Linux users: Are we over-reliant on Steam? (beehaw.org)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I’ve recently moved my whole game library over to Linux and stopped dual booting. Everything runs great on Linux, I just run it through Steam’s Proton layer.

Therein lies the problem. Even my non-Steam games I run through Steam since it’s so convenient with Proton. My experience with using straight up wine, winetricks, Lutris etc. had been much more clunky in comparison and less reliable for getting things running.

While it’s working fine for now, what do I do if I’m offline and Steam decides this is one of those days offline mode doesn’t work? What if I get banned from Steam?

Has anyone had any luck replicating their Proton setup outside of Steam? Or simply just running a Proton game outside of Steam after getting it set up using Steam?

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[-] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago

I've been trying to not use Steam on linux for a while now unless necessary (I have too many games there). GoG + Heroic keeps me pretty sane. Otherwise it's Lutris for starting them (which I'll agree is VERY clunky but you can get things done). I think we're actually getting over the hill of "Linux gaming means Steam" that we've been on since the SteamDeck launched.

While it’s working fine for now, what do I do if I’m offline and Steam decides this is one of those days offline mode doesn’t work? What if I get banned from Steam?

This is a pretty valid-ish concern I would say. It's one of the reasons I'm using GoG mainly now (which yes, still buying licences so similar concerns just maybe not as great or maybe I'm kidding myself)

[-] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

GOG is legit though. You can archive those offline installers and they’ll work forever (barring future OS incompatibilities etc). For the titles that support it I use the Linux installers otherwise I just run Galaxy through Steam for the time being since it reduces the amount of wineprefixes I have to configure with Steam.

this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025

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