Project Proton , within which Valve is developing an add-on over Wine for running on Linux gaming applications created for Windows and presented in the Steam directory, nearly reached 7K Platinum Confirmed Games support. For comparison, a year ago, similar support levels covered about 5 thousand games. Platinum level means that the game is fully functional in Linux and does not require additional manipulations to run.
The total number of Windows games running through Proton is estimated at 13.7 thousand, and games that have not yet been launched is 3.5 thousand.
Of the new games that appear, less than 20% fail to launch with Proton. The number of supported games increases by about 100 every month. 49.8% of the 13.7 thousand games launched are classified as the highest (platinum) support level, i.e. these games work just as well on Linux as they do on Windows.
The other half is started, but with some problems or other. Among the most common problems: crashes when playing video screensavers, inability to multiplayer games due to incompatibility with anti-cheat systems, limitations due to technical copyright protection (DRM), performance problems, insufficient support for DX12 in Proton.
Some games that have problems launching in Proton can be successfully launched in the experimental branch Proton Experimental as well as in the independent enthusiast-maintained build Proton GE , which features a more recent version of Wine, additional patches and the use of FFmpeg.
In addition, work is underway to create a new runtime container for Linux – Soldier Linux (Steam Runtime 2).
