Proton is a translation layer that uses Wine and other tricks to allow you to run Windows games on Linux. It's a Valve project that is making a ton of progress on compatibility. It's a huge part of the success of the Steam Deck.
I've recently installed Linux. Have a hdd full with steam games (for windows)
Is there any way to get that to work without needing to format the drive and install the games again? Looked a bit at it but every article seems to suggest formating the drive to get it to work with proton.
It's technically possible but not recommended as the NTFS format has some quirks under Linux. Give yourself the best chance at everything working and do full reinstalls after a format.
"Has some quirks" is putting it mildly. I had a couple of drives that I thought were dead because I kept getting errors. I reformatted them to ext4 and they were fine.
With proton, this is less and less the case.
Indeed, God bless proton
Basically, I tried proton and I'll never go back.
The overhead of windows is so heavy
what is proton? what does it do?
Proton is a translation layer that uses Wine and other tricks to allow you to run Windows games on Linux. It's a Valve project that is making a ton of progress on compatibility. It's a huge part of the success of the Steam Deck.
Was amazed at how good this is.
I think the real gamechanger was Vulkan. OpenGL was just not suited for this.
I've recently installed Linux. Have a hdd full with steam games (for windows) Is there any way to get that to work without needing to format the drive and install the games again? Looked a bit at it but every article seems to suggest formating the drive to get it to work with proton.
It's technically possible but not recommended as the NTFS format has some quirks under Linux. Give yourself the best chance at everything working and do full reinstalls after a format.
"Has some quirks" is putting it mildly. I had a couple of drives that I thought were dead because I kept getting errors. I reformatted them to ext4 and they were fine.