While Elgato continue to ignore the Linux market, developers from around the community end up creating applications to fill the gap. Now there's Boatswain, which allows Linux users to control Elgato Stream Deck devices.
News I'm sure many Linux fans will be happy to see - Valve sent over a Steam Deck to the developer of Lutris, the free and open source game manager.
PolyMC is a fork of the popular MultiMC launcher for Minecraft, giving you an easy way to install and manage mods. This release also brings an essential feature needed on the Steam Deck.
Heroic Games Launcher, the community-made open source app for the Epic Games Store, is now available as a Flatpak on Flathub making it even easier to install and setup on Linux and Steam Deck.
Another guide for you today. For those of you who want to use the EA App on the Steam Deck (or a Linux desktop!), here's one of the possible ways to do it using Bottles.
Blender, the all-in-one tool for 3D creation including modelling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, video editing and more has a big upgrade out with version 3.1.
Heroic Games Launcher is a great multi-platform alternative client for Epic Games and GOG, which helps get your games working on Linux and Steam Deck and a new release is out with version 2.2.2.
ProtonUp-Qt is a very helpful application that can help you install extra compatibility layers on Linux and Steam Deck.
Do you own a lot of games on itch.io? I do, and a huge amount more from past charity bundles I've yet to go and claim so maybe the Steam Deck will help me and you get through them all.
Something that I've been asked, repeatedly (and then some), is to show the Heroic Games Launcher on the Steam Deck. So here we are, let's take a look.
For those just getting into Linux and / or people who will be testing out the Steam Deck, GOverlay can be a bit of a lifesaver to help configure some extra tools like MangoHud.
Heroic Games Launcher is truly becoming one of the best game managers available for Linux. Not only does it support Epic Games, it's just expanded to cover GOG too.
86Box is a new one to me but perhaps some readers might be interested in it. It's an IBM PC system emulator that specializes in running old operating systems and software. Now with version 3.2 it's available for Linux.
Bottles is the very promising free and open source application to help you directly manage installing things with Wine, the compatibility layer to run Windows apps and games on Linux.
OBS Studio is the incredibly popular free and open source video capture and livestreaming software. A huge new release is now available with plenty of Linux improvements.
Ready to test some more awesome open source software? Lutris 0.5.10 Beta 1 is out, so this is your chance to help make the next release a polished one.
Readying up for the onslaught of users on the Steam Deck who will probably want to play some of their Epic Store loot, the free and open source Heroic Games Launcher has a new bug fix release up.
Ahead of the Steam Deck release, it seems the desktop client for Steam is getting a few handy UI changes too.
Managing various games and applications installed on Linux using Wine can be a hassle, and while there's stuff like Lutris available perhaps Bottles might be a better dedicated option.
Is any service safe from Lutris? Apparently not. This impressive free and open source game manager will gain support for another way to install games on Linux in an upcoming update.
