I've just posted my interview with the creator of #Lutris - @mathieucomandon
I did this interview some time ago, but again, back then I was almost exclusively on #Reddit
And, as you're sick of me telling you - I am now posting entirely to #opensource alternatives like where you'll see this one - one #Lemmy
So if you like Lutris, or the #SteamDeck and #Linux then you might find this interesting. And do tell me what you think of it!
https://lemmy.world/post/29459679
lemmy.worldDeveloper interview: my Q&A with the creator of Lutris - Lemmy.WorldA while ago I had the good fortune of organizing a fair-sized interview with one
member of the team behind Lutris.
[https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b99ecd3e-1b2f-4af6-ab12-ca0c84d362f9.png]
Lutris itself is an open gaming platform for Linux (obviously, including the
Steam Deck!). Lutris helps you install and play video games from all eras and
from most gaming systems. By leveraging and combining existing emulators, engine
re-implementations and compatibility layers, it gives you a central interface to
launch all your games. The client can connect with existing services like Humble
Bundle, GOG and Steam to make your game libraries easily available. Game
downloads and installations are automated and can be modified through user made
scripts. You can find more information about Lutris before you read this little
interview (or after, that’s up to you!) by visiting these links: * Lutris
official website [https://lutris.net/] * Their Discord link
[https://discord.com/invite/Pnt5CuY] * Their own forum on their site
[https://forums.lutris.net/] * The GitHub page
[https://github.com/lutris/lutris] One last thing to note before posting this is
that I did this interview some months ago, back when I was a stalwart Reddit
user and contributing a lot to the Steam Deck / Linux scene on there. Nothing
here is out-of-date, and it’s still a damn fine interview (if I may say so
myself!), I just wanted it shared here on Lemmy. I hope you enjoy it :) This
interview is held with Mathieu Comandon.
--------------------------------------------------------------- # Introduction
and Background:
[https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/49fc68e9-e8f1-4e50-84fe-ba328b0d8359.jpeg]
--------------------------------------------------------------- # Can you tell
us a bit about yourself, Lutris and how it got started? I see that you initially
made Oblivion Launcher, so this has clearly been your passion for a long time.
What sparked you to jump from that to Lutris? Mathieu Comandon: “I had recently
switched to Linux as my main OS, after using it on secondary machines for a
while. I still wanted to play my games but at the time, it meant reading
tutorials that would get outdated really fast or only worked on one distro.
Getting games to run on Linux could become a very frustrating experience at
times but it seemed that this could be considerably improved.” # In a more broad
sense, what was the inspiration behind creating Lutris? “Around that time I was
using Cedega, a proprietary fork of Wine with a nice GUI. I wanted something
similar but open source but I didn’t want to limit myself to Wine games like
Cedega or PlayOnLinux did. I wanted support for all games that could run on
Linux, which included native games and emulators.” # Can you give us a brief
overview of your team’s background and how you came together to develop it?
“These days, the team is mostly Daniel Johnson, who does an enormous amount of
user support on Github and GloriousEggroll who provides builds for Proton-GE.
Then there’s the Open Wine Components project that encompasses other gaming
projects and regular contributors on Github. There’s also a very active
moderation team on the Discord server. There’s no fixed team structure, anyone
can just come and go, do their own thing.” # How has Lutris itself evolved since
its initial release? “15 years ago, gaming on Linux was very experimental. With
the evolution that happened in the past years, it’s now something we have
integrated in our lives. Games running on Linux is now the norm. So instead of
tinkering, we can shift our focus on making sure games keep running in the years
to come, particularly games that are no longer being sold.” # Please tell me
about your logo for Lutris! “The initial logo (the version with the Atari
joystick) was designed by a friend of mine at the time and later received some
updates to make it more readable at small sizes. It was always meant to take
inspiration from Mozilla’s logos. A lot of projects have an animal as their
logo: PHP, Postgres, Firefox… so I wanted my own animal mascot. I picked the
otter because it’s an animal that likes to play!”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Features and Functionality:
[https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/56ceaea9-e34a-41db-9b42-e824a407dd47.png]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What are the key features that set Lutris apart from other game launchers? There
is a few now who offer similar capabilities, what makes Lutris so unique?
“Lutris is the only launcher on Linux to support such a wide array of games from
all platforms. Most launchers focus on Wine but Wine is only one of the 54
runners we currently support. The idea is to be able to build a collection of
all the games you have played during your lifetime, easily accessible and
playable.” How does Lutris integrate with Steam, especially on the Steam Deck?
“The Steam integration is much more basic now than it once was when we used to
run Steam in Wine. Running Steam games from Lutris only calls Steam with the
correct Steam ID, the options in Lutris don’t apply to the Steam game. For the
Steam Deck, it’s the opposite: Running Lutris games in Steam. We have a feature
for creating shortcuts for Lutris games in the Steam UI. In the next release of
Lutris, we’ll also have better support for running games with umu on the Steam
Deck (it makes it possible to use Proton instead of Wine).” Could you explain
how Lutris handles the management and optimization of non-native games? “We call
runner any program that can launch games, native games being the only games that
don’t require one. We provide binaries for those runners, which get updated on a
more or less regular basis. The important is not using the latest version but
having a version that can run games really well. For example, we ship DOSBox
Staging to provide a better experience for DOS games. Wine / Proton is the only
runner that receives some patching.” # What features do you think are the most
underappreciated by users? “Certainly the collection management and non Wine
games aspects. I often see people with less than 10 games on Lutris and all
mostly Wine based. On my end, I have over 1300 installed games for a variety of
platforms. Sadly, the fact that people have switched from HDDs to SSDs doesn’t
help building a large video game collection.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------- #
Development and Community:
[https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/0b2b44d2-7cd8-46cf-a60b-fc8f6bd01807.jpeg]
----------------------------------------------------------------------- # How do
you prioritize and manage feature requests and bug reports from the community? I
see you have such a sizable community built up around you (which speaks volumes
to your skills as a programmer), can you describe what goes into prioritizing
bugs or features? “If something is broken and impacts significantly the usage of
Lutris then that gets the highest priority. Then comes the pull requests
submitted by contributors. Bugs that can’t be reproduced or features that would
only interest a small portion of users get the lowest priority.” # Can you share
any interesting stories or challenges you faced during the development of
Lutris? “Between 2011 and 2012, the development of Lutris had crawled almost to
a halt because of a game called Minecraft. At numerous times, maintaining the
project felt very overwhelming and it was often difficult to deal with that. I
often resorted to measures that were more or less clumsy but however gave me
some breathing space (for a few months, reporting issues was only allowed to
previous contributors, for example). Nowadays, managing the project is much
easier. I put less pressure on myself to try and micro-manage everything and I
get some precious help from the community to help me with Github.” # How
important has community feedback been in shaping Lutris? Can you give an example
of a community-driven feature that you ended up implementing? “The community has
a tendency to push for the adoption of newer technologies while I have a
tendency to hold back a bit before we adopt anything new. Some people use lutris
on quite outdated systems and we try not breaking anything until a distribution
gets really old. Finding the right balance is quite an art but the community
helps in knowing what is needed and which systems can be dropped. Also, a few
runners we have were entirely written by community members. Translations are
another aspect that is heavily driven by the community.” # How do you foster a
positive and engaged community around Lutris? Your discord in particular are so
positive about your product, how do you encourage your users to participate and
contribute “I don’t have the time to do much on Discord but there is an amazing
moderation team. Troublemakers are kicked out really fast which keeps the vibe
on the server positive. Personally, I tend to engage more with the community on
Github and Mastodon.” ---------------------------------------------------------
# Technical Aspects:
[https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/9cb95721-a3b2-4991-aee5-82a986e4d49f.jpeg]
--------------------------------------------------------- # What technologies
and programming languages is Lutris built on? “The desktop client is using Gtk
3, the website uses Django. Both are written in Python. We also have a
moderation dashboard written in VueJS.” # Can you discuss the challenges and
solutions in ensuring compatibility across various Linux distributions? “We’ve
been shipping a set of libraries with Lutris trying to increase compatibility
across distros. This isn’t a perfect solution but works for the most part. This
is the approach Steam used to have. Now, similarly to Steam, we are
transitioning to a container based approach, whether it’s pressure vessel with
umu or Flatpak.” # How do you approach optimizing performance for different
hardware configurations, especially for the Steam Deck? “We don’t really have
anything in place that target specific devices. We do however provide many
option to let users find the best possible setting for their games.” # How do
you handle the rapid changes and updates, do the Steam Deck’s updates ever
affect what you do? “There are some breakages once in a while but so far the
Steam Deck with its immutable OS has been pretty stable. We’re still working on
providing support for using Proton on the Deck’s game mode but it’s coming
soon.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------- #
Future Plans:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------- #
What are your short-term and long-term goals for Lutris? “Short term is the
release of Lutris 0.5.18. It will contain all the fixes and improvements made
during the past few months, but nothing really groundbreaking. In the longer
term, we’re going to start working on a “Big picture mode” (integration with
OpenGamepadUI) and cloud saves.” # Are there any upcoming features or
improvements you’re particularly excited about? “The 2 I mentioned earlier,
cloud saves and fullscreen UI are very important. We also need a better rating
system and better support for Flatpak (by making the Lutris Flatpak very thin
and using other Flatpaks to run games)” # How do you see Lutris evolving with
the advancements in gaming technology and hardware? “That mostly depends on
upstream projects like Gamescope, VKD3D, Mesa or Plasma. We used to lack a lot
of features of newer hardware like HDR or ray tracing. Now, we have pretty much
every feature used in games like DLSS, FSR3, HDR, etc… Now, we’re only lacking
in anti-cheat support.” # What is your vision for the future of gaming on Linux?
“Projects like the Steam Deck and Playtron are going to help push gaming on
Linux outside of the Linux community and make it available to a wider audience.
Maybe we’ll finally see game consoles for the TV using Linux. The new trend of
handhelds is nice but it’s not the best way to experience games with graphics
pushed to their highest settings.”
------------------------------------------------------------------ # Community
and Support: ------------------------------------------------------------------
# What are the best ways for users to get involved with the Lutris community?
“Easiest way is to join the Discord server. That’s where most of the
non-development stuff happens. We might get a bridged Matrix room at some point
too.” # How can users contribute to the development or support of Lutris? “For
development, we have a list of open tickets on Github, and if someone wants to
implement something new, I recommend creating a ticket if one doesn’t exist.
Sometimes, some contributors send a patch which doesn’t fit the project and we
don’t merge it. We want to avoid that kind of situation, especially for
substantial patches. Supporting the project financially is very much
appreciated. There are Patreon, Paypal and Liberapay Lutris accounts that can be
used for donations. We don’t accept cryptocurrency though.” # What resources do
you offer for new users to get started with Lutris? “The goal for Lutris is to
not require any ressources to get started so if anything is missing or unclear,
report it as a bug.” # How do you address user support and ensure issues are
resolved efficiently? “In a lot of user support for Lutris means troubleshooting
generic Linux issues. That’s we have both a Lutris Support and Linux Support
channels in our Discord server. Usually, when something is broken in Lutris,
we’ll start getting multiple reports for it and we prioritize those issues
first.” ---------------------------------------------------------- # Closing
Thoughts: ---------------------------------------------------------- # What
advice would you give to aspiring developers who want to create their own game
launchers or similar tools? “Build a very small project that solves a real and
specific issue you have and try to make it work. If it solves your problem, it
may continue evolving into something bigger.” # Is there anything else you’d
like to share with our readers about Lutris or your team? “When I started
working on Lutris, I had no idea it would reach this size. I initially imagined
it would mostly be picked up by the community and I would focus on other
project. But then Linux gaming got really big (Vulkan happened) and with it
Lutris got bigger too and at this point it was clear no one was going to take
over. Lutris was becoming a recognized open source project and I was invited to
events like WineConf and Ubuntu Summit. After a lot of perceverance, it really
paid off!” # What has been the most rewarding aspect of developing Lutris for
you personally? “It has been an excellent learning experience in plenty of
fields. And it has certainly helped me get jobs more easily. But the best reward
is Lutris itself. Being able to manage a large library of games spreading over
decades and multiple systems.”
------------------------------------------------------------------ I hope you
enjoyed this, and coming up (once I write the questions up and get them all
done) I have: * AA of Decky Loader * Eben of Junk Store * Gardiner Bryant of
YouTube …and some more I won’t name just yet! Thanks again for giving me a space
I can share these :)