An interesting and important look at the development of Factorio’s Linux-native port from an actual developer: the platform in general, Wayland, GNOME’s bullshit, and dependencies.
As I keep saying, it will be hilarious when Linux overtakes Windows on gaming PCs, yet Wine/Proton is the overwhelmingly dominant API.
But Proton is not one API. There is a reason why Valve maintains multiple Proton versions and keeps them around. Cleanroom reverse engineering Windows is a moving target. They are at developing Proton 10. How long can they keep it up to maintain old Proton versions for old games while advancing Proton for new games? Will the workload break them at Proton 20?
Steam Linux Runtime is a less moving target. Valve bases a new SLR version on every second or so Debian release (IIRC SLR 3 uses Debian 11).
Props to them for caring. If it was me I’d let GNOME lie on their stupid Client-side Decorated bed and the game would be borderless forever, fuck it.
Why does such a game need a bordered window anyway?
Being able to easily move and resize with intuitive mouse controls and on screen buttons is something that people kind of fucking expect to have in 2005 let alone 2025.
Factorio runs amazing on Linux, probably the best game I’ve played on the platform.
Factario and vintage story are the two best indies iv ever played with native support.
Absolutely fantastic.
I don’t know if this is still the case, but Linux was the only platform that could save in the background because they were forking the process to do so.
They mentioned it at the bottom of the blog: works ok Linux and macos. And they want you to enable it because there a bug they’re trying to reproduce.
Plasma has server side decorations under Wayland. While it’s admirable to wanting to support as many desktops as possible, I think it’s also fine for games developers to say “we support SteamOS – its Game Mode and its desktop mode”. Both are built on standard APIs and if a specific desktop doesn’t care to implement standards, sucks to be them.
