Integrate UMU-Launcher for a Native-Like Windows Gaming Experience

[RaulKong898]

Tell us the problem or your need

Currently, running Windows games on Linux with Bottles, while functional, can sometimes lead to compatibility issues and performance limitations due to the inherent challenges of emulation. This can result in a less than ideal gaming experience for users.

Describe the solution you'd like

Integrate UMU-Launcher into Bottles. UMU-Launcher leverages Steam Runtime and Proton, offering a containerized environment optimized for running Windows games. This integration would provide:

Enhanced Compatibility: By utilizing Proton, compatibility with a wider range of Windows games would be significantly improved.
Increased Performance: The optimized runtime environment provided by UMU-Launcher would lead to smoother and faster gaming performance, minimizing performance overhead typically associated with emulation.
Unified Experience: Users would enjoy a seamless experience running games from various platforms (Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG, etc.) within Bottles, simplifying game management.
This would essentially allow Bottles to run Windows games with a level of compatibility and performance approaching that of native Linux games.

Other solutions?

While other solutions exist for improving Windows game compatibility on Linux, such as using different Wine versions or tweaking configurations, they often require manual intervention and technical expertise. Integrating UMU-Launcher offers a more streamlined and user-friendly solution, automating many of the complexities involved in optimizing game performance.

Additional context and references

UMU-Launcher GitHub repository: https://github.com/Open-Wine-Components/umu-launcher
UMU-Launcher documentation: https://github.com/Open-Wine-Components/umu-launcher/blob/main/README.md

This feature would greatly enhance the Bottles gaming experience, attracting more users to the platform and solidifying its position as a leading solution for Windows gaming on Linux.

Submitted by: Raul Popescu (aka Kong)

[Arcitec]

The creator of Bottles is one of the people who have write access to the UMU organization so I am 100% sure the plan is to add support for it later. I hope it's soon because it's the best way to run games. And Wine-GE has been abandoned for 9 months since Proton-GE with UMU is the new solution.

https://github.com/Open-Wine-Components

https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/wine-ge-custom/releases/tag/GE-Proton8-26

So right now we don't have a good runner for Bottles:

• Outdated Wine-GE, doesn't work for many of my games.
• New Proton-GE, but with the bad way of running it which has some stability issues (connects to Steam Linux Runtime, always had glitches with getting it to work).
• Kron4ek, which is too bleeding-edge, can be very unstable, and is made by a warez admin from RuTracker. Don't like it.

UMU is desperately needed. I look forward to us all using Proton-GE and collaborating with Valve for 1 perfect environment everywhere. :)

[SeongGino]

Honestly the most important part for me is having the fshack and the integrated gstreamer and video fixes integrated--two features that no other available runner seems to provide.

Which is unfortunate! Because Bottles has become my go-to, but the current implementation of Proton support leaves much to be desired, and I've been having to use Lutris in the meanwhile just to keep up-to-date with this forced change in GE updates... which while functional, is nowhere near as polished or friendly or functional as the Bottles experience.

I really, really hope that better Proton support is coming soon. Fingers crossed?