Anything to make gaming easier, especially non-Steam. I’ll list what I know of so far:

Bottles.

Faugus Launcher. UMU-Launcher GUI, which is kinda like Bottles but for proton specifically instead of WINE. It’s early dev and lacks functional GameScope for now, but Bottles I noticed really doesn’t like me using proton so this was an alternative I found.

This is a unified launcher for Windows games on Linux. It is essentially a copy of the Steam Runtime Tools and Steam Linux Runtime that Valve uses for Proton, with some modifications made so that it can be used outside of Steam.

MangoHUD of course.

Heroic Games Launcher.

Lutris.

I have Itch.io’s launcher too.

ProtonUp Qt - grab various versions of WINE or proton for all these applications.

Winboat - Trying some experimental fuckery to use Vortex but I’ve not got that far yet, just got Winboat itself set up so far. edit: It worked surprisingly, modded Skyrim Special Edition, see my other comments here.

    • BurgerBaron@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      Nice, I was just reading about using Optiscaler 's fakenvapi for spoofing DLSS support to inject FSR4 for Expedition 33 on my Radeon card. Extremely useful.

      • WereCat@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        I’ve just done it yesterday for the Expedition 33 as well :D But I’ve used it for other games previously, it works surprisingly well on RDNA2.

  • JTskulk@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    I wrote a vod renamer app that also automatically logs me into SC2 after closing the blizzard app’s ad.

  • UndergroundGoblin@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    8·
    2 months ago

    I’m using Ludosavi to make a copy of my savefiles. It’s able to automatically detect installed games and local savefiles. I just discovered it and using it to make a copies of the savefiles on my Main machine to transfer them to my Steamdeck running Lutris. Maybe I try to configure an automation which makes a copy every time a savefiles has been updated and sync it with my Steamdeck. Just for a seamless transfer without manually copy ever folder by hand if I want to sync my savefiles.

  • IndigoGolem@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    2 months ago

    AntiMicroX for converting gamepad inputs to keyboard inputs. I pretty much only use it for Super Smash Flash 2.

    • BurgerBaron@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      I made extensive use of reWASD for a few games in the past. I’ll miss that program occasionally haha. AntiMicroX is probably the best sort of alternative yeah?

      • IndigoGolem@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        Hard to say, i’ve never used reWASD. There’s another program called Input Remapper that i haven’t used for games but which is supposed to be like AntiMicroX but for keyboard, mouse, and gamepad inputs and outputs going both ways. So i can make my keyboard an Xbox controller, my Wii U controller a keyboard, my mouse a pair of DK Bongos probably, and so on. But i don’t know how to make it work without sudo access (apparently some programs need that and some don’t to mess with inputs) so i don’t like using it.

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        Steam Input can do all of that plus a nearly infinite amount of other things, and it’s built right into Steam. Even if it’s a non Steam game, you can still launch it through Steam and use Proton and Steam Input.

        • IndigoGolem@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          Some people don’t like Steam running in the background. My last computer was so weak it couldn’t run light weight games through Steam because of the extra resource usage.

      • Jarix@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        Just a voice chat for me and my friends. Can’t from Dolby Axon before it shut down, and before that trying to use teamspeak, ventrillo and a few others was painful.

        And let’s you share some kinks in the chat. So useful for us. Pretty much just a straight replacement for what we used to use.

        I have no interest in using it as anything other than just a way to talk to my friends when playing games because in game voice was always so bloody janky.

        Not sure why they trying to make it a social media platform but so far it does exactly what I need it to. It’s getting kind of bloated for my uses, I don’t need bots and a thousand different channels, not am I trying to build anything like a social media following. It’s literally just a tool that works for me and the crew

  • dgdft@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    2 months ago

    Since no one else has said it yet, ZFS is underrated for gaming. Compression saves considerable disk space if you have a big library, you can stripe HDDs for better performance, and snapshotting makes backups a breeze.

  • Mongostein@lemmy.caEnglish
    37·
    2 months ago

    What about non-gaming software? I do some video editing for work occasionally and am often handed projects started in Premiere. They want it back in Premiere, so I can’t switch my main desktop over because of this.

    • BurgerBaron@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      I’d still consider myself new to Linux keep in mind, but from what I understand Premiere won’t work (well enough) with WINE. Adobe does a lot of undocumented Windows GUI fuckery was the tl;dr that I recall.

      Winboat with GPU passthrough (it’s QEMU under the hood) I guess but at that point it’s so much effort to get working under a virtual machine that you’d have to consider dual booting instead. I mean either way, you’re still using Windows :(

      • Mongostein@lemmy.caEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        Hmmm interesting.

        What about the Mac version? And Mac software in general? I’m also new to Linux (and not a programmer), but wouldn’t that be easier to get running considering Mac OS is Unix based?

        Sorry I kind of feel like I’m high-jacking your post, but it got me thinking and I’m probably too lazy to ever post about it myself.

        • BurgerBaron@piefed.socialOPEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          One idea but it’s paid software and the compatibility list doesn’t give me a lot of confidence: https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/?name=adobe;curPos=100

          Instead I think you’d be using QEMU/KVM still and then Virt Manager for a macOS VM. Longer process, have not attempted myself. Same issue with needing GPU acceleration: Need to set up a GPU Passthrough. Similar problem sans dual booting being viable.

          high-jacking your post

          I don’t care, this thread is to vacuum up scattered knowledge pretty much. There’s no complete guide to any of this anywhere that I know of so I’m already learning of a bunch of new programs to use here to make my life easier.

    • z3rOR0ne@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      I’ve never done this mind you, but some quick searching yields this.

      And if that link doesn’t work (it’s a redlib fork), here is the original reddit link.

      Either way, read through the comments as well as there’s some good insights there.

      Ultimately the post points to a guide.

      Hopefully this helps.