For the new guys on Ubuntu 18.04!

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Alright, you saw Steam Play, you were like FINALLY I CAN DITCH WINDOWS. But you’re clueless about linux. Don’t fear, we have plenty of community members that will gladly help you!

This is a basic barebones starter guide for getting things working with Proton/Steam Play on Ubuntu 18.04. Will all games work? No. But the ones listed by steam should. So let’s dive in:

Part 1: Setting up your system

1. Allow system to run 32 bit binaries:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade

2. Update to latest Nvidia proprietary drivers (Skip to 2a for AMD/Intel/Nouveau):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install nvidia-kernel-source-396 nvidia-kernel-common-396 nvidia-driver-396 nvidia-settings nvidia-utils-396 libvulkan1 libvulkan1:i386 xserver-xorg-video-nvidia-396

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nouveau.conf

(paste the contents below, ctrl+o to save, ctrl+x to exit):

blacklist nouveau
blacklist vga16fb
blacklist rivafb
blacklist nvidiafb
blacklist rivatv
blacklist amd76_edac
options nouveau modeset=0

2a. Update AMD/Intel/Nouveau drivers (Skip if on Nvidia proprietary):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:paulo-miguel-dias/pkppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install mesa-vulkan-drivers mesa-vulkan-drivers:i386 vulkan-utils libvulkan1 libvulkan1:i386 
sudo apt autoremove

3. Upgrade to latest linux kernel:

sudo apt-add-repository -y ppa:teejee2008/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install ukuu
sudo ukuu --install-latest

4. Install Wine and it’s dependencies for your system:

wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/Release.key
sudo apt-key add Release.key
sudo apt-add-repository 'https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/'
sudo apt update
sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-staging
sudo apt install winetricks

5. Install python for proton:
sudo apt install python2.7 python3

6. Reboot

Part 2: Setting up steam for Steam Play

As you know, Steam Play is still very much in beta. There are a few things we need to do to get it working properly on Ubuntu:

1. Install steam

sudo apt install steam

2. Install steam’s controller support
sudo apt install steam-devices

3.Run steam and do the following in steam’s settings:

Steam Play:
-Enable Steam Play for supported titles
-Enable Steam Play for all titles
-Use this tool instead of game-specific selections from Steam
-Compatibility tool: Proton 3.7-3

4. Configure Proton

Some notes on this version of proton:
We use this version of Proton because it is more stable than compared to the current beta for a lot of games. That being said, it was the first release and there are some things we need to change to get it up to date:

-It has the debug log on by default, which drops performance. You will want to go to
/home/yourusername/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Proton 3.7/
then rename
user_settings.samply.py
to
user_settings.py

Then open it and comment out the WINEDEBUG line and DXVK_LOG line by putting a # in front of each line.

-It uses an older version of DXVK, you will want to upgrade this. Go to
https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases
Download the latest release.
Extract dxgi.dll and d3d11.dll from the x32 folder to Proton 3.7/dist/lib/wine/dxvk
Then extract dxgi.dll and d3d11.dll from the x64 folder into Proton 3.7/dist/lib64/wine/dxvk

Lastly, install and run your game!

P.S. Some games have launch options for them to be able to run in Vulkan. For example, if running DOOM don’t forget to add
+r_renderapi 1
to the launch options in steam!