Windows & Steam games with Lutris: Install guide (Wine, DXVK, Drivers)
2,683If you're using Linux already, and you like to play some games, you probably already have tried your hand at Steamplay and proton. It's a great tool to play some of your windows only games, but what of the games that don't run through steam ? There is a simple solution, with Lutris. Let's see what it can do !
CheatSheet for install everything: https://medium.com/@stouff.nicolas/lutris-dxvk-wine-and-linux-drivers-cheatsheet-800e9f4004d2
What is Lutris ?
Lutris is an open source game library manager that aims to centralize all your games on Linux, from your native or steamplay steam games, to your games installed through your repositories, your emulated games, and even your games running with wine. Lutris puts all of them in a single interface to start and manage these games.
It also comes with a huge library of install scripts, which will make the download, installation and setup of all these games a lot easier, especially those running with Wine.
How to install Lutris ?
Open the lutris website: lutris.net, and go to "Download Lutris". Instructions are available for about any distro out there, whether it's adding a PPA for Ubuntu-based distros, or downloading Lutris from the AUR in Arch or Manjaro, it's a simple process, just follow the instructions on that page.
Once that's done, you're all set to start importing your games.
Lutris is able to import a ton of different games, from your steam games, native or enabled through steamplay, your Wine games, emulated titles, or GOG games. To start that process, click the "+" dot menu on the top left corner, and select "Import Games". You'll get a window that allows you to import selected games, or all of them, for each "runner" or game provider you enabled in Lutris's main menu, accessible by clicking on the Lutris icon in the to left corner.
Once games are imported, you can simply start them from Lutris' main window, and manage them from here.
DXVK and Wine
Now, to play most games at an acceptable framerate, you'll need DXVK, which is a conversion layer that translates DirectX instructions into Vulkan instructions, that Linux can actually understand. Installing DXVK is a simple process on any Arch based distro, just go to the AUR, and look for dxvk-bin. On Debian, DXVK is available in the main repositories, just install the package names DXVK. Ubuntu users can download that same package and install it as well. I'll leave links in the description below so that you can get easy instructions on how to do it.
Finally, for playing Windows games that do not run through steamplay or proton, and have no native Linux client, such as Blizzard games, you'll need Wine. Wine is, in short, a compatibility layer that allows some Windows program to run on Linux, without resorting to virtualization or emulation. For the best compatibility, you should install the staging version of Wine. To do so, head over to the Wine HQ website, and follow the instructions there, depending on your distribution. I'll leave a link in the description down below.
This might seem complicated, but it's nothing more than 2 packages to install. The final step is to make sure you have the latest drives for your graphics card. AMD and Intel users should be allright on most distributions, Nvidia users will have to install the latest version from the repositories, or add a PPA on Ubuntu based distributions, such as the graphics driver PPA, link in the description below.
Installing a game
Lutris has a whole library of install scripts that do the heavy lifting for you. To start any installation, go to the Lutris website, and click "games". Just browse the games available here. Some of them offer multiple versions, such as a Steam Version, a GOG version, or anything else.
Some games will exhibit a rating, going from "Garbage", which means the game does not run, for some reason or other, to Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum, this last one meaning that everything runs flawlessly with near native performance.
Select the game you want to install, and click the "install" button. This should open the Lutris window.
The Lutris installer window should open, now you just have to follow the steps !
Obviously, these scripts are provided by the community, so you can review them to see if they install anything not to your liking, and they also come without any guarantee: a script might not work on your machine even if it's reported as working great for somebody else.
Read the game's descriptions carefully, they often contain some tips to help you run the games you'll need ! Some will have instructions for specific packages to install, others will recommend you enable or disable some options.
And here it is ! Once you went through the setup needed to get some games running, everything is really easy and automated, and you'll save a ton of time to try out the games you want to play on Linux.
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