Crossover and Wine are the OG compatibility layers for Windows gameplay on Linux, and while I can’t vouch for either one now, as Wine is the only one I used–back in the days of the original Unreal, I can say now that Steam’s Proton is fairly straightforward and simple. Pretty much, unless it has some sort of anti-cheat malware, like BattleEye, everything “just works.” … and usually, if the game employs anti-cheat, and they catch you playing (fairly) on Linux, you’re usually banned.
Do not use PlayOnLinux, it’s dead and doesn’t work. Use lutris an/or steam…
Bottles works pretty well
On linux, for gaming? Not any better than Proton.
On Mac? I have no personal experience but I believe it’s good there.
I’ve only used CrossOver on Linux and actually find it harder to use than Lutris. There’s some crazy stuff like needing to declare environment variables inside a configuration file instead of having a GUI for it. But if you look at CodeWeavers’ blog and release notes, you’ll see them constantly making changes to improve gaming on macOS. That’s where they seem to be devoting most of their energy these days. CrossOver on Linux worked for Microsoft Office when I needed to use it, but that was the only reason I bought it.
I still think it was a worthwhile purchase, if only to support further Wine development. CodeWeavers has a great article about the differences between CrossOver and other Wine distributions: https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/alasky/2019/3/21/wine-crossover-and-proton-whats-the-relation
PlayOnLinux is no longer under active development (even Phoenics seems to have been stale for a while now), and Steam’s Proton, Lutris, or Bottles are what you should use on Linux nowadays.
I find Lutris so extremely annoying. I feel like sometimes it just never does what you tell it to do. Bottles is even worse, I simply feel like I am being crippled in possible actions you can perform.
I can understand Lutris sucking, but how is Bottles worse? Genuinely curious.
Is your issue that Lutris is buggy or limiting? I haven’t encountered buggy behavior in Lutris, and it gives you a ton of options. I like some parts of bottles but I would really like to be able to change cover art without editing a config file, lol. It’s definitely the easiest way to get started with Wine though.
There’s Heroic Games Launcher too, by the way. It has less features than Lutris but it’s probably easier to use? It’s also prettier than Lutris, I think. What issues were you having with Lutris?
