To be fair, it’s just because windows is the most used and common desktop operating system and the two OSs are different. People would be confused about windows too if the tables were turned.
What’s confusing about wine prefixes apart from the fact that wine itself doesn’t come with a graphical interface to manage them? On a Deck, Steam should handle these for you
Calling them “prefixes” is about the total of the confusion. Call them “instances” or even just “boxes” and it’s suddenly clear what they do.
(The only reason I’m not using “sandbox” is because they don’t really provide sandboxing from a security point of view, only a kind of separate instance with its own configuration but with access to everything via the Z drive)
Once you figure out that using a different “wine prefix” only really means a separate “Windows” with it’s own config and file structure there’s nothing confusing about it.
Same. However some mod programs that rely on Windows prerequisites like C++ and .NET don’t have that (which is where my frustrations were stemming from)
I have so far avoided that specific pit, but that’s because for maybe decades now and still whilst using Windows as my main I’ve avoid proprietary solutions (except for games) and went for Open Source ones instead, which has yielded the benefit that since I moved over to Linux for good a few months ago, I have yet to be faced with needing something I used to use in Windows and not finding a Linux native version.
I’m sure I’ll end up in the same kind of situation you describe.
By the way, have you tried “Bottles”? From what I’ve heard (but did not test myself yet) it might help there and it’s not specifically for games.
As a windows main but steam deck user, can confirm Linux being confusing.
Fucking wine prefixes.
To be fair, it’s just because windows is the most used and common desktop operating system and the two OSs are different. People would be confused about windows too if the tables were turned.
Also the Linux community is toxic and overcomplicates things for no reason.
What’s confusing about wine prefixes apart from the fact that wine itself doesn’t come with a graphical interface to manage them? On a Deck, Steam should handle these for you
Calling them “prefixes” is about the total of the confusion. Call them “instances” or even just “boxes” and it’s suddenly clear what they do.
(The only reason I’m not using “sandbox” is because they don’t really provide sandboxing from a security point of view, only a kind of separate instance with its own configuration but with access to everything via the Z drive)
Once you figure out that using a different “wine prefix” only really means a separate “Windows” with it’s own config and file structure there’s nothing confusing about it.
Oh I know what prefixes are. Configuring them is the bitch part
I just use Lutris, which generally does most of that work for me.
Same. However some mod programs that rely on Windows prerequisites like C++ and .NET don’t have that (which is where my frustrations were stemming from)
Ah.
I have so far avoided that specific pit, but that’s because for maybe decades now and still whilst using Windows as my main I’ve avoid proprietary solutions (except for games) and went for Open Source ones instead, which has yielded the benefit that since I moved over to Linux for good a few months ago, I have yet to be faced with needing something I used to use in Windows and not finding a Linux native version.
I’m sure I’ll end up in the same kind of situation you describe.
By the way, have you tried “Bottles”? From what I’ve heard (but did not test myself yet) it might help there and it’s not specifically for games.
Yep! Have bottles installed along with protontricks
I was led to believe you could put windows on steamdeck? Am I wrong? I don’t have one.
You definitely can. The UI from Steam OS (Linux based) is much better though.
You could, but you wouldn’t