I’m looking for discussion and suggestions about the best way to play games from GOG on linux.
My current method is that I’ve got GOG Galaxy installed with bottles, and then I use GOG Galaxy to install and launch the Windows games. That’s working alright so far. One downside is that won’t install Iinux versions like that, so for games that have a native linux version I have to decide if I want to install it separately, or just run the windows version with the others. So that isn’t perfect. Another minor thing I don’t like is that since I’m installing games via GOG Galaxy via Bottles via Flatpak… I end up having very little idea of where stuff is being saved. It’s difficult to find save game files for example; and if there is some junk installed or left over from something, there’s very little chance that I’m going to notice and delete it. It just feels very opaque. (I guess that’s mostly just about my personal lack of knowledge though.)
Anyway, I’m mostly just wondering how others are choosing to handle their games from GOG.
The Heroic Games Launcher is (IMHO) by far the best interface to gog you can have on linux.
You can find it on the AUR if you use arch, which makes it pretty straightforward to install.
The next version will integrate with the Galaxy API using the comet project, which should make it even better.
The only problem I had with it is that, once upon a time, there was a bug with downloading some games (Cyberpunk 2077, in my case) and I had to compile the git version of Gog-dl and target that in the settings… but the fact I could even do that is great by itself.
Heroic does seem to have jumped in popularity recently. I’d never heard of it when I first started installing games on Linux.)
Does the comet support mean that it can also do Galaxy cloud-saves and achievements? I wouldn’t say those things are super important to me, but it would make switching between launches easier - since I wouldn’t have to stuff around trying to move save files to the right place after switching.
I think comet is more about multiplayer in games that use the Galaxy API than achievements
The gog cloud save support I think was already in the Heroic Game Launcher for about a couple of years, I think I have my Cyberpunk 2077 saves on there, but honestly I’m not sure
Cloud saves are already supported by Heroic ; Comet can already be used if you launch it yourself but will be integrated in the package in the future. Comet support online features and achievements. Heroic + Comet = Gog Galaxy
Heroic is good, cloud saves are on Beta at the moment, on some (a lot) GOG games cloud saves aren’t present. On the other hand some games do have the option. Heroic does allow you to configure a runner per game basis which is helpful in some situations.
If you do play the game on Heroic and it doesnt have cloud save, when/if you copy paste all the files or import it (copy/paste) to something that can run their client like Lutris/Bottles with galaxy all the achievements and saves are transferred and can be saved in the cloud. You do have to run the game at least once after transferring all those files to the client.
After ignoring it because Epic sucks, I recently realised that https://heroicgameslauncher.com/ is a really nice GOG client as well.
I use Lutris. It downloads the Linux installers when available and every game gets its own folder.
But it won’t help you with finding save files. GOG especially has many old games and over the years there have been many different “standards” to store save files and on top of that most games didn’t even follow any standard. Use PC Gaming Wiki to find where save files are stored.
When I was first getting started, I briefly tried Lutris - but was put off by two things. The first was that it felt very complicated. I was new to Linux at the time, and I’m being asked helps of config questions about how to install which-and-what components in order to use such-and-such runners or launcher or whatever… basically just a heap of stuff that I didn’t really understand. And when I tried using a recommend ‘gold rated’ auto-setup to install something, it just froze. So that was disappointing. I decided that maybe I’d try something else.
I’ve seen Lutris recommended in a lot of places; so apparently it’s pretty good. But at the time I used it, it wasn’t really what I was looking for. I think a lot of people praise Lutris for the way it lets you have case-by-case special configurations for all sorts of things, which might allow you get some stubborn stuff working. But for me, it felt like more things I could break. I’ve got enough games that I’m happy enough to just say that if it doesn’t work then I won’t play it. So I guess Lutris wasn’t for me. [edit - Bottles also had a lot of config choices to get started; but I was lucky enough that what I picked worked first time; and I haven’t looked at the config since.]
Honestly, I can see that. I’ve just gotten used to Lutris over the years, even before Valve released Proton.
I mainly like Lutris as a tool to manage all of my games with easy ways to share common configuration steps between them. But I also see it going the way most Wine helpers went over the years. At first it works brilliantly for everyone. Then the pre-made configurations fail to work for edge cases or they fail when a game is updated. Eventually it’s easier to configure everything by hand and then you don’t need the tool anymore until the next one comes along.
But they started an initiative with Bottles, Heroic and other programs to make standardised configurations. Pair that up with Valve’s efforts in Proton and the overall rising popularity of Linux gaming and we might get better and better tools down the line until they aren’t needed anymore.
I really enjoy mini galaxy
You can have both naitive and wine games all listed in the one launcher to keep all your gog games together
And finding data for the games is easy because you can just navigate to it from the launcher
I’ve tried lutris, I’ve tried bottles, I’ve tried Heroic. Heroic is the best experience I’ve had.
