The Evolving Art of Running Windows Apps on Linux

Description

This is a four-panel 'Drake Hotline Bling' meme format, illustrating a hierarchy of preferences for running Windows applications on a Linux operating system. In the first three panels, Drake shows disapproval for: 'Running Windows app in a virtual machine' (with the VirtualBox logo), 'Running it in Linux through Wine' (with a wine glass icon), and 'Running in it in the Bottles flatpak (containerized)' (with emojis of bottles). In the final panel, Drake shows his approval for 'Running it with Proton as a Non-Steam game', accompanied by the Steam logo. The meme humorously captures the progression of solutions for Windows compatibility on Linux, especially for gaming. It portrays virtual machines as clunky, vanilla Wine as a hassle, and even containerized solutions like Bottles as less desirable than the highly optimized and seamless experience provided by Valve's Proton compatibility layer when used through the Steam client

Common Tags

Linux Virtualization Containerization SteamGames VirtualBoxVMs

Comments

Anonymous ★ Top Pick Of course the most reliable way to run legacy enterprise Windows software on Linux is with a compatibility layer for video games. It's the kind of beautiful, cursed solution architects dream of

Anonymous ★ Top Pick

Of course the most reliable way to run legacy enterprise Windows software on Linux is with a compatibility layer for video games. It's the kind of beautiful, cursed solution architects dream of
Anonymous

Proton: because trading a DirectX syscall translation for four extra abstraction layers still beats remembering which Tuesday the guest Windows VM wants its patches
Anonymous

After 15 years of wrestling with Wine prefixes and dll overrides, we've finally reached the promised land where running Windows apps on Linux is easier than explaining to management why we need to refactor that legacy .NET Framework monolith - just add it to Steam and let Valve's engineers handle the DirectX translation layers while you pretend it's 'research into gaming performance optimization'
Anonymous

The evolution from 'just spin up a VM' to Proton perfectly captures the Linux gaming renaissance - we went from accepting 30% performance loss and RAM sacrifice as 'good enough' to Valve literally making Windows games run better on Linux than on Windows itself. The real joke is that gamers accidentally became the killer app for desktop Linux adoption, something decades of enterprise tooling couldn't achieve. Who knew the path to the Year of Linux Desktop was paved with anti-cheat bypasses and DXVK shader caches?
Anonymous

Cross-platform strategy: ship Win32, let Valve’s QA budget be your runtime
Anonymous

VM-emulated, Wine-translated, Flatpak-sandboxed, Proton-transpiled EXE: because native ports are for startups with budgets
Anonymous

Proton: the only time “works on my machine” comes with a Valve-maintained runtime and a million gamers as QA - much cheaper than babysitting a GPU passthrough VM
@Phizilion 2y

Do not run it ⬆️👍
@mihanizzm 2y

Running it in windows🧐
1. @Araalith 2y
  
  Too easy.
  
  @TBurZ2NjiJ 2y
  
  Running it on proton in a linux vm on Windows 🤣
  
  @mihanizzm 2y
  
  Not always😅
@sylfn 2y

> as a non-steam game and there are standalone proton builds, widhout steam as a dependency
1. dev_meme 2y
  
  That’s too simply, don’t you think so?
  
  @sylfn 2y
  
  installing from AUR is simple now?
@deinoxia 2y

>Not running it in ReactOS shiggy
@sylfn 2y

ah yes the "makepkg -si"