Discussions and news about gaming on the GNU/Linux family of operating systems (including the Steam Deck). Potentially a $HOME away from home for disgruntled /r/linux_gaming denizens of the redditarian demesne.
This page can be subscribed to via RSS.
Original /r/linux_gaming pengwing by uoou.
WWW:
Discord:
IRC:
Matrix:
Telegram:
I use GOG to get away from downloading things in the context of a store and have a nice little archive of installers to use whenever I want it. I am trying to get as many Steam games to just be that way so when I run the binary it just works without Steam being involved at all. Laughably few will do it on their own but there are some ways around others...
Yeah, quite happy without some bloated launcher, thanks.
I think the bigger complaint is that, when Galaxy was released, GOG said (back in 2015)
A Linux version of our client is planned eventually ... Stay tuned for future announcements
Ten years is plenty of time to implement a launcher, or at least give a planned timeline
Sure, third parties have done it with Heroic, etc. but promising support and not delivering leaves a really bad taste to me
CDProjekt/GOG said the same thing about Cyberpunk 2077, their biggest product ever, and in the year 2025 I'm still running the Windows version of that through Proton because they give no fucks.
To be fair, you probably don't want a native version anyways. Most native games i've played just required me to switch to proton because they had their own share of issues that the proton versions didn't have.
At this point it's better for devs to make proton support a goal(i.e steam deck compatibility) rather than native linux builds. Linux just has too much diversity for native linux support to not be a massive pain in the ass in my opinion.
Ten years is plenty of time to implement a launcher, or at least give a planned timeline
Or to give literally any kind of update, like admitting it was never seriously planned.
I thought they said they're not doing it now?
Because Linux still makes up a small % of PC Gamers, so CDPR hasn't prioritized it. Plus they'd need to have some kind of proton-like middleware (or just proton) for the majority of their games (which are mostly 15-20+ years old) to be playable. It seems like a large engineering challenge for a company which isn't nearly as wealthy as valve
Proton is open source, they could just use that. Valve would hardly complain as it helps more games run on steamdeck.
I want to use GoG more but they seem to increasingly not care about Linux. So I use Steam.
"This river doesn't need a bridge because almost nobody ever crosses it."
Also is there a reason they can't just distribute proton? It's open under BSD, so they'd be free to do it.
Gog is not in the bridge building business though
Heroic did it. Why couldn't GOG?
Because of the power of friendship... And open-source.
And caring about Linux...
CD Projekt is a public company, which would likely be cautious in relying on complex third-party tools like Wine.
Yep, no public company would ever use Apache, nginx, AWS. Those are all 3rd party tools.
Most businesses rely on third party tools and software libraries. Particularly open source ones.
Valve isn't public, but they seem to be making plenty off of WINE. In fact, companies of all types love building on other projects, because it reduces how much work they need to do.
They just don't seem to care. They could literally hire someone who works on Heroic to make an official Galaxy port reusing most of Heroic's functionality. Yet they don't.
I've been with linux for 20 years now and at one point GOG was the place to go, because DRM was one of the biggest problems with wine.
I downloaded all my games stopped using it after they came up with their own electronic store, which I thought was a horrible shit and very clunky on wine.
Steam and proton were rising at the same time and more and more games were working without the usual fuss of installing .dll files, obscure media codecs, .net and etc, so it was bye bye GOG.
Heroic Games Launcher, supports gog cloud saves, full wine/proton integration and even store front.
Also, it has controller support (slightly dodgy though)
It's also a nice way to use a single launcher to replace 2 / 3 (Epic Games, GOG Galaxy and Amazon gaming).
On Linux I only use Steam and Heroic.
And that's amazing work they've done, but really it's surprising that it's not already supported natively.
I think there is some ... cooperation? Or at least acknowledgement towards heroic from GOGs side.
Marginal support happens a lot on Linux. See AMD drivers without Adrenaline. "You may use Linux if you must... at your own risk... we do the bare minimum to keep you runnig... our past stuff is in the open but we can pull the rug on future releases any time." You can install gog games and maybe some dude made galaxy work in wine, corporate has decided that is good enough.
I used to purchase everything I could from GOG until I switched to Linux full time. I still like the company and buy some from them, but until they become more Linux friendly or Steam gets worse I'll still prioritize Steam now. And it's not only the (very odd) resistance to making a Linux version of Galaxy, I've also seen them not offer Linux versions of games even when the developers have released it on other platforms.
And Linux versions taking over a week longer to update than the steam ones. I refunded a game over that before and got it on steam instead.
I tried to push for GOG purchases too and then I just ended up with games that would receive updates late. I'd miss out on discounts and bundles that make future purchases cheaper, at some point it was cheaper to just rebuy stuff with DLCs on Steam than continue building up the library on GOG.
I also gave their galaxy client a try since it promised a united library for all platforms and then they did a horrible job managing the plugins for other stores - they constantly kept breaking or logging me out while even Playnite worked perfectly out of the box.
In the end I just stopped wasting energy on GOG, life is too short and complicated enough. If they have a good deal on old games I might grab it, otherwise I prefer anything else.
Same here. I had nearly all the XCOM2 DLC purchased from GOG, and then Steam ran a sale on the bundle that was cheaper than buying the last piece to complete the collection! Since then I think GOG have run similarly cheap sales, but it wasn't the last time I saw that happen.
I know launchers like Heroic are available, and I use it for some of my games from them, but I actually liked the Galaxy launcher on Windows. I wasn't linking it to anything else though, so I didn't run into the issues you mention.
It's sad, because I think they could do well in the Linux community. Hopefully they eventually start supporting it, but until then I'll be buying most of my games from the company that's actively contributing and improving things for the community.
I agree, it was something I would have thought would happened a long, long time ago. Then a few years ago I thought for sure when steam and linux were really picking up.
It is one of the reasons I dont use gog that much.
Yeah, they promised Linux support years ago with Galaxy 2.0.
It's basically the reason why I always prefer Steam for my games.
IIRC GOG is actually partnered with HeroicLauncher... so.. it's semi official to use that... and better UX.
Affiliate links are not business partnerships. Does Heroic have anything more than that with GOG?
EDIT: The answer is no, GOG is not partnered with Heroic Games Launcher.
Better UX until you have to download or update a game… there is an open bug report where it just doesn't progress but keeps starting new processes until you‘re OOM. Still no fix in months, I've had to boot into Windows for every single update. Really not that good of an UX.
This is what keeps me on Steam, along with Steam Input and Big Picture
You can use heroic I guess...