It's rather refreshing to see a redesign that introduces a simplified interface but doesn't forget about the power users. From a title like "A New Chapter", I was expecting to see some Gnome-like "Here's what we're doing now and you'll like it"
The Next mode simplifies Bottles usage significantly. There won’t be individual bottle management; Bottles will create and manage a single bottle, leaving users with the task of installing and running the software they need. The Next bottle will use a layering concept to isolate applications, dependencies, and configurations. This means that the underlying wineprefix will be the same, but each application will have its settings (DXVK, VKD3D, FSR, desktop resolution, environment variables, launch options, dependencies, etc.). This minimizes the risk of bottle breakage to just external interferences.
This is cool! I've always been a Heroic launcher fan, but this update would make me switch. The UI also looks very sweet. Shame it's s few months away, but I'm greatly looking forward to it.
This is very exciting! I don't use bottles, because I barely game, but for rhose that do, I'm sure this is very exciting! (although some people would not like the Electron part, but hey, at least they are NOT abandoning GTK and will still offer it specifically for those users)
My heart sank upon reading the word "electron" and rose again on the very next paragraph. I'm looking forward to seeing it in action.
Yeah, I don't have that much of a problem with electron, but I would prefer it if we had more non-electron apps on Linux.
I guess people don't realise Qt exists.
And it's so easy to use as a developer! I hate having to think about both GTK and QT themes though. I wish there was a QT equivalent of lxappearance.
That would be qt5ct/qt6ct
Generally the distro should handle that if you're not using something that requires manual intervention. If you are, Kvantum is pretty solid, it provides themes based on Adwaita or Libadwaita, as well as many other themes which KDE uses.
You'll have to set the theme to Kvantum which I think qt5ct and its Qt6 ilk should handle.
I use a tiling window manager on a fairly minimal install of Debian.
Then yeah, qt5ct + qt6ct will help you there. Kvantum will help if you've got a specific theme you want to use.
I stopped reading when I read "Electron".
I used Heroic a few times and it's absolute garbage because it runs Electron.
They said they will offer these 2 versions side-by-side, but mark my words, a few months/years they will go with the Electron version and kill the GTK version.
Yeah, I'm guessing it's just a transition period, until most people use the new version, because it's easier, and then they will kill the old version because it "takes too much development effort" and "nobody uses it", and because it's a "duplication of effort".
I had more luck using steam. Adding installer or exe as non steam game. There was only one game that did not work and worked on bottles/lutris. There was a lot more that worked on steam and didnt work on bottles/lutris. And I feel it is a lot less complicated. You just add the game and change comp. settings to proton and thats it. If it was installer, you add the new exe to the steam or edit shortcut.
I find if it has an installer and it's not covered by Heroic or Lutris, it's easier to use WINE directly rather than Steam. Bottles is just doing that with a nice GUI, which'll certainly help new people. I've used it to install old games on my Steam Deck that GOG doesn't cover and it did a good job, any issues were from WINE or a component not being installed.
Am I missing anything by using lutris?
I used to make Lutris install scripts. In general, I find:
If it works for you though, keep using it
I was fully expecting that to be an announcement that they were releasing a paid version or something like that, so this was a pleasant surprise.
Bottles > steam for linux
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