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Hello, For all my windows applications I run under Linux, I use either direct wine, or play on linux.

I might live behind the moon, but I heard about Lutris only very recently. From my understanding it does the same thing as PlayOnLinux does... which is combining setup and configuration steps for certain programs and tie those to Wine versions.  

What do I need Lutris for? why does it even exist

Edited by Dadu042

Hi,

Lutris exists because it is always a good thing to have several "competitors" that does more or less the same thing in Open Source World:

1. It emphasizes innovation;
2. It makes things safer for community when some project experience downturn. (For any reason like personal reason).

I think Lutris is an amazing project ; Mathieu is a passionnate and dedicated guy ; so you should defintely give it a try. Concerning POL, use cases are a little bit different. We have pro and macOS users, and we are more focusing on wine and mabye a little less on gaming than Lutris. So we continue to maintain. That still makes sense and nothing prevent you from using both programs for their advantage

I have read people raving about Lutris on reddit, but when I've tried installing games its a bit confusing.  Specially if you want to test a game and manually install it.  Lutris handles wineprefixes just like PlayOnLinux and supports many different versions of Wine.  They write a lot of scripts for modern AAA games so you can basically install the game with a click.

Its not much different from PlayOnLinux, just the GUI is different, but functions the same as a frontend for Wine.  Its basicaly meant for gaming... but PlayOnLinux can run productivity applications as well.

How exactly do you install a game with lutris? I want to play the longest journey and also the first dreamfall game. I have no idea how to actually use the Lutris system though.

If there is an installer already on the list, then install it, but if not I'm not sure of the steps to manually install it.

Does lutris work on MINT 19.2 and 19.3?

 

I don't think it works on 18.3 because you need vulcan and for some reason you can't use that on anything before MINT 19. But I have not actually tested it on MINT 19.

That is a good point.  I still have one computer with Mint 18.3

I'm pretty sure I have installed Vulkan and used DXVK for a game or two.  I'm going to upgrade it soon.

Lutris should work in any version of Mint but you will be limited to DirectX 9 games and the rare occasion when stable Wine actually works with a DirectX 10 game.

 

Hello, For all my windows applications I run under Linux, I use either direct wine, or play on linux.

I might live behind the moon, but I heard about Lutris only very recently. From my understanding it does the same thing as PlayOnLinux does... which is combining setup and configuration steps for certain programs and tie those to Wine versions.  

What do I need Lutris for? why does it even exist

 

Edited by Dadu042

you dont actually need a vulkan supported card to use lutris. many games work fine without it.

its just that most of the newer games do need it for dxvk.  even older dx9 games benefit greatly from it.

 

the baseline for linux gaming really is vulkan though.  example geforce 6xx or higher

 

Sambills asked, "What do I need Lutris for? why does it even exist" 

The same reason all frontend loaders for any Linux software exists.  They just make life easier for people (like myself) who don't know all the terminal command lines.  My husband does most of the work on Linux for me. Without him knowing "what to do" I would be Googling answers or using my Windows laptop for everything.  I understand about maybe less than 5% of how to operate at terminal level.  Everything I do is run through the desktop environment.  Your desktop shell could easily be called a frontend for your OS.  Without the desktop everything you do can be run from a prompt and command line, but would you?

Ubuntu has many GTK and other frontends, a lot are used for simple things like mplayer.  A user could open terminal, and type mplayer myvideo.mpg at the prompt.  I never used Lutris, but it exists, because someone believes they have a different method that might appeal to others that have the same mindset.  I sample a few mplayer frontends before I found one I liked. 

Awesome points Wendy!  Thank you for posting!

I would consider myself a "power user" in Linux as I have played with installing, upgrading, configuring Linux and games on a daily basis.  I touch the Terminal every once-in-a-while, but Mint and other Distros have such a stable and easy-to-use desktop environment.  No reason to do everything in a shell or Terminal.

The only time I "have" to go to the Terminal is when something isn't working and I need to see some errors.  Then usually the error is a missing librrary when I can search for and install.  I could use Synaptics Package Installer, but I'm already in the Terminal.  Might as well do an apt-get install.

So, you are totally correct!  PlayOnLinux, Lutris, Winetricks and Crossover and SteamPlay are just front-ends that make gaming easier.  why not?

Lutris uses special 32-bit runtimes which enables running older Wine versions like Wine 1.xx under Ubuntu 18.04/Linux Mint 19.xx, see "What is the Lutris runtime?" at https://github.com/lutris/docs/blob/master/LutrisRuntime.md. This runtime will fix the problem "Wine cannot find the FreeType font library. To enable Wine to use TrueType fonts please install a version of FreeType greater than or equal to 2.0.5." when using a Wine version prior to Wine 2.22.

Edited by DrM1173