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Bottles is a thoroughly great application for managing Windows applications and games on Linux. It's fast moving and a new release is out with their new default runner called Soda, which is based on Valve's fork of Wine and Proton patches.

The problem was their previous runner called Caffe was based directly on Wine and moved with its updates. Given how often Wine updates, it introduced plenty of regressions so this is their attempt to provide a more stable experience. Soda actually takes Valve's Wine fork, Proton patches and updates from TKG and GE too. So it's a big mixture of things that should hopefully make running games with Bottles easier. As for the name Soda, they say "we think it will be a sparkling experience".

A new experimental feature added with this release is sandboxing per-Bottle. The idea is to restrict the environment and hopefully be more secure and stable with it using flatpak-spawn when Bottles is installed as Flatpak and bubblewrap for all other formats.

There's also a new UI for installers that looks a lot cleaner and clearer:

You also get a nice status bar along with info on what it's actually doing when setting up these apps.

More integrations have arrived with support for the Ubisoft Connect launcher. If you turn it on, it will list games you have installed directly in the Bottles application. They also worked to continue to improve the Library view, performance improvements, various fixes, improvements to the Epic Store integration which they say can now use "using Cloud Sync and Anti cheat", improved translations and so on.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Solarwing Jul 14, 2022
Soda seems impressive. Soon I will test it. Maybe tonight. Btw I cloned winesapOS to my external ssd hard drive. It Worked like a charm when I connected it to my main rig which has an amd processor and a display card on it. But my secondary rig refused to work on it for some unknown reason.It froze after login screen. So work needs to be done to ensure it'll work well on most computers.
redneckdrow Jul 14, 2022
Quoting: TheSHEEEPIs someone who uses Wine called a winer?

Here in the Southern US, we usually call 'em winos. People hire them to decorate homes.
udekmp69 Jul 15, 2022
Soda seems like an interesting wine runner for non-steam games. Will try it with Bottles when I get the chance!
iiari Jul 15, 2022
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Quoting: RaabenLove the UI
The UI is terrific and its use of the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines makes it look native and right at home with Gnome's newest apps.


Last edited by iiari on 15 July 2022 at 10:47 am UTC
marcosfs93 Jul 15, 2022
A wise decision!
Using the Valve's Proton they will get more results for gaming instead pure Wine with fixes/patches, Proton was made with this purpose XD.
fearnflavio Jul 15, 2022
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Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: TheSHEEEP
Quoting: Perkeleen_VittupääNever tried it but looks pleasant! I wonder if this makes Lutris more irrelevant
I think they do somewhat different things.

Although I'd also say that for most people using Lutris, Bottles could be an easier-to-use replacement.
Anyway, aren't they collaborating or something? Like, Lutris starting to use Bottles for things? Or was that Heroic?

Yes, soon Heroic will be able to use Bottles to run the games.
So instead of choosing a prefix and this and that, just select a bottle from bottles and Heroic will run the game there.
Will be useful to play Ubisoft games that you got from Epic. Basically, just choose the bottle with Ubisoft Connect installed and the game will run, probably, ahaha.
Marlock Jul 18, 2022
I'd love if all those opensource alternative launchers/updaters/managers would team up and make storefront interfaces modular so all of them can interface with all stores and all future improvements to interfacing with a store on one would be available in all of them at once...

...a bit like Kodi plugins for downloading subtitles, for online video websites, etc

...and a bit like RetroArch and Lutris and Gnome Games all can use libretro emulation engines


Last edited by Marlock on 18 July 2022 at 9:01 pm UTC
itsNotting Jul 19, 2022
I can‘t get the EA App to install on Bottles (default config, Soda).

Watched the video on Bottles and that worked fine but in my case, the EA Client installer always failes with a red exclamation mark „send logs„ option available, but that is only for EA. No files added in the bottles folder/path.

Any ideas, suggestions? ;)
Purple Library Guy Jul 19, 2022
Quoting: itsNottingI can‘t get the EA App to install on Bottles (default config, Soda).

Watched the video on Bottles and that worked fine but in my case, the EA Client installer always failes with a red exclamation mark „send logs„ option available, but that is only for EA. No files added in the bottles folder/path.

Any ideas, suggestions? ;)
Avoid anything connected with EA?
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