How does Proton work?

Ste@programming.dev to Steam Deck@sopuli.xyz – 24 points –

I got my Steam Deck 3 days ago and I just started exploring it. Given that I already have a large library of games on Epic Games, one of the first thing I did was installing the Heroic launcher. It worked well for some of the games (and not for others... like Hyper Light Drifter ;_; if someone knows how to configure it please help me). What I'm not understanding is: why do I need to have different proton versions installed for each game? Eg: one game requires GE 7.32 (what's GE by the way???), another game version 7.45, another one 7.20 etc etc etc... Why? I already had the latest version (8.0) of proton installed on my Steam Deck, shouldn't it be enough to run all other games being the latest version? 🫤

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You can force a specific Proton version on each game, though I’m not sure (off the top of my head at least) if that would help with not installing duplicates. Iirc best practice for using Wine for games is to have separate installations to avoid having conflicting dependencies, though I’m not sure if Steam does that.

Also, GE is short for Glorious Eggroll, which is the name of the dev who creates custom Proton distributions. People refer to these distributions simply as Proton GE or just GE. Ref: https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom

Steam makes Wine prefixes for every game so they don't interfere with eachother. (I think most if not all launchers do)

To answer OP: each new version of Wine and especially Proton introduces changes to fix one or more games that can potentially break other games. That's why if a specific Proton version has been known to work for a game, your best bet is to use that version for that game. But as always with Wine on Linux though, YMMV, so trying out several versions to see which one works best is a good idea. However I've found that most games work well with the latest GE.

Why is your account marked as a bot?

??? Am I? Never noticed that. Imma go check my settings

Edit: Not sure why that box was ticked. Guess I did that by mistake.

Maybe you're a bot but only your subconscious knows it.

Maybe you’re a bot but only your subconscious knows it.

This coming from a guy named "Dandroid"

I mean, if we think of how we sometimes respond to people in a mechanical, maybe even programmed way (e.g. “How are you?” with “Doing fine (though I’m actually not). How’re you doing?”), you ain’t wrong about it.

You can select it yourself on registration in some instances. Probably running some automation from that acc.