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Cartridges is another Linux game launcher and it's super-clean

By - | Views: 35,847

If there's one thing we're not short on, it's launchers. There's some kind of launcher for everything including Lutris, Heroic Games Launcher, Bottles and more. Now there's also Cartridges.

First impression is surprisingly good with this one. The interface is impeccably clean and clear, with options to import games from other sources like Steam, Heroic and others. It works damn well too without any fussing around. Although you will need to add extra sources for it to scan, if you're not using the defaults (like extra Steam game install folders). Importing is blazingly fast too.

Features:

  • Manually adding and editing games.
  • Importing games from Steam, Lutris, Heroic, Bottles and itch.
  • Support for multiple Steam install locations.
  • Hiding games.
  • Searching and sorting by title, date added and last played.
  • Automatically downloading cover art from SteamGridDB.
  • Searching for games on various databases.
  • Animated covers.

Might be worth a look if you're after something simple, that will bundle all your games from different sources.

Check it out on GitHub and Flathub.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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About the author -
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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11 comments
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peotr26 May 5, 2023
I have been using it for a month on KDE Plasma, and I have nothing to say other than it's great.
WorMzy May 5, 2023
Oh yay, another pointless launcher that uses GTK. Let me add that to the pile of crap that a) I'll never use, and b) will stop working after the next major GTK release because GTK only cares about in-house 'Gnome' apps. Horray.
tpau May 6, 2023
I wonder why I should choose this one over the others?
A comparison table might make sense in the future.
I would use this if there was a way to transfer playtime from Lutris
Marlock May 6, 2023
does it?

1) manage (fetch/update/delete, lets you choose and configure per game) wine/proton versions for use by windows versions of games

2) manage libretro emulator cores?

3) alternative native game engines (eg: dosbox, scummvm, openra, openrb, ...)

4) use runtimes/sandbox?


so far it looks a bit like its purpose is to be a launcher over launchers (just to have a unified games list somewhere with steam, heroic, lutris and etc still needed behind it), but i may have gotten the wrong impression from the article
TheSHEEEP May 6, 2023
View PC info
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Samsai May 6, 2023
Seems decent enough if you just need a launcher that pulls your games into one place from distinct sources. It happily discovered all my Itch, GOG and Steam games and seems to properly shell out to the correct launcher with XDG. So, kind of a launcher of launchers, which is really only useful if your library is scattered. I suppose I could also manually add a few games that I currently manage in custom app directories. Doesn't seem like it does a whole lot of actual management, but what it does it seems to do well enough.
RollTheSlayer May 7, 2023
Seems like a good alternative to Gamehub for games not on popular stores (like really old visual novels) now that Gamehub is kind of abandoned/old.

You can even change the cover of the games to whatever you want, which you cant do on Bottles library I believe.
InhaleOblivion May 8, 2023
Currently Lutris and Bottles already fill all my launcher needs outside of Steam. However if Bottles stops being updated at some point in the future this seems like a solid alternative.
crabctrl May 8, 2023
Loving this launcher. I've been looking for a game launcher for awhile which was minimalist, not using a web engine, not doing extra features like having its own game repository, etc... Cartridges really hits the spot for me. Very minimal but in a good way, it does exactly what it's meant to and it does it well. <3
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