https://www.nexusmods.com/news/15433 As we move into 2026, Vortex is shifting back to the centre of our development roadmap. While we have spent the last couple of years exploring new territory with the Nexus Mods App, we have decided to consolidate our efforts and bring all that innovation directly into Vortex. Over 1.4 million modders use Vortex every month to mod their games, and we’re committed to improving their modding experience.
Our plans for the year include a steady, iterative modernisation of the Vortex user experience. We’ll be investing in the developer experience, which will allow us to focus on quality-of-life improvements, specifically streamlining navigation, simplifying game management, and introducing more intuitive controls for load orders. You can expect the interface to become cleaner and more responsive as we integrate the design lessons learned from our recent projects. Our goal is to make modding more accessible and reliable without disrupting the workflows that long-time Vortex users have come to rely on.
We’re also committing to supporting Vortex on SteamOS. We’ll be targeting vanilla Steam hardware like the Steam Deck and Steam Machine. We won’t be officially supporting any other configurations, but as Vortex is an open source project community developers will be free to extend support for their preferred Linux distros as they please.
Here’s an early proof of concept (subject to change) of the updated Vortex navigation:
Very nice!
I haven’t tried modding on Linux in a while, so seeing “SteamOS” support is nice to see as that probably means proton support.
Last time I tried modding Fallout New Vegas on Linux…it didn’t end well.
they already had a mod manager that they worked on for years that worked on linux. i used it in december for cyberpunk and stardew valley and it worked better than vortex. they discontinued it a few days ago.
And it worked fine with finding the game’s folder under .steam?
I mostly mod Bethesda games, so MO2 is the defacto and it’s what I default to. So I’m kicking myself right now for not trying other mod managers if MO2 just wasn’t the right tool for the job…
yep, worked perfectly with linux steam and proton
Sounds like it’s time for a new community effort instead
I’ve been using Limo and I like it; it’s quite flexible but not very noob friendly, which is a two part problem.
First is how deployers work and which ones you should set up (not easy to intuit).
The second is inconsistency. Primarily in packaging from mod authors: archives based on path structure of game root
./*, library root./game/*, partials inside the game folder hierarchygame/folder/./*, loose files, … And unavoidably: sometimes mods include INI or other game related files that go somewhere else entirely…All of that is manageable, but not easily, especially for people who just want to click to install a mod like how the Steam Workshop works.
Oh yeah I think I heard of that. Sounds like it may just need a bit of specifics applied to mods. Fingers crossed.
I tried using Limo though and as you said, it is not noob friendly but i finally decided to use Windows mod managers in prefixes instead… Althrough i might give it try once again
Once I got the hang of deployers (and got used to repacking poorly packaged mods…), I found Limo to be better than managing mods manually… But yeah, the windows alternatives have way better UX
I’ve been using Limo for 2 years now to run 10+gigs of mods for FONV, CP77, and Kenshi, on a Steam Deck.
I have been doing that since before NMM even claimed to support modding CP77 on Linux. It never really correctly did.
Limo is not that hard, it just isn’t an easy button.
And oh dear god the horror, you have to download all the files you want instead of just clicking once to download a collection.
And even worse, use your brain a little bit to figure out how to unfuckup mistakes make by amateur modders, gasp, the horror!
I’ve been modding since the 90s and its actually hilarious to me the level of no-thinking, on demand convenience people demand.
Go try to set up a full KSP Realism Overhaul install.
They just straight up tell you that if you can’t figure out how to follow their instructions, which are correct and do work… you’re not smart enough to play the mod overhaul.
We need more of that energy, to counteract consumerism and AI driven brainrot.
Mod Organizer 2?
Works but gets annoying very fast because you have to set up a distinct MO2 install/wine/proton instance for every single different game you want to mod, and half the guides / autoscripts for how to properly set up MO2 on linux are half broken to fully broken on half the forms of linux they claim to work on.
That being said, if you can find a version that works for your setup, and you’re primarily only modding one game at a time… its a reasonable solution.
Sounds great. It took me like 12 hours to get modded New Vegas working on the Steam Deck. While completely worth it, I’d very much like the process to be just a little bit easier.
Did you use LIMO or anything? My first time was basically mod elsewhere/copy files, this was much slicker. Seems like as usual “official” support is coming once FOSS has finished the heavy lifting
No, I didn’t use that. This is the first time I’m hearing about it.
I used Mod Organizer 2 with the Linux version of Viva New Vegas. It didn’t work, so I manually installed all of the mods, then solved some remaining issues. Took a while, but works flawlessly. Performance and battery life are pretty much the same as the vanilla game.
I was going to write the process down, but by the time I got to it I forgot some parts unfortunately. I couldn’t find any working guide, so I was mixing several and seeing what works in which cases.
I died a little when I learned they were canceling their Linux mod manager project the other day, but if they are making Vortex run on Linux instead I have some hope.
some hope
I read this news as: “The Linux proof of concept has graduated and will be merged into the main app”.
Nah, its more like they spent a year or two trying to figure out how to actually support linux, and disastrously failed, and the new plan is ‘let proton handle it’.
They spent a few years trying to make a linux piece of software, … and have totally abandoned it as a failure, and are now just saying the new plan is to… make the old app … do the thing … that they initially started the project of the new app to do … because they could not figure out how to make the old app do it.
… Uh huh.
They’re claiming they’re going to support SteamOS and also the hardware of a SteamDeck or SteamMachine.
This makes no sense.
Blam, I’m running Bazzite on my Deck or Machine… does their new idea of Vortex work on that?
Does it… only work on SteamOS, so… its… gonna be a flatpak?
If its gonna be a flatpak, it would work on nearly any linux OS, so why say its only targetting SteamOS?
Or… will it require you going into SteamOS, manually disabling the thing that by default prevents you from fucking with the core read only by default OS, and setting up custom Arch packages from the AUR, or will they have you do a fully manual install?
None of what they have said actually makes any sense.
Conclusion: They’re utterly incompetent with all things linux and have no idea what they are even talking about, much less how to create actual linux software.
Meanwhile Limo does 90% of what you need a native linux mod manager version of a Nexus app to do, has done so for 2 years now, and is free for them to fork.
But they’re not doing that.
… they’re morons.
NexusMods is to mods as CrunchyRoll is to anime.
Supporting only SteamOS doesn’t mean it can’t run on other options, just that they aren’t going to help you if you encounter issues as a result of using said other option.
Do you have any experience using Arch, SteamOS, Flatpak, or just… linux in general?
Because now also what you have said makes no sense.
I’ve already explained why.
Here’s the thing: the new app did work on Linux. It only supported a few games, but it worked. I can’t understand why they’re abandoning it. Are the new owners just wanting to continue Vortex because it’s more recognizable?
Also, Vortex does work already, just not very well. It’s a pain in the ass on Linux, but it can be ran through WINE, on the same prefix as the game you’re modding, and can do the job. It gives warnings and it doesn’t handle clicking the download button from the website (you have to paste the URL into the app’s download menu), but it functions. Is this the bare minimum they are going to keep and just throw their hands up and say “it works”?
Now all I need is for fitgirl repacks to run on linux
Works perfectly for me.
Create new empty lutris app, run installer in prefix, set install path to virtual c:, after that you set the executable and that’s it
Lutris is your answer. https://youtu.be/LZUhBRJwp4M
Do they usually not? I had no problems with the Starfield repack running it in a proton prefix.
Some of them do. I install them in a windows VM then transfer them over to Linux.
I wish more pirated games were distributed in a portable manner. Saving a few gigabytes with compression is not worth the hassle of installation. It also ends up taking up more space because you need to have the installed version and the uninstalled one. Anyone who deletes the uninstalled version to save space is now no longer seeding.
They do! It has been a while since I used one but there are ways to get them running well. I had to always check the ram limiting option and there were some permission issues I was running into when I used the default directory.
Then I also ran into issues getting the games to launch using Lutris, instead of adding an exe as a game I would have to run it through Lutris like it was an install exe every time… But I’m pretty sure I just had things misconfigured and was too lazy to try and fix it.
I entirely do not understand why Lutris even exists at this point.
Get a game, add it to Steam, if its gonna work, it’ll work.
Lutris? Gooood luck.
Cuz I don’t want to be dependent on a corporation. If, god forbid, Valve starts to enshitify, I don’t want to go back 10 years in Linux Gaming. And Lutris works just as fine as Steam. So having options is always nice IMO.
Proton is vastly majority funded by Steam, in terms of how much development is done by whom.
So you’re still basically dependent on Steam, if you’re using Proton.
But yeah, its certainly good to still have Lutris and other launchers / wine-proton environment configurator tools… but…
Lutris’ UI is a confusing unintuitive mess compared to Steam’s, for the process of setting up a game to work via Proton.
And that’s saying something, because Steam’s is still a bit annoying.
Yes, Lutris having more tweakable options is nice, but… it also could be made in such a way that it generally just actually works 90% of the time.
Lutris does work, but its unnecessarily confusing with too many steps much of the time.
I guess I’m being a bit too harsh in just straight up questioning why Lutris even exists anymore, and what I am really conplaining about is that it is a bad UX and could benefit from an overhaul, one that still gives you all those tweakable settings, but streamlines and makes the most common procedures that most users are likely to do into a much less annoying process.
Take a chill dude. Don’t use it if you don’t find it useful. You don’t have to question its existence lol.
And about Proton being a product of Valve doesn’t matter when it’s open source—anyone can fork it and continue development (Proton itself is a fork of wine). It’s just if Linux becomes the default for everyone, Valve can enshitify themselves just like any other corporation and thus maybe not allow 3rd party installations or even add a Steam Shortcut. It is great for what it is now but I won’t put all my eggs in one basket; least of all a corpo basket.
What about that heroic launcher though?
I haven’t personally used it.
https://heroicgameslauncher.com/faq
Is it possible to use Heroic to launch games that have been purchased outside of the Epic Games Store or GOG, such as on a physical disc or through another digital store?
Yes, you can use the ADD GAME feature in Heroic to add games that have been purchased outside of the Epic Games Store or GOG. After installing the game normally, use the ADD GAME option and fill in the necessary information. Heroic will automatically retrieve an image for the game from the web. If the game requires an installer to be run before launching, you can use the “Run Installer First” button on the ADD GAME screen to do so.
Uh… sounds like that would work for purchased games, but not for generally just having a game.
???
Pretty sure it can work with games you did not buy, i’ve used it before
Lutris, Heroic, Steam, etc. all work in pretty much the same way for adding unofficial games. They just create wine/proton prefixes and add those as entries in the app.
They do.
Use bottles or something to run the unpacker, then just add it as a new game to Steam, or set up your your own WINE/Proton environment or use some other tool that does that.
I get the feeling only supporting steamos means the Linux version will only support steam games, yes steamos can run Heroic but I’m not sure they know that
All of the work they do will indirectly benefit Linux gaming as whole. Lutris has more direct use of Wine and if they support Proton they support Wine to a large extent. It could be that when the support for SteamOS is up then it’ll start working with other tools.
Not to mention if Bottles end up working where you have the mod client and game running on the same virtual system.
If they can get Collections working on Linux… I’d be able to play some modded New Vegas/Fallout 4/Skyrim again! :D
Hey if you’re interested I’m playing modded New Vegas check out a Tale of Two Wastelands. It’s a total conversion collaborative mod project that combines 3 and New Vegas into a single streamlined experience, and so much more.
Oh, my friend! You are preaching to the choir here!
Tale of Two Wastelands was the first time I was fully immersed in a video game. I played for over 200 hours through that game. All the DLC, any encounters or places I could find on the map, the whole works.
I also got some mods for either Fallout 3 or NV that made static models like cargo flaps or old electric wires animated to seem like they have wind going across them. I can try to find them again if you’d like!
I thought I was smart and zipped the game (TTW) so that I could always have it ready to go, but alas, I think I was stupid and didn’t back it up or deleted it for some reason. ;(
Good. I want to be able to easily mod my Palworld with monstergirls after I have switched to Linux.
I’ve been using Mod Organizer through Steam Tinker Launch.
Since Vortex also uses mod profiles and instancing, I may switch just to make things easier. However, MO is pretty damn good.i got pissed off with mod organizer when I lost an entire fallout 4 run because it just suddenly decided my mods didnt exist anymore. Just poofed, into the ether. and no, it wasnt cause a fallout update, this was before the latest update debacle.
My experience says: don’t. Vortex uses some weird-ass GUI toolkit that doesn’t like running on Wine. Mouse-related events (hover, click, drag) sometimes don’t fire. If MO works for you, Vortex is probably not worth the effort.
They said they’re releasing a native Linux version
I know, I was talking about the state of Vortex as of today.
They’re completely incompetent at all things linux and are not capable of doing that in a way that is not horrendously broken.
If this was not the case, they’d be talking about how they are forking Limo, after having spent the last year or two attempting to develop a linux app, and failing so hard they dropped it.
I love how the new UI is just ripped directly from Discord lol
Is it? I only see the sidebar being identical.
There’s only so many ways to do a docked panel layout. At some point something is going to resemble something else.
I love how PCSX2 and Duckstation use the exact same UI.
Why make things different just for the sake of being different?
