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Comment by Thaxll | Hacker News Reader

" PC library available"

That's the problem proton does not run all the games.

Proton supports around 15.000 games [0], I couldn't find a concrete number for all games on Switch, but this list [1] has around 4.000 of them.

[0] https://www.protondb.com/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nintendo_Switch_games_...

Protondb isn't completely reliable, it's all based on user generated reports of how well a game works. I've had games that were rated gold and platinum on ProtonDB fail to launch on my PC. Then you have people reporting that a game works great, but they say that they had to compile a custom version of Proton, not just use what's included with Steam.

Compiling custom versions of proton are somewhat a thing of the past already.

I installed Steam on Debian sid via Flathub / Flatpak, and then installed https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom using their flatpak instructions as well.

Honestly, it has never been easier to get a version of proton that makes gaming on linux seamless. Of course, I understand "run these terminal commands" is the usual defensive linux nerd^H^H^H^H coward's reaction, but installing Steam and this package from flatpak and then going from there is a _vast_ improvement from yester-years. I've been fairly happy with it, and I didn't have to do any actual compiling / building!

It runs many more games than the Nintendo switch right from the start, with many people being able to play games on the go without buying them again.

It's not perfect, but it sounds like a much better deal than the Steam Machines which didn't really offer any additional value to anyone and were much more limited.

You can install Windows on it too, to run run pretty much all the games.

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