Valve has released a new beta version of its Proton compatibility layer, which aims to allow seamless installation and play of Windows games on Linux. No games have been officially added to the whitelist, but in practice, many games not on their curated whitelist will still work, or work with some tweaking.
Per Valve's changelog, here's what's new in version 3.16-4:
- Proton now ships with corefonts support. This should fix many games with missing text, or that crash due to missing font support.
- Significant Steamworks compatibility improvements. This should fix SOULCALIBUR VI's network failure when launched through Steam Play.
- For Direct3D games (both DXVK and wined3d), Nvidia cards are now reported as if they are actually AMD cards. This prevents games from trying to load the Windows-only nvapi library and crashing or giving very bad performance.
- Mouse focus and clipping improvements.
- Upgrade OpenVR SDK support.
- Fix for a keyboard input issue in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games.
This beta has been committed on Github and is showing on Steam as an update if you have opted into beta programs. Linux users not enrolled in the beta can enable it by going into Steam’s settings, Steam Play, and selecting “Proton 3.16-4 Beta” under compatibility tool. Enabling Steam Play for non-whitelisted titles and using that specific tool instead of Valve’s stable versions of Proton must also be enabled.
What do you think of these updates? Have you had any games improved or fixed by this beta? Let us know in the comments.
