FOSSPicks
FOSSPicks
This month, we explore the top FOSS, including a stripped-down version of Brave, a lightweight audio player, and a command-line search utility.
Compatibility Capers
I've recently treated myself to a mid-tier gaming laptop to naturally, the first thing I did was fire up Steam on Linux and play Deus Ex: Revision through Valve's Proton Windows compatibility layer, built around open source projects including Wine, DXVK, and VKD3D-Proton. It all just works. I must say that it feels miraculous for a game released in 2000 and designed for Windows 98.
Proton 11, now rebased on Wine 11, represents another substantial refinement of that compatibility stack. Tests comparing Windows 11 with the gaming-optimized, Arch-based CachyOS found that titles including Anno 117: Pax Romana and A Plague Tale: Requiem could run several percent faster under Linux on a number of AMD GPUs. The results were far less flattering for NVIDIA hardware, and Windows retained an advantage in several other games, but the old assumption that compatibility necessarily carries a heavy performance penalty no longer holds.
[...]
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