User/Appdata, User/Saved Games, User/Documents/a bunch of shit but usually My Games unless you’re EA Games or Electronic Arts or 4000 other special developers.
You can never escape if you game on linux distro, plus you add non-conforming special devs on linux next for native apps. Too many .fuckface folders dumped in /home.
@PieMePlenty@lemmy.world I should clarify that was me pulling the path from memory. So might not be 100% accurate but it explains how the path works with proton/wine when using steam.
Essentially WINE creates a windows styled directory, with all the core folders, and then the emulator uses this as it’s root directory.
Documents is a great example. On Linux the document path is
/home/<USER>/Documents.
On windows it’s
C:\users\<USER>\documents
If we use the default wine settings, the path for the wine documents folder on Linux is
/home/<USER>/.wine/drive_c/users/<USER>/documents
Any program running in wine will only see the files from drive_c and down, emulating how a windows environment would work.
Happy to answer any questions if that isn’t clear. Feel free to DM.
etc… as most will be leveraging proton via steam. And I reckon the other 10% are making use of proton via lutris or heroic… Or if they’re feeling particularly oldschool, just a wine installation.
IMO it doesn’t make sense for Devs to build games directly for Linux, as the long term compatibility is better via proton than it seems to be for native Linux releases. I have a catalogue of games that offer both installers, and I’d say around half of the Linux versions are fucked. (Tesla Vs Lovecraft is a prime example for me, as it even borked my soundcard for a while when it crashed, which was a real pain to sort, but the windows emulated version doesn’t have this issue.)
And I say this as a Linux enthusiast/Microsoft doomsayer. Using a compatibility layer unifies the way distros interact with games… It enables the wide diversity in Linux without sacrificing compatibility when choosing a distro.
Edit: I just pulled these numbers out my arse to make my point. I have no data on how many Linux users actually use steam.
Since each windows game installed through lutris and steam run in their own sandbox where they are free to mess with things, I don’t see why the same couldn’t be done for Linux games. It’s not exactly an ideal solution, but it would abstract each game’s quirks in where they want to store files just like steam does with the compatdata folders. I know this is basically what flatpak does.
Oh definitely; and I don’t think there is a great deal of users that would argue for the use of snap over flatpak either, so flatpak would be an ideal unified compatibility solution.
Not sure if I’ve seen a commercial game with a flatpak release; and given the open nature of flatpak, a company (ie: steam) could theoretically implement their own gatekept repository to manage purchases etc…
The main hurdle with adoption is native compatibility with steam; if they started hosting and supporting flatpak installs, the concept would likely stand a better chance. I suppose you could run the whole application sandboxed, which would theoretically sandbox every game installed; but canonical try that, and well… If you search snap steam, you’ll see the issues that brings about.
User/Appdata, User/Saved Games, User/Documents/a bunch of shit but usually My Games unless you’re EA Games or Electronic Arts or 4000 other special developers.
You can never escape if you game on linux distro, plus you add non-conforming special devs on linux next for native apps. Too many .fuckface folders dumped in /home.
Any idea how proton handles this for windows only games running on linux? Where is My Documents mapped to?
In a Wine/Proton prefix stored in
compatdata. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Proton-FAQ#how-does-proton-manage-wine-prefixes.@PieMePlenty@lemmy.world I should clarify that was me pulling the path from memory. So might not be 100% accurate but it explains how the path works with proton/wine when using steam.
Essentially WINE creates a windows styled directory, with all the core folders, and then the emulator uses this as it’s root directory.
Documents is a great example. On Linux the document path is
On windows it’s
If we use the default wine settings, the path for the wine documents folder on Linux is
Any program running in wine will only see the files from drive_c and down, emulating how a windows environment would work.
Happy to answer any questions if that isn’t clear. Feel free to DM.
Tbf the reality for like 90% of people gaming on Linux the path is something like
etc… as most will be leveraging proton via steam. And I reckon the other 10% are making use of proton via lutris or heroic… Or if they’re feeling particularly oldschool, just a wine installation.
IMO it doesn’t make sense for Devs to build games directly for Linux, as the long term compatibility is better via proton than it seems to be for native Linux releases. I have a catalogue of games that offer both installers, and I’d say around half of the Linux versions are fucked. (Tesla Vs Lovecraft is a prime example for me, as it even borked my soundcard for a while when it crashed, which was a real pain to sort, but the windows emulated version doesn’t have this issue.)
And I say this as a Linux enthusiast/Microsoft doomsayer. Using a compatibility layer unifies the way distros interact with games… It enables the wide diversity in Linux without sacrificing compatibility when choosing a distro.
Edit: I just pulled these numbers out my arse to make my point. I have no data on how many Linux users actually use steam.
Since each windows game installed through lutris and steam run in their own sandbox where they are free to mess with things, I don’t see why the same couldn’t be done for Linux games. It’s not exactly an ideal solution, but it would abstract each game’s quirks in where they want to store files just like steam does with the compatdata folders. I know this is basically what flatpak does.
Oh definitely; and I don’t think there is a great deal of users that would argue for the use of snap over flatpak either, so flatpak would be an ideal unified compatibility solution.
Not sure if I’ve seen a commercial game with a flatpak release; and given the open nature of flatpak, a company (ie: steam) could theoretically implement their own gatekept repository to manage purchases etc…
The main hurdle with adoption is native compatibility with steam; if they started hosting and supporting flatpak installs, the concept would likely stand a better chance. I suppose you could run the whole application sandboxed, which would theoretically sandbox every game installed; but canonical try that, and well… If you search snap steam, you’ll see the issues that brings about.
Beyond All Reason ships as both a flatpak and appimage! https://www.beyondallreason.info/download#Download-Play