this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
49 points (100.0% liked)

Linux Gaming

15850 readers
9 users here now

Gaming on the GNU/Linux operating system.

Recommended news sources:

Related chat:

Related Communities:

Please be nice to other members. Anyone not being nice will be banned. Keep it fun, respectful and just be awesome to each other.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I have had numerous cases where a non-Steam game would run perfectly through Steam with Proton but the same game wouldn't even launch through Lutris, even though I used the exact same Proton version. How are they different? Is there anything that Steam does in the background that Lutris won't?

I'd love if anyone could shed some light on this for me.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Hubi@feddit.de 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I know that wine and proton are not the same thing, which is why I specifically ran my tests with the Proton Experimental version that is downloaded through Steam in both launchers. I tested it again with GE-Proton8-14 and the results were largely the same: Most games ran just fine, but some wouldn't launch in Lutris and would instead work through Steam.

[–] ayaya 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Proton isn't meant to be run outside of Steam at all. If you are running games in Lutris you need to use the "lutris-GE-Proton8-14" you can find in the Lutris wine version manager. There is actually a huge bold disclaimer about that on the proton-ge-custom repo I linked in my last comment. Proton (and Steam) bundles a bunch of libraries together while Lutris uses whatever versions your system has installed.

[–] Hubi@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah I know, I'd just like to know how they are different. I imagine some of it has to do with controller compatibility and steam features such as overlay and achievement integration?

[–] ayaya 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Proton and the Steam Runtime bundle a bunch of different libraries so they all play nice together and are consistent across everybody's machines. There are the obvious things like DXVK and VKD3D, but the Steam Runtime includes basically all of the system files that affect games. It's not quite the same thing but for the sake of simplicity think of it like running in a virtual machine. The Steam Runtime is using libraries from Debian. It is the same concept as docker if you know how that works.

Lutris on the other hand lets you select DXVK and VKD3D versions independently of the wine version, and uses your system's actual libraries rather than the standardized ones. If you're wondering why running Proton inside of Lutris is not working it's because Lutris is missing the Steam Runtime. It's searching for a container that doesn't exist so it can't even start in the first place.

[–] Hubi@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

That's a really helpful explanation, thank you!