Wine Reviews has release information and reviews of Windows applications and games running on Linux macOS and ChromeOS using Wine from Winehq.org Proton Lutris Q4Wine PlayOnLinux PlayOnMac WineBottler WineSkin WineTricks and Wine-Staging.
Lutris helps you install and play video games from all eras and from most
gaming systems. By leveraging and combining existing emulators, engine
re-implementations and compatibility layers, it gives you a central interface
to launch all your games.
The client can connect with existing services like Humble Bundle, GOG and Steam
to make your game libraries easily available. Game downloads and installations
are automated and can be modified through user made scripts.
Add new window to add games to Lutris, with searches from the website,
scanning a folder for previously installed games, installing a Windows
game from a setup file, installing from a YAML script or configuring a
single game manually.
Move the search for Lutris installers from a tab in the Lutris service
to the window for adding games.
Add a coverart format
Add integration with EA Origin
Add integration with Ubisoft Connect
Download missing media on startup
Remove Winesteam runner (install Steam for Windows in Lutris instead)
PC (Linux and Windows) games have their own dedicated Nvidia shader cache
Add dgvoodoo2 option
Add option to enable BattleEye anti-cheat support
Default to Retroarch cores in ~/.config/retroarch/cores if available
Add support for downloading patches and DLC for GOG games
Add --export and --import command line flags to export a game a lutris
game and re-import it (requires --dest for the destination path)
Add command line flags to manage runners: --install-runner, --uninstall-runners,
--list-runners, --list-wine-versions
Change behavior of the "Stop" button, remove "Kill all Wine processes" action
Gamescope option is now disabled on Nvidia GPUs
Enable F-Sync by default
Run Microsoft Windows Applications and Games on Mac, Linux or ChromeOS save up to 20% off CodeWeavers CrossOver+ today.
Lutris helps you install and play video games from all eras and from most
gaming systems. By leveraging and combining existing emulators, engine
re-implementations and compatibility layers, it gives you a central interface
to launch all your games.
The client can connect with existing services like Humble Bundle, GOG and Steam
to make your game libraries easily available. Game downloads and installations
are automated and can be modified through user made scripts.
Add new window to add games to Lutris, with searches from the website,
scanning a folder for previously installed games, installing a Windows
game from a setup file, installing from a YAML script or configuring a
single game manually.
Move the search for Lutris installers from a tab in the Lutris service
to the window for adding games.
Add a coverart format
Add integration with EA Origin
Add integration with Ubisoft Connect
Download missing media on startup
Remove Winesteam runner (install Steam for Windows in Lutris instead)
PC (Linux and Windows) games have their own dedicated Nvidia shader cache
Add dgvoodoo2 option
Add option to enable BattleEye anti-cheat support
Run Microsoft Windows Applications and Games on Mac, Linux or ChromeOS save up to 20% off CodeWeavers CrossOver+ today.
What is Valve Proton? The Steam Deck’s live-or-die Linux software, explained
The Steam Deck's success will hinge on Proton, a Valve technology
that lets Windows games run on Linux. Here's what you need to know.
Looking at the spec sheet alone, the $399 Steam Deck gaming handheld should be a winner—and early Steam Deck reviews
certainly suggest Valve nailed it on the hardware front. The PC-centric
Nintendo Switch rival features a big 7-inch touchscreen, plenty of
control inputs, an all-AMD chip based on the same hardware inside the
Xbox Series S|X and PlayStation 5, and the ability to double as a
full-fledged Linux PC. But forget the hardware. While it’s impressive
indeed, the Steam Deck will sink or swim based on its software, and that
means Valve awesome Proton technology is about to be thrust into the
spotlight.
The Steam Deck
will sprint to a larger software library than most gaming handhelds
because you’ll be able to tap into decades of existing PC games through
your Steam account, rather than having to wait for new releases made
specifically for the fresh hardware. But most of those games were
created for Windows, and the Steam Deck runs on Valve’s Linux-based
SteamOS operating system instead. Proton (via Steam Play) lets Windows
games run on Linux. It works very well much of the time, but
it’s not perfect—and the Steam Deck’s success probably depends on just
how much Valve can polish up Proton before the handheld’s February 25
launch. The best hardware in the world is only as good as the software
that runs on it, after all.
Here’s a high-level look at what you need to know about Proton, the Steam Deck’s secret software sauce.
What is Steam Proton?
At a high level, Proton is a compatibility layer that allows Windows
games to run on Linux-based operating systems (such as the Steam Deck’s
SteamOS). In the past, playing PC games on Linux required you to run
Steam games through software called Wine (an acronym for “Wine is not an
emulator.”). Valve worked with CodeWeavers developers to build Proton
as a fork of Wine, then baked the technology right into Steam itself as
part of Steam Play, the company’s “buy once, play on any PC platform”
endeavor.
Valve created Proton after its living room-focused Steam Machine initiative failed, partly because of their reliance on the much-smaller Linux gaming library. “There was always kind of this classic chicken and egg problem with the Steam Machine,” designer Scott Dalton told IGN. “That led us down this path of Proton, where now there’s all these games that actually run.”
If you’re interested in industry inside baseball, Proton and SteamOS also double as a potential escape hatch from Windows if Valve ever needs it.
How do you set up Steam Proton?
Hey Valve: This should just work, with Proton support activated by default on the Steam Deck.
Currently, Steam for Linux does not flip on Proton by
default. You need to manually enable it or stick to games that offer a
native Linux port. Considering how few games offer native Linux
versions, we’re strongly hoping Valve makes Proton/Steam Play enabled by
default on the Steam Deck, or there will be a lot of unhappy customers.
If you’re already using Linux, you can turn on Proton by opening your
Steam settings and clicking on the “Steam Play” option at the bottom of
the navigation pane. (The option won’t be visible on Windows PCs.)
There, you’ll see a box you can check to “Enable Steam Play for
supported titles.” That turns on Proton for games confirmed to work well
with the technology, added to a whitelist by Valve. You’ll also see an
advanced option to “Enable Steam Play for all other titles,” which will
flip on Proton for everything after you restart the client.
Will all my games work on Steam Deck with Proton?
Will all games work? That’s the million dollar question.
Notice that none of the games in this Steam Deck promotional image are massively popular multiplayer titles.
Valve has been steadily improving Proton ever since it launched in 2018, and many—most,
even—Windows games run pretty well via Steam Play with little to no
tinkering. Your best resource for determining how a game runs is the
utterly fantastic ProtonDB,
a community-made treasure trove of information that currently tracks
almost 19,000 games, of which over 15,000 work on Linux. The site also
maintains a very helpful troubleshooting FAQ for Proton games. (Be sure to leave reports of your own if you use Proton and Steam Play!)
As those numbers indicate, some games are just plain “borked” on
Linux, to borrow ProtonDB’s term. The most common casualties? Sadly, the
most popular games around—battle royale games and esports titles.
Proton’s compatibility layer tweaks don’t play nice with the anti-cheat
software deployed in widely played online games. Valve made sure to get
its own Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2 running on Linux, but heavy hitters like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, New World, Apex Legends, and Destiny 2 still won’t run.
Screenshot of ProtonDB.com
That’s a massive bummer, and as you can see from the ProtonDB stats
about game compatibility above, it means that many of the most popular
games in the world couldn’t be played on a Steam Deck currently. Epic
recently stated it won’t work to support Fortnite on the Steam
Deck either. (Notice how the percentage of red “borked” games in the top
ten is much, much, much higher than in the top 100 and top 1000—that’s
because those multiplayer games dominate the top-played charts.)
Valve understands what a huge roadblock this could be. While BattlEye
and the Epic-owned Easy Anti-Cheat lacked Proton support whatsoever
when the Steam Deck was announced, but Valve has worked with those
developers to get the technology up and running on SteamOS. At the end
of January 2022, in a Steam Deck Anti-Cheat Update,
Valve declared that “Our team has been working with Epic on Easy
Anti-Cheat + Proton support over the last few months, and we’re happy to
announce that adding Steam Deck support to your existing EAC games is
now a simple process, and doesn’t require updating game binaries, SDK
versions, or integration of EOS. Alongside our BattlEye updates from
last year, this means that the two largest anti-cheat services are now
easily supported on Proton and Steam Deck.”
Developers still need to update their games to support the
technologies on SteamOS, but with BattlEye and Easy Anti-Cheat now
playing nice with Proton, the Steam Deck will launch with its biggest
hurdle already cleared. That doesn’t mean everything is roses and
sunshine though. As you see in the ProtonDB screenshot above, about 20
percent of the top 100 and 1000 games on Steam lack a Gold+
compatibility rating with Proton, and Linus Tech Tips noticed that Forza Horizon 5
suffered from some bizarre physics and lighting effects even when
running at 60 frames per second. The vast majority of games run very
well on Proton already, and that’s a monumental success for Valve and
Linux gaming alike, but every hiccup and pain point could potentially be
a deal-breaker for casual users enticed by the Steam Deck’s juicy $400
selling price.
All the appealing hardware
and just-as-appealing prices won’t matter if PC gamers can’t play their
favorite games on Valve’s handheld. As a general consumer device, the
Steam Deck will live or die on the back on Proton—and whether Steam Play
can indeed coax multiplayer developers into supporting it. Fingers
crossed.
Run Microsoft Windows Applications and Games on Mac, Linux or ChromeOS save up to 20% off CodeWeavers CrossOver+ today.
Lutris helps you install and play video games from all eras and from most
gaming systems. By leveraging and combining existing emulators, engine
re-implementations and compatibility layers, it gives you a central interface
to launch all your games.
The client can connect with existing services like Humble Bundle, GOG and Steam
to make your game libraries easily available. Game downloads and installations
are automated and can be modified through user made scripts.
Lutris helps you install and play video games from all eras and from most
gaming systems. By leveraging and combining existing emulators, engine
re-implementations and compatibility layers, it gives you a central interface
to launch all your games.
The client can connect with existing services like Humble Bundle, GOG and Steam
to make your game libraries easily available. Game downloads and installations
are automated and can be modified through user made scripts.
Lutris helps you install and play video games from all eras and from most
gaming systems. By leveraging and combining existing emulators, engine
re-implementations and compatibility layers, it gives you a central interface
to launch all your games.
The client can connect with existing services like Humble Bundle, GOG and Steam
to make your game libraries easily available. Game downloads and installations
are automated and can be modified through user made scripts.
I’m thrilled to announce that CodeWeavers has released CrossOver 21 for macOS, Linux and Chrome OS!
CrossOver 21 includes an update to Wine 6.0, bringing with it thousands of improvements to a variety of applications. One of the more exciting features of Wine 6.0 is the Vulkan backend for wined3d. This feature is on by default on macOS for 64-bit Direct3D 10/11 games if DXVK is not enabled. Our testing results have largely been positive, but we know of a few games that run with DXVK but do not currently run with wined3d. We also have found a few games that work with wined3d but not DXVK. Notably, NieR:Automata should run on all platforms with wined3d on CrossOver 21, and Skyrim Special Edition should be newly playable on M1 Macs with wined3d.
macOS users running Big Sur 11.3 or later will also find that Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 DualSense controllers now work with Bluetooth.
Also relevant to our macOS users is the addition of dark mode support to the CrossOver UI. We hope that dark mode fans whose eyes are currently shocked when they open CrossOver will be pleased with the changes.
We have several fixes for Office 2016/365 on Linux, including better support for multi-monitor configurations and a fix for problems entering a password to sign in to and activate Office.
Both our Chrome OS and Linux users should notice faster startup times when opening CrossOver 21.
In addition to many other fixes for various applications, we have updated the version of DXVK we ship to 1.7, and we also now ship Wine Mono with CrossOver.
Lastly, I want to touch on one thing that CrossOver 21 does NOT currently include: support for macOS Monterey. We have been working closely with Apple on a solution, but right now CrossOver will not run on Monterey. We expect to be able to offer support for Monterey on CrossOver later this year in time for Monterey’s release. We will be posting progress updates on our website, so make sure you are subscribed to our blog to get the latest updates on Monterey compatibility.
Run Microsoft Windows Applications and Games on Mac, Linux or ChromeOS save up to 20% off CodeWeavers CrossOver+ today.
Lutris helps you install and play video games from all eras and from most
gaming systems. By leveraging and combining existing emulators, engine
re-implementations and compatibility layers, it gives you a central interface
to launch all your games.
The client can connect with existing services like Humble Bundle, GOG and Steam
to make your game libraries easily available. Game downloads and installations
are automated and can be modified through user made scripts.
VKD3D-Proton is a fork of VKD3D, which aims to implement the full Direct3D 12 API on top of Vulkan.
The project serves as the development effort for Direct3D 12 support in Proton.
This is a release which focuses on performance and bug-fixes.
Performance
Improve swapchain latency and frame pacing by up to one frame.
Optimize lookup of format info.
Avoid potential pipeline compilation stutter in certain scenarios.
Rewrite how we handle image layouts for color and depth-stencil targets.
Allows us to remove a lot of dumb
barriers giving significant GPU-bound performance improvements.
~15%-20% GPU bound uplift in Horizon Zero Dawn,
~10% in Death Stranding,
and 5%-10% improvements in many other titles.
Features
Enable support for sparse 3D textures (tiled resources tier 3).
Bug fixes and workarounds
Various bug fixes in DXIL.
Fix weird bug where sun would pop through walls in RE: Village.
Workaround game bug in Cyberpunk 2077 where certain locales would render a black screen.
Fix various bugs (in benchmark and in vkd3d-proton) allowing GravityMark to run.
Improve robustness against certain app bugs related to NULL descriptors.
Fix bug with constant FP64 vector handling in DXBC.
Fix bug where Cyberpunk 2077 inventory screen could spuriously hang GPU on RADV.
Add workaround for Necromunda: Hired Gun where character models would render random garbage on RADV.
Fix bug in Necromunda: Hired Gun causing random screen flicker.
Fix windowed mode tracking when leaving fullscreen. Fix Alt-Tab handling in Horizon Zero Dawn.
Temporary workaround for SRV ResourceMinLODClamp. Fix black ground rendering in DIRT 5.
The overbright HDR rendering in DIRT 5 sadly persists however :(
Implement fallback maximum swapchain latency correctly.
Development features
Various features which are useful for developers were added to aid debugging.
Descriptor QA can instrument shaders in runtime for GPU-assisted validation.
Performance is good enough (> 40 FPS) that games are actually playable in this mode.
See README for details.
Allow forcing off CONCURRENT queue, and using EXCLUSIVE queue.
Not valid, but can be useful as a speed hack on Polaris when single_queue is not an option
and for testing driver behavior differences.
Lutris helps you install and play video games from all eras and from most
gaming systems. By leveraging and combining existing emulators, engine
re-implementations and compatibility layers, it gives you a central interface
to launch all your games.
The client can connect with existing services like Humble Bundle, GOG and Steam
to make your game libraries easily available. Game downloads and installations
are automated and can be modified through user made scripts.
VKD3D-Proton is a fork of VKD3D, which aims to implement the full Direct3D 12 API on top of Vulkan.
The project serves as the development effort for Direct3D 12 support in Proton.
This is a minor bugfix release to address some issues solved shortly after the last release.
Fixes
Improved support for older Wine and Vulkan Loader versions.
Fix blocky shadows in Horizon Zero Dawn.
Fix the install script failing on Wine installs not built with upstream vkd3d.
VKD3D-Proton is a fork of VKD3D, which aims to implement the full Direct3D 12 API on top of Vulkan.
The project serves as the development effort for Direct3D 12 support in Proton.
This release adds support for more D3D12 features and greatly improves GPU bound performance
in many scenarios.
Features
Early DXR 1.0 support
VK_KHR_raytracing is used to enable cross-vendor ray-tracing support.
The implementation is WIP, but it is good enough to run some real content.
As of writing, only the NVIDIA driver works correctly.
It is expected AMD RDNA2 GPUs will work when working drivers are available
(amdgpu-pro 21.10 is known to not work).
Games which are expected to work include:
Control (appears to be fully working)
Ghostrunner (seems to work, not exhaustively tested)
To enable DXR support, VKD3D_CONFIG=dxr %command% should be used when launching game.
Certain games may be unstable if DXR is enabled by default.
Conservative rasterization
Full support (tier 3) for conservative rasterization was added.
Variable rate shading
Full support (tier 2) for variable rate shading was added.
Command list bundles
Allows Kingdom Hearts remaster to get past the errors, unsure if game fully works yet.
Write Watch and APITrace
Support for D3D12_HEAP_FLAG_ALLOW_WRITE_WATCH has been added.
This means APITraces of titles can now be captured.
Performance
Improve GPU bound performance in RE2 by up to 20% on NVIDIA.
Enable async compute queues. Greatly improves GPU performance and frame pacing in many titles.
Horizon Zero Dawn and Death Stranding see exceptional gains with this fix,
due to how the engines work. GPU utilization should now reach ~100%.
For best results, AMD Navi+ GPUs are recommended, but Polaris and earlier still
see great results. It is possible to disable this path, if for whatever reason
multiple queues are causing issues. See README.
Optimize bindless constant buffer GPU-bound performance on NVIDIA if certain API code paths are used.
Optimize sparse binding CPU overhead.
TRACE logging calls are disabled by default on release builds.
Fixes and workarounds
Fix various DXIL bugs.
Be more robust against broken pipeline creation API calls.
Avoids driver crashes in Forza Horizon 4.
Workaround some buggy shaders in F1 2020.
Fix bugs if depth bounds test is used in certain ways.
Fix a read out-of-bounds in UpdateTileMappings.
Fix SV_ClipDistance and SV_CullDistance in Hull Shaders.
