this post was submitted on 25 May 2025
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Most simply put, it's a layer that allows a computer program expecting windows to run on Linux. It isn't emulating anything, just sorta like translating.
Think of it like a language. Windows speaks English, so a program expects to talk in English. But let's pretend like Linux talks Spanish. Proton translates the English commands to Spanish for Linux to understand and execute, and then Proton converts the responses back to English for the program.
The big thing though about Proton is that it's not an additional translation/emulation layer. It doesn't translate into Spanish for Linux, as that would be slow, it makes Linux talk English.
So in your example, imagine you, the English speaking program, want to catch a taxi in Madrid/Linux but all taxi drivers speak only Spanish. An emulation layer would be "translating", so you would have an additional guy in the taxi that you could talk to that talks to the Spanish driver. Proton is not that, it's an English-speaking taxi driver.
Proton uses Wine, which is a Windows system call API translation layer for Linux. In other words, it translates commands for the Windows kernel into calls for the Linux kernel.
So it's kind of an emulator and kind of not, but regardless the metaphor of a translator is fine. As a lightweight translator, you might say it's like using Google Translate on your phone to translate back and forth quickly and automatically, rather than having a person in the middle who needs to think about it.
I'd say it's something like a babelfish. You speak English, I hear Spanish.