# Proton by Valve

451 Hacker News commenters recommended Proton by Valve and 189 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 13 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 2 years (31 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Valve's open-source layer runs most Windows games on Linux and the Steam Deck, sometimes better than native ports, though some titles still need tweaking or break.

## Why people recommend it

- Runs most Windows games on Linux (9 comments): "The invention of the Proton protocol to allow gaming on Linux Machines is FORCING industry to ABIDE by the wishes of the customer." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46824355)) "Proton has made huge strides, and the Steam Deck has forced a lot of game companies to make sure that there aren't any issues." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46351441)) "Proton directly solves the latter problem, and may indirectly solve the former when Linux sees widespread adoption by gamers." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46483885))
- Often beats native Linux ports (4 comments): "it's quite common to get better performance/fewer bugs by forcing a Linux native steam game to run the windows version through Proton instead" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46170825)) "older games with a native Linux port that is now unmaintained and stopped working at some point, but they still work just fine with Proton" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48410324)) "In my experience even with games that have native Linux support running through proton seems to have less issues." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47993591))
- Proton-GE fixes remaining issues (4 comments): "Steam handles the management of pulling whatever the most recent version of Proton-GE is for me and everything pretty much works." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48538163)) "I use Proton-GE a fair bit when running steam games on Linux, usually when something in the normal proton release isn't working" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48685876)) "try with regular proton or proton experimental first" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48688992))
- Open source, single stable target (3 comments): "Proton is open source though (and a lot of the improvements are also upstreamed to Wine, which isn't directly under Valve's control)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48753603)) "Proton and Wine means there is a single target now, instead of the fragmented mess that is Desktop Linux today." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46799158)) "The reason Wine/DXVK/Proton works so well is because it didn't fracture itself into a thousand downstream forks" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49779924))

## What people warn about

- Often requires tinkering and tweaks (4 comments): "I had great success in such cases by just overriding the compatibility tool used, most often to just some version of proton." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47616207)) "Wine/Proton has gotten really good, but still requires tinkering, and still sometimes has really bad performance." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49700462)) "the GloriousEggroll proton fork, which are easy to install with my distro's package manager" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45794116))
- Some games still broken (3 comments): "When using proton it technically works - clicking randomly I launched the tutorial, judging by the sounds - but the screen is black all the time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45969776)) "Some (Age of Wonders 1) don't work at all under wine/proton. Others technically work but keep hitting snags like midi just flat out not working" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45962073)) "There's been quite a few deal breaking issues with Steam client and/or Proton that went unaddressed by Valve for months" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46823089))
- Not a seamless Windows replacement (2 comments): "Proton is getting there but even so, it doesn't make Linux+Proton a drop-in replacement for people who have used Windows all their lives." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45815539)) "things have gotten much better, but pc gaming, esp via proton is no where near as seamless as playing on console" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48136684))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Wine/Proton](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wine-proton.md): 16 recommend
- [Steam with Proton](https://hackerapproved.com/p/steam-with-proton.md): 9 recommend
- [Winlator](https://hackerapproved.com/p/winlator.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Proton by Valve", https://hackerapproved.com/p/proton/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).