Recently the Bottles team announced they've been granted funding by NLnet NGI Zero Commons and now they've given more detail on what it means.
In the new post they clarify they haven't actually received anything yet as it now goes through a planning stage to define what budget they will be given and how it will be spent. Additionally, this funding is for Bottles Next, their total rework of the app and not for maintenance on the current Bottles app.
With that in mind the developers mention it "doesn't mean Bottles is financially secure", as the current existing Bottles app is still funded purely by donations. And, once Bottles Next is available, it will too "live on donations from the community" as while the funding they will eventually get from NLnet "is a huge support" it's finite.
Since the news of the funding broke they said they've "seen donations decline, especially recurring ones" which is a shame and note that "The funds don’t cover servers, maintenance, or running costs. And without direct support, the risk is that Bottles will be overshadowed before Next is ready".
They also said they're working on a fresh update on the progress of Bottles Next and how development is going.
And other than that I guess I just don't have a need for windows-only software. Everything I use is either linux native or I do productivity stuff on my macbook.
I use it as a WINE manager for abandonware games, because it is the only wine manager GUI I know of that has easy access to a 2 click full backup into a zip, hence why I use it despite my general dislike of GTK+Adwaita as a theming framework as a KDE user myself. I wish more wine GUI managers had that, heck, if Lutris or Heroic Games Launcher got that feature I'd probably never install bottles again, especially since Bottles Next is gonna be moving to Electron, and like I'm not gonna hold my breath for Unreal Engine 5 to have a truly well optimized game, I'm not gonna hold my breath for an electron app to run well or be not buggy.
Last edited by WMan22 on 27 Aug 2025 at 7:15 am UTC
I do prefer native apps like Steam/itch.io/Heroic, but Bottles does its job well for the rest.
Must have been early in its development.