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How can I transfer non-steam games between Linux devices. (self.linux)

submitted 4 months ago by lambda to c/[email protected]

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I have a desktop and a steam deck. I would like to setup some old games I have on disc on the desktop. Then compress them and decompress on my Steam Deck without doing the full install again. I understand that with wine/proton prefixes they should be installed to a "fake c:/ windows hierarchy" can I just compress that and copy to a different Linux machine? Does it save which proton version was used? If I use something like Lutris or bottles can I import into them?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (5 children)

I use Lutris and set up my directories a "GameName" and then 2 subdirectories "game" "prefix" and point Lutris to these.

All of the game files go in "game" and the prefix is created in "prefix" when I press play in Lutris. Any extras dlls that are needed can be installed with winetricks within Lutris to that specific prefix

This way you can just compress and decompress "GameName" folder and point Lutris to these locations on whichever machine.

You can choose which prefix version you want in Lutris and it will download that version for you. ~~I'm pretty sure it saves the version to somewhere in ~.local/share/lutris I'm not at my PC now so not 100% sure of the path.~~

It saves it to ~.local/share/lutris/runners/wine and you can put a custom wine build here and Lutris should recognise it when configuring the runner options

So you could copy this over to the corresponding location on the deck and Lutris will automatically detect this version as installed and won't have to download it again but its not necessary unless you don't have internet on the deck, or you're like me and want to keep an archive of the working prefix for the future in case the prefix version is no longer available for whatever reason and other version just won't work.

If you're new to Lutris, I wrote a step by step guide on how I use Lutris on a different community

https://sopuli.xyz/comment/9858101

[–] lambda 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Wow. You wrote a guide on it. I'll try to find time to read it tonight! I do have a question, what if a game makes use of the windows registry? Would that change the prefix?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Guide is maybe not the right word lol, it just exactly what I click to set up the majority of my games

I'm not 100% sure, but from my understanding yes the regisrty in the "prefix" folder would be changed. You can manually edit the wine prefix registry with regedit https://www.winehq.org/docs/wineusr-guid%3Cbr%20/%3Ee/using-regedit and Lutris supports this, just click the arrow that brings up the winetricks option and its under Wine Registry

[–] lambda 2 points 4 months ago

Sounds like a guide to me ☺️

The registry is one of the reasons I was thinking I would need separate prefixes that I can copy. But, I also understand that games that actually use the registry are few and far between. If I actually come across one that needs registry edits I can just pack that differently.

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