I don’t use GOG. I’m not going to let them treat me as a second class citizen, when Steam treats me as first class.
Steam doesn’t even let you own games you paid for, so it treats you as a pleb in feudal times - it’s just that at this precise moment in time this isn’t a bad quality of life. But your existence is nothing but the whim of Steam - which includes the option to shut down everything & end your existence.
I appreciate what Valve does for Linux gaming, but GOG gives me the freedom to use the client I prefer (Heroic, GOG Galaxy, Minigalaxy, …) or no client at all. When I buy a game, I receive a ZIP file with everything I need to run the game, without requiring an account or an internet connection. GOG Galaxy may only be available as a Windows executable, but I run it on Linux, and they allow me to do so, no questions asked.
One of these two entities actually lets me own my games. To where I can install them from local files even without an internet connection. One of these entities leases me games that I can install with an internet connection as long as they see fit. They are not the same.
Learning that steam may delist a game if its offered by another store for cheaper has definitely soured my opinion of them. GOG should make a native installer though.
That only applies if you’re selling Steam keys in the other store. If you sell access via other means (like direct download), you can price them however you want. Hence, thousands of itch.io games that are cheaper than their Steam versions.
itch.io does have a client, it even has a Linux version and it’s on Flathub:
I can sort of understand why GOG has no Linux client. Have you noticed how there are differences among the distros? I use Arch (by the way), another Linux user uses Debian, the other uses Slackware, the other uses Enlightenment OS, the other uses RHEL, and so on. There are lots of flavors, structures, package managers, display managers… Some distros still use X11 instead of the newer Wayland… How to deal with so many differences? Whereas a Windows system is generally not so different from another Windows system regarding filesystem structure (i.e. where’s Program Files, where’s the system registry, where’s the system32 folder, and so on), so it’s easier to make a Windows client.
And then, there’s a second reason why GOG may have no Linux client: Linux users often won’t need training wheels. I bought Terraria from GOG, a game that I already had “purchased” from Steam a few years ago. I got surprised how easy is to install the game. They deliver a shellscript, you run it, you click next, next, tick accept, next, optionally choose another folder, next, wait, finish, and that’s it. The thing just… works. Why bother to install a whole client when the current way already works seamlessly? You won’t even need internet connection during the installation, whereas a client would require it, so in a sense, IMHO, a client would actually worsen the experience of installation.
I’m not OP but I use GOG significantly less ever since I switched to Linux and got a Steam Deck.
- Steam has an official Linux client, GOG does not
- Steam syncs my savegames between PC and Steam Deck out of the box, GOG does not
- Steam setups all the Proton-stuff and I only have to click play, GOG does not
I currently use Heroic but until GOG commits some more resources into their Linux ecosystem I’m just going to use them sparingly.
Lutris will also let you install a game from a GoG offline installer using the install script from GoG (using the script means that if there are dependencies like the game needing a specific DirectX version it gets automatically configured in Wine).
Also if I understand correctly the article, going via Bottles means you have a single Wine “instance” (i.e. a wine prefix) for all your GoG games - as GoG access in managed via GoG Galaxy which is a Windows program - whilst Lutris by default gives you one wine prefix per game, so it’s a bit better isolated and you can chose different Wine versions for different games (for those games were latest is not bestest).
Last but not least, if you want further isolation from your system in Lutris there is a “command prefix” option (under runtime options if I remember it correctly) where you can put the prefix for the command that runs wine with your game, which let’s you run things like firejail which sandbox the whole Wine instance and whatever game it’s being used to run (in my system I have it as default, configured to deny things like network access and privilege escalation). This is maybe more applicable for people sailing the high seas, but it will also do things like blocking games from sending game analytics over the network if configure as I did to block network access.
They all have there pluses. Currently I really like Heroic.
Lutris has community scripts to install.
Can be nice for the different versions of games out there, not just gog.
Bottles is cool because it really focuses on you having complete control is wine.
Heroic is great because you can log into gog through it and install the games. Somewhat like Steam. Just noticed you can have Heroic link installed games to Steam
I have found that lutris scripts are often so out of date that they often break as much as they solve.
Battle.net games had this problem for a long time tested on 2 different systems. Bottles worked perfectly by default.
Unfortunately, GOG does not offer a client for Linux that you can use.
…
You can use any of the following game clients on Linux:
• Lutris
• Heroic Games Launcher
• BottlesI found Lutris to be the easiest, and quickest to be able to run a Windows-exclusive GOG game on Linux. So, let me start with it…
I found Lutris to be a complete pain. GOG Galaxy in Bottles and Heroic Games Launcher have been much better.
I have been using Lutris but I am always happy to learn! Do you know a good guide you could point me towards to get started with Galaxy in Bottles?
This has the process:
https://docs.usebottles.com/bottles/installers#use-installers
It’s pretty much install bottles>>create bottle>>click on install programs>>GOG Galaxy
That said I’ve just started using Heroic Games Launcher and I think I prefer that. Granted I haven’t done too much with it yet.
@Sunshine A tool I find way too rarely mentioned in that context is
https://constexpr.org/innoextract/ - it allows to unpack the Windows and Linux installers from GoG without actually running them.
That’s for instance relevant if you are on an ARM computer and don’t want to bother installing box64 just to get a DOS game running.
