It's been three years today since Valve released the Steam Deck. Not only has Valve shown how incredible Linux actually can be as a gaming platform, but they really kicked the industry into gear on PC gaming handhelds.
I mean, it’s complicated yeah, but i would still maintain that DXVK was more of a watershed moment than Steam Deck.
Valve developed SteamOS way back during the first Steam Machine push, 2012-ish.
They moved quick adding DXVK into Proton and releasing it in 2018.
But I think that the core of the recent Linux Gaming story gets lost when people celebrate Valve or the Steam Deck since, like you said, it was a dedicated gamer who first developed DXVK which enabled all of this.
Linux gaming has accelerated in the last few years for sure, but I’m not sold on the premise that the impact belongs to the SD. That being said, I haven’t checked the release feature sets against the SD launch so I don’t have any hard numbers to back that up.
SD has done a lot to push Linux Gaming into the mainstream, but i don’t think the development efforts are a reflection of that, rather that SD was launched in the middle of an accelerated development curve caused by DXVK.
I just remember that when the steam deck was announced in 2021, I was excited for it, but I was extremely skeptical of their claims that most steam games would run on it. Linux game compatibility was really hit or miss at the time, and it didn’t seem possible that it would improve that much by the release date. I know the groundwork was already in place for a lot of the foundational projects, but those months before the release were absolutely incredible for seeing proton mature and actually start working on most everything.
Hopefully wine would have gotten here eventually, but I really think that valve funding the development of stuff like DXVK and proton was absolutely key for the fantastic state of Linux gaming now. The big question is how much of valve funding development of those projects was with the steam deck in mind, or if they had something else in mind.
I mean, it’s complicated yeah, but i would still maintain that DXVK was more of a watershed moment than Steam Deck.
Valve developed SteamOS way back during the first Steam Machine push, 2012-ish.
They moved quick adding DXVK into Proton and releasing it in 2018.
But I think that the core of the recent Linux Gaming story gets lost when people celebrate Valve or the Steam Deck since, like you said, it was a dedicated gamer who first developed DXVK which enabled all of this.
Linux gaming has accelerated in the last few years for sure, but I’m not sold on the premise that the impact belongs to the SD. That being said, I haven’t checked the release feature sets against the SD launch so I don’t have any hard numbers to back that up.
SD has done a lot to push Linux Gaming into the mainstream, but i don’t think the development efforts are a reflection of that, rather that SD was launched in the middle of an accelerated development curve caused by DXVK.
I just remember that when the steam deck was announced in 2021, I was excited for it, but I was extremely skeptical of their claims that most steam games would run on it. Linux game compatibility was really hit or miss at the time, and it didn’t seem possible that it would improve that much by the release date. I know the groundwork was already in place for a lot of the foundational projects, but those months before the release were absolutely incredible for seeing proton mature and actually start working on most everything.
Hopefully wine would have gotten here eventually, but I really think that valve funding the development of stuff like DXVK and proton was absolutely key for the fantastic state of Linux gaming now. The big question is how much of valve funding development of those projects was with the steam deck in mind, or if they had something else in mind.