Proton

And 46% of current top 100 Steam games by player count meet compatibility standards.

And this, of course, is driven by Valve's Proton compatibility layer.

This library, you know, just continues to grow, making vast portions of the PC catalog accessible on handhelds and Linux-based systems.

Woo-hoo.

I mean, this is what Valve has already done on their glorious crusade to bring all the games to Linux, right? Like, okay, we're going to invest, I mean, at this point, tens of millions? At least 10 million? A lot of millions.

A lot of millions has gone into Proton and everything else that it required for the Steam Deck to get to where it is.

And now we have the Steam Box.

Steam Machine, sorry.

Yeah.

And the wonderful thing about this is Valve is pushing Linux forward through major investments in SteamOS, the Proton compatibility layer and core open source infrastructure to reduce its dependence on Microsoft Windows.

And it's been the benefit to all of us Linux users.

And you know, SteamOS 3 is powered by Arch Linux, Which is great for a fast console-like experience for the Steam Deck, the new Steam Machines, and the ARM-based Steam Frame VR headset that's upcoming.

So it's really been amazing in their journey and their growth.

And Valve is pushing Linux forward through major investments in SteamOS, the Proton compatibility layer, of course, and core open source infrastructure to reduce its dependence

on Microsoft

Windows.

But the other big thing has been gaming, like what Valve has been doing.

Introducing a new version of Steam Play in August 2018. and that was Proton.

And for me, that announcement, what they've been doing with Proton, has unlocked absolutely everything else, right through to the Steam Deck, the Steam Machine, and the Steam Frame.

I think without Proton, we just wouldn't be here.

This would be a contender for one of the best good stories of the last decade.

I mean, in so many ways, not just a company like Valve directly investing in Linux and open source, doing things the right way, but also...

WoW 64.

How is this going to affect Proton? Proton's already so good.

Yeah, I mean, it's just going to get wrapped up into Proton because, you know, they basically take Y to just improve it.

Yeah, it's crazy.

Dude, gaming on Linux is like...

Something you are going to spend a bit more time on, though, is right now we're in a pretty good state if you care about Linux gaming.

So, obviously, we've had Proton for a long time.

Before that, we had the original Steam Machines.

After Proton, we got the Steam Deck.

Now we have the Steam Machines.

Obviously, you were...

There have been games that I wanted to play which had problems at launch.

Persona 5 Royal, for example, where it had one of Denuvo, one of the big bullshit DRM systems, and it had a problem where the game would crash on launch.

I've never had really good luck with it personally.

Uh, but on Windows, there's this thing called Proton, and Proton is a way to emulate Windows games on Linux, and it works great.

And the key thing about it is that it does not require the developers of these games to do anything.

They just make their Windows game like they normally would, and it runs on Linux.

I do still think I wanna keep it as my default, but yeah, there's a few things that are not as good.

Um, the first thing is game compatibility.

So I talked about how Proton makes it so that games just work without developers needing to do anything, and that is true.

But it's not 100% the case, uh, and you're not 100% of the time gonna get the same, like, performance you would get running natively on Windows.

Another factor is gaming.

So the Steam ga- the Steam Deck runs on Linux, you know, and Valve has spent years improving Proton.

So playing games on Linux is no longer the deal breaker it used to be.

Uh, mostly.

And parts of Asia are moving in the same direction as well.

So, uh, Linux share globally is increasing.

Now, for anybody running Linux at home already, you know, none of these changes are really what you're... n- nothing, none of this changes what you're doing day- day per day, but it does matter in the bigger picture, because the more desktop market share that Linux has, it means more attention from hardware manufacturers, more games getting written with Proton support in the back of the developers' minds, and more softwares vendors deciding it's worth their time to ship a Linux version.

So every year for a long time, people have joked about, you know, "Year of the Linux desktop," you know? Sh- any...