Not really. Just install bottles, usage is extremely self-explanatory as the UI is very good.

But if you need more details, the bottles docs are great.

Bottles has a wine manager that allows you to install various wine versions, and switch between them. You can also use the system installed version or even more versions installed by protonup-qt.

Winetricks is included.

No, actually.

Your game files do not need to be inside a prefix, and I generally do not set things up that way.

Same as on windows you can have your c drive, but then install games to a different drive. You can mount any file location as an additional drive in wine. There is usually already a “z” drive mounted, which gives the prefix access to the filesystem outside the prefix.

This means there’s not actually any need to place things inside the prefix, except for save files which need to be in specific locations like appdata or documents.

So to move things over and run them, you’d just copy the game files anywhere you like. To run a game, instead of a location on the c drive, you’d use the corresponding z drive path to the exe.

With bottles, this is super easy. Set up a bottle, and copy any save files into the prefix. Easily done with “browse files” from the config page of a bottle, which will open the fake c drive in a file browser.

With a configured bottle, simply navigate to the game .exe. Right click it, and select run with bottles. Bottles will ask which bottle to run it with, and that’s that. Alternatively, use the “Run executable” button found on the config page of the bottle. For ease of use, add the exe to the bottle as a shortcut.

Shortcuts can then also be added as start menu items, or even added to steam.

No need to fiddle with putting all the game files inside the fake c drive.

Setting things up this way means you have your prefix, with save files and such, separate from the game files. You can easily delete or add games, without touching the save-file-containing prefix, and move games around to wherever you need and still have them work.

You can re-use the same bottle for many games, and keep the save files for those games in one prefix.

If a given game needs a bit more massaging to work, bottles makes it very easy set up and manage additional bottles for any such games.

Well, Endeavour is just arch. If you want, you can achieve the same install that has only the things you need, by removing things instead of just adding.

IMO it starts off closer to the config most people want, so it’s less work to take it the rest of the way.

Not even close, if you actually install barebones arch, then barebones arch is exactly that, barebones. You wont even have a DE.

Endeavour is what you want. It’s just straight up arch, but with all the stuff you’d want to set up anyway done for you.

And if you want an “app-store” style app to browse packages with, and not fiddle with the command line to manage packages, install pamac. It can be expanded with AUR and flatpak support.

That’s nice. But I think most people literally just hook up the big screen with an actual display cable.

With AUR it’s as easy as installing any other package, actually.

You just install the git version from AUR.

No clue. Haven’t used it in years. I was done when I went looking for a fix for the compositor thing and found a years-old open bug report.

There were apparently several, now that I look into it. I didn’t know that.

They seem to try to mitigate other issues, like asset streaming and other general bad practices in the code of the game.

It seems there are many things wrong with how Elden Ring was coded.

I suspect most people who buy one already have another gaming device. If I’m gonna play couch co-op games, I’m just switching the video output of my desktop to the projector, not docking my deck.

Don’t show this to Bao

I’m making a note here:

Microsoft*

Or have we learned more about how the fuck that decisions got made?

I do want to add that new games can also require new packages, the way Alan Wake II did at launch. Even on Arch you had to compile the development version of Mesa for it to run.

Cinnamons compositor doesn’t turn off for games (it’s supposed to but has been bugged for years) which costs you fps.

Playing Alan Wake 2 at launch was only possible with the latest Mesa drivers compiled from the AUR due to some graphics features that it required.

I need to catch up on this. I recall really enjoying the first season.

Chais robot hand is also way more generic robot hand, rather than the colorful and somewhat oddly shaped appendage we got in the game.

It’s only level one.

!militarymoe@ani.social

Yes. But Valve didn’t do anything special. They provide pre-compiled shaders for all games on the deck and can only do so because of how directx shaders are handled on linux.

All games on linux and windows when using DX12/Vulkan must compile shaders. They should be compiled during loading screens and such, not gameplay, then cached for use later.

Elden Ring in particular, didn’t precompile shaders before gameplay, and then when it did compile them, it would discard the shaders rather than cache them. As a result the stutter would happen non-stop and never go away.

On linux, the equivalent compiled vulkan shaders are cached by VKD3D, eliminating the stutter except when a shader is used for the first time. On the deck, Valve will deliver the shaders precompiled with the game download to eliminate the need to compile them at all.

The fix of providing precompiled shaders was only possible on linux due to the use of VKD3D. And even without them, on linux the stutter would go away after a while as VKD3D will cache them even when the game doesn’t. Fromsoft had to update the game to fix it from their side on windows.