it doesn't have on proton, got quite a few of Frictional's games - Penumbra, Amnesia - that just won't open on my main monitor when native, and most recently Silksong has been really funny about my 8bitdo controller when native. Works great with my fightstick, though.)

If it's gonna be anything like their official MacOS port, then it will be worse than playing the windows version with Proton.

The MacOS port is so incredibly bad that not only do you get less bugs when playing the Windows Version using crossover, you even get better performance

The article says this build is for Steam Deck *only*, there won't be a desktop release. At least, not with this build, maybe in the future.

Steam has its own set of stable libraries that devs can target.

I guess Larian couldn't get enough of winning so they started a native Linux version. I hope it gets released on GOG as well.

it seems a bit pointless

Quite the opposite. Linux is currently frequently matching Windows in performance when running games through Wine/Proton. Targeting Linux native avoids this translation layer, and can result in better performance or less CPU overhead for the same performance (which is noticable especially on devices like the Steam Deck).

making games for Linux is ironically difficult

Yes, because of the tooling. If you make a game in Unity, and build for Windows, ""things just work"". If you then build for Linux, you can face any number of random engine issues, like bad controller support, broken mouse grabbing, etc.

as they can break as libraries change over time

Valve has thought about this, and designed the Steam Linux Runtime. This does effectively the same thing as Flatpak, except it pulls in the system native graphics drivers. Steam Linux Runtime provides effectively a full (minimal) Linux distribution that game developers can target, ensuring their games keep running, even on more modern systems.

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Gaming on Linux has always been a chicken and egg problem. Gamers see there's no games on Linux, so they stick to Windows. Developers see there's no Linux gaming market, so they stick to Windows. With Valve's Proton, they interrupted this cycle. Most games now work on Linux, but game developers haven't switched yet. For them to switch, there needs to be a market of Linux users, and the tooling needs to be sufficiently developed for Linux, ensuring the same (or better) quality as the Windows versions of games. This includes game engines, common libraries (like online multiplayer frameworks or voicechat), and possibly development software, 3D modeling software like Blender, the Adobe suite, etc.

I wonder why they're making a Linux native version?

I know that good Linux ports can have dramatically better performance vs Windows versions, it just usually doesn't matter because few companies do actually good Linux ports.

I forced it to open with Proton Experimental on my Steam Deck to make it work. I had panicked because restarting it twice didn’t work

This explains a lot. I ended up reinstalling on hotel wifi which was painfully slow. 🥲

I wonder why they're making a Linux native version? It is one of the ironies of Proton that windows native games are so easy to install it seems a bit pointless? But also making games for Linux is ironically difficult as it's difficult to support long term as they can break as libraries change over time.

It feels like we need a Flatpak style set up for Linux native games which may help games launch stable long term versions that won't "break" if newer libraries don't work with them. Flatpaks "bring your own dependencies" approach is more similar to how windows games often work with their own dlls (even to the point of installing old versions of directx when needed) except without windows annoying set up of spraying dlls all over your hard drive making them difficult to clean up when you uninstall a game.

Although arguably Steam already deals with that on both Linux and Windows currently. But it is proprietary. And maybe Flatpak is already that solution? Maybe Appimage too although not sure how well a 30gb would run from a single file virtual file system? Is it native speeds or have some overhead?

Larain is just aura farming at this point. They dont need to do half the shit they do but the choose go do it anyway.

I need devs to be supportive of modding enough that both versions use the same mods or just use proton

This is why I always force the Windows version of stuff by using Proton on everything. I hate to say it, but the native Linux versions of a lot of games are inferior.