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Comment by mahboi

4 days ago

It's nice but a low bar. Steam pioneered crappy Chrome-based desktop apps before Electron existed, which is also why it's so hard to run Steam in Wine. It has a longer startup and shutdown process (they even call it that) than my entire OS.

Epic, EA, etc then made their own similar launchers. Of course all of them also want to launch when Windows boots, update constantly, and not close when you press close.

I’m pretty sure the early steam client was based on Trident before chromium no?

Edit: actually it seems to have been Trident, then WebKit, then Chromium Embedded

  • Yes, but when they finally switched to Chromium, it was still before Electron

I think these days it's easier to run Steam in Wine than it is to run Wine in the first place. If you're running a commercial packaging of Wine for gaming, both things are trivial.

(Successfully running Windows games is its own issue: I think "Steam Deck" compatibility badging is a pretty reliable tell for Linux gaming, but on a Mac, having the game be playable is a gamble on install and again with every patch.)

  • If you pay for Crossover, sure. Not if you want to use the free Wine. And it used to be hard even in Crossover.