Wayland is why Steam Deck is a product. Gamescope, the compositor it uses for all the features that makes it compelling to buy, uses it and it's features heavily.
Desktop Linux was never going to go anywhere stuck on X. Wayland is happening, it's currently going through it's trial by fire and in the end (and for a lot of people, right now) it'll be better for it.
It's easy to say Wayland has been around forever and barely progressed, but for me it's pretty easy to see, based on the massive amount of fixed issues and new features being added to Wayland, that we're no longer on the horizontal part of the curve. It seems a lot of people have become blind to it's exponential growth. Also the growth of desktop Linux adoption, which is real and happening, in spite of 'Wayland setting Linux Desktop back by 10 years'.
Gamescope is custom sw built by Valve, and all the games run under X (via Xwayland). I'd suspect you could build similar functionality without Wayland (for example a custom X server talking to directly to the kernel DRM).
I'd wager in a alternate universe where Wayland didn't have all the mindshare, Steam Deck would still be a product (unless some butterfly effect nixed it).
Better than trying to make a point and failing to make it. And if I didn't, at least I tried to be funny as that counts for something, your comment is just noise.
My comment is a fact, without the Windows games ecosystem, by developers living and breathing on Windows, with Windows development tools, Proton has nothing to play, even if many of Windows games are developed on top of cross-platform engines.
Unfortunely Valve failed to make native Linux gaming a reality, not even game studios targeting Android NDK bother, which has the same 3D and audio APIs as GNU/Linux.
> Unfortunely Valve failed to make native Linux gaming a reality
Who cares? What would that actually achieve and how would they have practically achieved it anyway? Use their store platform to force or coerce developers? Hold a gun to developers heads?
Valve don't owe anyone shit, neither did PC compatible BIOS manufacturers, nor anyone else who creates a clean room implementation of a pre-existing API. Getting Windows software working outside of Windows is a net good for consumers and developers.
Is anything around forever? What kind of argument is this?
Proton works by wrapping Windows calls to Linux equivalents, which have been improving and becoming more robust as a result of this work. If the Windows game ecosystem collapses (How? When? It's literally never been more popular) then those equivalent APIs can be targeted instead. Meanwhile, the absolutely massive PC back catalogue, the platform's greatest strength, remains playable.
Desktop Linux was never going to go anywhere stuck on X. Wayland is happening, it's currently going through it's trial by fire and in the end (and for a lot of people, right now) it'll be better for it.
It's easy to say Wayland has been around forever and barely progressed, but for me it's pretty easy to see, based on the massive amount of fixed issues and new features being added to Wayland, that we're no longer on the horizontal part of the curve. It seems a lot of people have become blind to it's exponential growth. Also the growth of desktop Linux adoption, which is real and happening, in spite of 'Wayland setting Linux Desktop back by 10 years'.