For anyone who wants the same info without the ads see: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Proton-Versions
And for proton-ge: https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom?tab=readme-ov-file#overview
Proton-sarek: https://github.com/pythonlover02/Proton-Sarek
The only reason for the article to exist is to have an excuse to serve ads.
Seems like an SEO article. Im all for getting simplified articles easily accessible to the people who pick up a steam deck or the steamos lenovo legion and really do go “whats the difference between proton experimental and proton 7”
Because quantum physics is hard
Have we really hit the point where we have to explain versioning to people now.
Lemmy is a more technical crowd, but many deck owners don’t understand what proton is, or why they might need different versions.
Most software you don’t even have an option to easily use older versions, so choosing to downgrade proton for a specific game may be a unique experience for some.
The article has one sentence on using older versions for better compatability with some games.
The rest of the article is basically summed up by “bigger number means newer”
The whole article seemed very surface level and didn’t really give any more info than could be derived from the names of the versions. As for the community forks mentioned people could find much better info just looking at the readme.
Maybe I’m just too technical but it just feels to me as pointless as an article explaining the difference between hot and cold taps on a sink.
Edit: fix autocorrect
I agree with you on this point completely. The article is pretty garbage. But that’s not what your original comment seemed to imply. It seemed like you were saying everyone should know this stuff so why should any article exist on the subject.
I think that’s why everyone is so worked up.
the question about “why keep half a dozen stable versions around” is a legit one, if you are not deeply familiar with the background of the project
Everyone has to learn something for the first time. Today’s 10,000 and all that.
Why are you gatekeeping so hard bro
Helps them feel better than others, maybe they have low self esteem or something
How many software do you keep multiple versions of installed on your computer? How is it not logical to expect the newer version of something to still be able to do what it did before and more?
When you change things you might fix some issues but you might also simultaneously create others.
Just saying, from a user perspective it’s not what people are used to, they don’t keep multiple copies of the same software installed in case an update breaks something and they expect that if something breaks the fix will come in an update, not that they’ll fix the issue by forcing the use of a previous version of the software they don’t even realize it’s still available to them.
