Windows Games’ Compatibility on Linux Is at an All-Time High
-
As far as I know, Microsoft has no patents related to linux and how it can run Windows games. Everything has been reimplemented from scratch on the linux side, there’s no shared IP or patented techniques being used.
They likely have patents on a number of things implemented in Wine/Proton. Clean-room implementation is also good, buy would cover copyright, not patent.
-
Developers should still try to optimize Linux performance with native Linux ports.
It’s still happening in some cases. Like Balder’s Gate 3 getting a recent Linux port, for example.
-
Right, they clearly don’t believe it has been worth the effort in the past. At a certain point I’ve always worried that they might.
-
At what point does Microsoft start suing over patents?
What patents?
-
What patents?
I don’t have a list. Just considering that MS patents EVERYTHING I have a tough time believing they don’t have patents over at least SOME DirectX things that Wine has created an implementation for, etc.
-
I don’t have a list. Just considering that MS patents EVERYTHING I have a tough time believing they don’t have patents over at least SOME DirectX things that Wine has created an implementation for, etc.
WINE doesn’t need to implement anything that DirectX does, it just needs to translate those calls into the equivalent Linux ones. Linux does all the actual work; and if Microsoft had a patent for “drawing pixels on a screen” they’d have shown that hand by now.
-
They likely have patents on a number of things implemented in Wine/Proton. Clean-room implementation is also good, buy would cover copyright, not patent.
WINE stands for “WINE Is Not an Emulator”; they’re not reimplementing Microsoft libraries. No patents to violate.
-
I cannot wait for GamersNexus to agree on a testing framework for Linux and then see how many games will run actually better on Linux than on Windows, either native or through Wine/Proton.
Didn’t they just announce this? Or are they still deciding on the “how” and not the “if”?
-
I don’t have a list. Just considering that MS patents EVERYTHING I have a tough time believing they don’t have patents over at least SOME DirectX things that Wine has created an implementation for, etc.
Sure, but patents cover methods and implementations. If Wine gets a cleanroom spec that says “when you put in these values, we need these pixels out” then they are free to write their own implementation not covered by the patent.
-
This post did not contain any content.
To Windows people wondering:
JUST DO THE JUMP. Installing Bazzite only needs a 16GB flash drive and 15 minutes of time, and you’ll be SHOCKED how smooth everything goes compared to Windows bloat.
And you don’t even need to give up on Windows! You can keep it on dual boot until you realize you didn’t touched Windows even once over the last 6 months.
-
WINE stands for “WINE Is Not an Emulator”; they’re not reimplementing Microsoft libraries. No patents to violate.
That’s not how it works, but ok
-
Im not sure how they even would make a testing framework. Its not like windows, where you have the os as standard and then just swap parts to see.
Its so fragmented the amount of combinations is mind-boggling. I guess they choose the 3 most popular and just run a limited series of hardware tests?
Really the only factors in software are kernel and compatibility layer. Everything else is not a huge factor in Linux; this is mostly akin to saying “we need to test games with every different windows app running in the background”.
Of course for individual machines there will be external factors that users themselves need to consider (like don’t be doing Blender renders in the background lol) but there should be a huge difference between distros.
Perhaps custom desktop managers should be tested along with KDE and GNOME, but I’m honestly not sure much even those factor in.
-
At what point does Microsoft start suing over patents?
-
My wife plays it. She’s on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (so I’d expect it to work on Mint too), installed it through Bottles, and it just worked. I’m on Kubuntu 25.10 and I’ve had it running but haven’t actually played it.
I was looking into this, it’s weird that it isn’t on ProtonDB
Future Linux Converts:
If you wonder “Will the game that I play work on Linux?”, there’s a website for that:
-
There are Anti-Cheats that work just not one or two of the truly invasive ones. I’m able to play games like the Finals or Arc Raiders or CSGO or DOTA or World of Tanks or Insurgency or Battlebit without issue. I can’t play some multiplayer games owned by EA. It’s largely coming down to company lines based on what Anti-Cheat they’ve decided to go with.
It used to be not all games worked on Linux. Now it’s most games work and there’s a handful that don’t for one reason or the other (like Anti-Cheat).
And Vermintide 2, using EAC, just ticked the box to not being hostile towards Linux, and it just works now. Hated Denuvo works too. There’s now a minority of games that don’t play ball with penguins.
-
I am getting ready to switch and I play City of Heroes on Homecoming and wonder of anyone here has it running and what destro you are using. I ahve Mint on two laptops and they are running fine will all my other programs
Yes! I just installed the game through Lutris!
-
Im not sure how they even would make a testing framework. Its not like windows, where you have the os as standard and then just swap parts to see.
Its so fragmented the amount of combinations is mind-boggling. I guess they choose the 3 most popular and just run a limited series of hardware tests?
From the video it looks like they’ll test on Bazzite, it’s probably more stable than Windows for that, just choose a snapshot and it’ll always be the same
-
Didn’t they just announce this? Or are they still deciding on the “how” and not the “if”?
They’ve announced their testing methodology and are testing games IIRC. They’re using Bazzite as the base.
-
It’s not one big optimization, it’s a product of Id actually having some of the best UE developers on the planet being able to tweak the engine to run like a beast. Each level is crafted from the ground up to allow for some sweeping optimizations revolving around actor loading and culling, and the game uses proper light baking to allow raytracing to handle marginal calculations instead of explicit path tracing every shadow. It’s a lot of little things that all take impressive amounts of skill and management to pull off effectively, a lot of this stuff is implemented poorly in other games and it showEdit: Id has their own engine, I always confuse quake/doom and UE. Still though, Id has always built games that were well optimized. Look at some of the systems they managed to port quake to. I was wrong about the engine, but not about the talent in the studio.s.
it’s a product of Id actually having some of the best UE developers on the planet
UE = Unreal Engine?
Doom 2016 ran on id tech 6. Is there crossover?
-
This post did not contain any content.
I think it’s funny that, with reports that Proton games often run better on Linux than Windows, the entire Windows OS is sort of a weird Linux gaming API now…
