I bought a refurbished steam deck finally and am thinking about what my ahem acquisition workflow will be. This is what I’m thinking from my past experience daily driving Linux (arch btw):
For Linux native games, easy - just torrent it and/or install it and play.
For Windows:
- For game file dumps, add the .exe in Steam as a non-steam game and run it with proton.
- For setup installations (repacks etc.), run the setup.exe with wine, install to a location, then do the same as above.
For any issues with the above, try installation scripts from Lutris and review protonDB and wineHQ to troubleshoot.
Is there an easier way I’m missing?
Edit: Will also check Bottles. Apparently you can use Heroic launcher to install setup.exes? If true I’ll try that also.
I install games with the heroic launcher. And add the game to steam
PCGamingWiki for any older or less popular games.
Bottles is nice. Granted, I’ve only had to use it for one game with a setup.exe so far, but it was more straightforward than trying to do it through steam
bullet point #2 fails more than half of the time for me.
What I found works for me is… well I’ll just repost my previous advice:
if anyone is struggling with installing 3rd party mods and such in Proton, try starting your installation process from ConEmu (ConEmu64.exe) (It’s a simple, open-source, portable terminal emulator for Windows) instead of pointing the Non-steam Games wizard at each installation and gaming exe individually.
I originally tried to do this with the explorer.exe built into Wine, but getting that thing to launch is a pain.
for example a lot of Windows programs will have you download an .exe that installs the program, then you need to run a different .exe to actually run the program. Steam’s non-steam game wizard in combination with Proton gets confused by this and runs the two .exe’s in separate environments, screwing with any attempts to install a mod or install the app itself.
I usually run repacks on Desktop PC with Windows and copy over resulting files and point Steam at the resulting exe. It makes the process a lot faster since my Desktop has a 5800X3D. Other than that though pretty much the exact same process on my end.
