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The Playtron team working on PlaytronOS has grown recently, with the creator of the popular app Lutris joining up.

What is PlaytronOS? An upcoming specialised Fedora Silverblue based Linux distribution from Playtron. Designed to work with Steam, Epic Games, GOG and more. It's backed by the likes of Samsung, Square Enix, Circle & Mysten Labs and is taking aim at both SteamOS from Valve and Windows from Microsoft to give a simple interface to get gaming on handheld PCs and more.

A first Alpha of PlaytronOS was just recently released so they're actually beginning to show what they're doing.

Now, in a post on Patreon, Mathieu Comandon the creator of Lutris announced how they're "Joining forces with Playtron". As Comandon explained:

Having a console like experience on Linux was something I’ve always wanted but building a full OS for Lutris was always out of scope given the effort required to maintain it. Maintaining the Lutris project is already quite a substantial load and we wouldn’t have the manpower to drive such a project. But with joining forces with other projects and getting support from investors that’s a whole different story. My plan was to find a job after the SCaLE expo, ending a period of only relying on savings and donations. I put aside the other prospects I had and got in touch with Playtron. A few weeks after, I was joining their team as a developer to work mostly on the UI side of things.

The post also briefly touches on some issues like PlaytronOS not currently supporting actual Native Linux games, and crypto/web3, which I touched on in previous articles too. The post also notes how like with SteamOS, the development of PlaytronOS "directly contributes to the evolution of several open source projects".

So now the Playtron team has developers from Lutris, Heroic Games Launcher, ChimeraOS, winesapOS and Box64 to name just a few.

Lutris fans will also be happy to know a new release is "on the way" that will have "many fixes, notably for the Ubisoft integration" along with "better support for umu and Flatpak". More about Lutris can be seen on the official website.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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This makes me less interested in playtron not more, i stopped using Lutris years ago, it will certainly be interesting to see where this all goes, but Playtron really is not something I am interested in much at this point, it still seems like pie in the sky to me. What I am worried about is when Playtron fails what happens to all these projects that anchored themselves to it.. it could potentially be really bad for Linux gaming.


Last edited by nebadon2025 on 9 September 2024 at 4:27 pm UTC
sobkas Sep 9
So does anyone know a good replacement for Lutris that isn't Heroic Games Launcher?
GBGames Sep 9
I use Lutris, and it has been more or less fine, but I guess I'm hearing that it won't be updated anywhere near as frequently in the future. Should I be looking for an alternative?
scaine Sep 9
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Quoting: sobkasSo does anyone know a good replacement for Lutris that isn't Heroic Games Launcher?
I jumped to Heroic a couple of months ago and it's a breath of fresh air. But if it's not for you, I suppose Arch Wiki has you covered. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Gaming

There's a section on launchers in there.

Edit - oh, and I just noticed that Liam covered another alternative earlier today!

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/09/nonsteamlaunchers-v394-gets-save-backups-using-ludusavi/


Last edited by scaine on 9 September 2024 at 5:05 pm UTC
Alexander Sep 9
QuoteWhat is PlaytronOS? An upcoming specialised Fedora Silverblue based Linux distribution from Playtron.

I have seen today Gardiner Bryant on Youtube today testing this alpha. And it has clearly signs from arch and chimera os.

Not sure how that can even fit with Silverblue. ? It was something from The Bootprocess.

But i am kind of curious why does that ask for a EULA?


Last edited by Alexander on 9 September 2024 at 5:37 pm UTC
_wojtek Sep 9
Not overly extatic that the project siphons all the devs but! it's still Linux based so there is a poasibilit that with SteamDeck it will bite oven more pie from Windows, which is good.
Quoting: sobkasgood replacement for Lutris
Bottles can manage Wine prefixes and install some dependencies. It can also install some launchers like Ubisoft connect and EA app iirc.
I use Heroic or plain old command line for managing Wine.


Last edited by mr-victory on 9 September 2024 at 6:32 pm UTC
Quoting: nebadon2025what happens to all these projects that anchored themselves to it
I'm not optimistic about Playtron's feature but IMO devs can find more time to work on upstream projects while they (the devs) are under the Playtron umbrella and continue normally if/when Playtron goes under.
Quoting: scaine
Quoting: sobkasSo does anyone know a good replacement for Lutris that isn't Heroic Games Launcher?
I jumped to Heroic a couple of months ago and it's a breath of fresh air. But if it's not for you, I suppose Arch Wiki has you covered. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Gaming

There's a section on launchers in there.

Edit - oh, and I just noticed that Liam covered another alternative earlier today!

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/09/nonsteamlaunchers-v394-gets-save-backups-using-ludusavi/

Can you install and add games that aren't on any of those platforms? Iso's and cds ect

Does it have a mangohud toggle as well like lutris does?

I've never used anything other then lutris (then emulationstation for my main GUI) so abit unsure about the alternatives
You absolutely can add any executable to Heroic Launcher, i don't really have any games i play from CDs to test it, but it you can run it in wine, it can run in Heroic Launcher pretty much.

Quoting: Doktor-Mandrake
Quoting: scaine
Quoting: sobkasSo does anyone know a good replacement for Lutris that isn't Heroic Games Launcher?
I jumped to Heroic a couple of months ago and it's a breath of fresh air. But if it's not for you, I suppose Arch Wiki has you covered. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Gaming

There's a section on launchers in there.

Edit - oh, and I just noticed that Liam covered another alternative earlier today!

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/09/nonsteamlaunchers-v394-gets-save-backups-using-ludusavi/

Can you install and add games that aren't on any of those platforms? Iso's and cds ect

Does it have a mangohud toggle as well like lutris does?

I've never used anything other then lutris (then emulationstation for my main GUI) so abit unsure about the alternatives
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