PlayOnLinux has a new alpha release out with an overhaul of the interface

Oof... Can't they just join forces with Lutris and produce something that actually works?

PlayOnLinux hasn't worked well for me in years since it is so outdated in actual game scripts.
Lutris doesn't even manage to install Steam Wine correctly, so that it freezes at startup due to the script somehow messing up the 32/64bit versions.

I was kinda hoping POL would go the way of the dodo and more people would join the Lutris project, since that does seem way more promising (partly due to NOT being limited to linux).

Oof... Can't they just join forces with Lutris and produce something that actually works?

PlayOnLinux hasn't worked well for me in years since it is so outdated in actual game scripts.
Lutris doesn't even manage to install Steam Wine correctly, so that it freezes at startup due to the script somehow messing up the 32/64bit versions.

I was kinda hoping POL would go the way of the dodo and more people would join the Lutris project, since that does seem way more promising (partly due to NOT being limited to linux).

Really i have never had a problem with lutris but if you are having problems with steam installs submit and tell matthew comondant (Stryder) there are bug reports if you cant contact him via lutris hes on twitter and you can find him weekly in the linuxvideogamecast discord

While it's always nice to see more development on user-focused Wine tools, I wish that PlayOnLinux would focus more on uniting the field instead of doing their own thing again. Using Java is one thing, but coming up with yet another install script framework - in a different scripting language from what's generally considered the standard for these thing - isn't really helping build a solid, widely usable pool of install scripts. We already have Winetricks and Lutris (both of which use Bash shell scripts), I really don't see how adding JavaScript to the mix will help.

Disclaimer: I wrote Vineyard so I'm fairly biased ;)

It's either java or javascript. And the two cultures hate eachother.
But in this case I bet it is java.

Oof... Can't they just join forces with Lutris and produce something that actually works?

PlayOnLinux hasn't worked well for me in years since it is so outdated in actual game scripts.
Lutris doesn't even manage to install Steam Wine correctly, so that it freezes at startup due to the script somehow messing up the 32/64bit versions.

I was kinda hoping POL would go the way of the dodo and more people would join the Lutris project, since that does seem way more promising (partly due to NOT being limited to linux).

I used POL for several years, not for their scripts (as for Lutris, scripts are obsolete too fast) but to manage easier Wine prefix and others tweaks/operation.

And POL is not limited to Linux, but there is a version for Macosx too.
I'm not as sure as you that Lutris is more promising than POL, we have here two big challenger and you don't have to choose only one of them, you can use the two, like I do.

I'm glad to see PoL is still alive and, if not kicking, twitching. This project was what opened Wine gaming up for me (almost a decade ago? Sheesh) and has a place in my heart because of that. I've never found much use for its scripts, but it was, and is, an excellent Wine management tool. Kudos PoL people!

Aaaah that bring some nostalgia! I do not use PoL anymore but it's the software that brought me back to gaming after my switch to Linux (was not playing games anymore at that time) with support for Diablo III on Linux... About 100 hours of fun with Windows friends before Valve support of Steam on Linux and my switch to "native" Linux gaming only! :)

If you can't run it on Ubuntu 18.04, you're not alone. They seem to be having issues with it not working on the latest Java, hopefully they will solve that in time. For now they're telling people to use Java 8. More info on the issue here and here.

Now I know why MediathekView isn't working properly for a few weeks after I'm updating to 18.04.

p/s: Nope, I don't understand German. But, If I wake up Sunday morning and Terrestial TV, Youtube and Vimeo videos not interesting, Mediathekview is my entertainment.

looks like competition is paying off...


"includes a completely redesigned user interface, along with moving their scripting system from bash to JavaScript"
how the hell this suppose to work?

Great! I always use POL. I like it for the easy management of wine prefixes.
In this scenario I do not like to use scripts, all my installations are made and configured manually.


Last edited by CJOR on 24 September 2018 at 5:21 pm UTC

While it's always nice to see more development on user-focused Wine tools, I wish that PlayOnLinux would focus more on uniting the field instead of doing their own thing again. Using Java is one thing, but coming up with yet another install script framework - in a different scripting language from what's generally considered the standard for these thing - isn't really helping build a solid, widely usable pool of install scripts. We already have Winetricks and Lutris (both of which use Bash shell scripts), I really don't see how adding JavaScript to the mix will help.

Disclaimer: I wrote Vineyard so I'm fairly biased ;)

I can't express how much I wish Lutris, POL and Vineyard somehow joined forces.
POL has great prefix management tools.
Vineyard has a great set of useful options for running stuff.
Lutris has another great set of useful options for running stuff.

It's amazing but also so, so frustrating. A tool that contains all options from both Lutris and Vineyard and has prefix management capabilities of POL would absolutely rock. I'd sorta prefer that unification happened under the Lutris umbrella but I don't want it to be a matter of contention.


Last edited by qptain Nemo on 24 September 2018 at 5:19 pm UTC

While it's always nice to see more development on user-focused Wine tools, I wish that PlayOnLinux would focus more on uniting the field instead of doing their own thing again. Using Java is one thing, but coming up with yet another install script framework - in a different scripting language from what's generally considered the standard for these thing - isn't really helping build a solid, widely usable pool of install scripts. We already have Winetricks and Lutris (both of which use Bash shell scripts), I really don't see how adding JavaScript to the mix will help.

Disclaimer: I wrote Vineyard so I'm fairly biased ;)

I can't express how much I wish Lutris, POL and Vineyard somehow joined forces.
POL has great prefix management tools.
Vineyard has a great set of useful options for running stuff.
Lutris has another great set of useful options for running stuff.

It's amazing but also so, so frustrating. A tool that contains all options from both Lutris and Vineyard and has prefix management capabilities of POL would absolutely rock. I'd sorta prefer that unification happened under the Lutris umbrella but I don't want it to be a matter of contention.

There have been talks about joining forces previously, which mostly amounted to settling on how prefixes are handled (generally, and at least in Winetricks, Vineyard and Lutris; POL is doing its own thing there as well), but apart from that, I think a lot of the separation of work comes from having different end goals.
Lutris aims to be a generic frontend for game emulation/handling.
POL aims to be a Wine-focused frontend game handling.
Vineyard aims to be a generic frontend for anything related to Wine.

I'm curious about you mentioning that you prefer the prefix management in POL; I always found it incredibly confusing. In Vineyard, the prefix is meant to be the top-level interface and everything you do happens under that. How does POL differ and what are the benefits?

It's a good thing that Lutris came along as well. I always thought that PoL was resting on its laurels a little when it came to the user experience.

I've honestly had much better results with Lutris, both in ease of use and actually having things work, so competition in the space seems healthy.

There have been talks about joining forces previously, which mostly amounted to settling on how prefixes are handled (generally, and at least in Winetricks, Vineyard and Lutris; POL is doing its own thing there as well), but apart from that, I think a lot of the separation of work comes from having different end goals.
Lutris aims to be a generic frontend for game emulation/handling.
POL aims to be a Wine-focused frontend game handling.
Vineyard aims to be a generic frontend for anything related to Wine.

Fair enough, I have no qualms with them remaining separate tools but the fact that Vineyard and Lutris offer different sets of very useful options that aren't available anywhere else either makes me want to cry. By all means remain separate, but they need to be all brought together in at least one place. I just really want Lutris to have all of them and to have some kinda good prefix management tool if I'm being honest and I obviously wouldn't mind if Vineyard got those from Lutris either.

I'm curious about you mentioning that you prefer the prefix management in POL; I always found it incredibly confusing. In Vineyard, the prefix is meant to be the top-level interface and everything you do happens under that. How does POL differ and what are the benefits?

Let's see.
Creation:

• creating a new prefix is pretty much the same, if you don't count the fact that POL lets you download different wine versions in advance and easily create fresh prefixes with any wine version it provides; whether it's a "fair" comparison or not in practical usage it's a huge advantage for when you need to test a lot of things under different configurations

Management:

• POL has a button for opening winecfg for a given prefix (technically, vineyard does include pretty much every setting from there though...)


• POL offers more installers of various system components


• you can switch the wine version after creating a prefix as much a you want as well as easily get additional wine versions as they're needed

I absolutely agree though that the whole UI presentation paradigm of Vineyard is much more straightforward, you actually need to go to the settings window of POL to get to all those tools, but in terms of practicality some of those advantages are significant especially in scenarios where rapid creation and testing of prefixes and experimentation are needed. I guess the biggest one here is the ability to download and switch between wine versions. This feature is incredibly helpful in both Lutris and POL.

[...]

I'm curious about you mentioning that you prefer the prefix management in POL; I always found it incredibly confusing. In Vineyard, the prefix is meant to be the top-level interface and everything you do happens under that. How does POL differ and what are the benefits?

Let's see.
Creation:

• creating a new prefix is pretty much the same, if you don't count the fact that POL lets you download different wine versions in advance and easily create fresh prefixes with any wine version it provides; whether it's a "fair" comparison or not in practical usage it's a huge advantage for when you need to test a lot of things under different configurations

Management:

• POL has a button for opening winecfg for a given prefix (technically, vineyard does include pretty much every setting from there though...)


• POL offers more installers of various system components


• you can switch the wine version after creating a prefix as much a you want as well as easily get additional wine versions as they're needed

I absolutely agree though that the whole UI presentation paradigm of Vineyard is much more straightforward, you actually need to go to the settings window of POL to get to all those tools, but in terms of practicality some of those advantages are significant especially in scenarios where rapid creation and testing of prefixes and experimentation are needed. I guess the biggest one here is the ability to download and switch between wine versions. This feature is incredibly helpful in both Lutris and POL.

Oh yes, I absolutely agree! I've often wanted to add the Wine version handling that POL has, but the choice is either to create my own repo of Wine versions and duplicate the work they've already done (which seems a waste of resources and yet another split effort) or download directly from their repo (and steal their bandwidth, essentially). It's the same thing with Lutris' handling of DXVK and a bit of a rock-and-a-hard-place situation all in all.
This would probably be the perfect example of somewhere we should really be working together though; maybe something will happen eventually, but currently, the only solution I can offer is that Vineyard does let you use Wine versions that you've already downloaded in POL.
As for the other points (for Vineyard at least), that's the result of me just not having enough free time these days to add installers and new options :(

Thanks for the dialogue, I think you're on to something here ;)

Don't need any more Java in my life. Thus I ditched POL and now I use vanilla wine managed by myself. No regrets.

Exactly as legluondunet, I've never used PlayOnLinux for their scripts, which, indeed, are outdated and rarely works. But the tool is just perfect for managing Wine versions and additional components. Even removing whole "virtual disc" is quite useful. Never found anything better than this, except maybe adamhm's scripts for GOG games.

New post to a old news: PlayOnLinux 5 Alpha 2 is out since beginning of january 2019. And it looks very promising. It already has a better compatibility than the old PlayOnLinux 4. It contains several different (Wine-)Engines, a lot of new installer-scripts, works fine with Ubuntu 18.04, has GoG- and special Dos-support integrated etc. And it is very good addition to Lutris. In the ladder you cannot install games manually, if there is no installation-script or if the installation-script does not work (properly). At least I could not do it. Hence you can use PlayOnLinux 5 to install games in new "containers", and then add, start and play these games using Lutris.

If you are interested in trying out new software, than have a look at this link:

https://www.playonlinux.com/en/comments-1368.html

You can even install it besides PlayOnLinux 4 and compare both directly, because it uses other directories ("Phoenicis"). Only bigger disadvange at the moment: You cannot change the used wine-version for a game after installation, but this will be fixed in the next Version(s).

For those interested, have fun by testing it and maybe it is even the author of this site a look and article worth ;). I found some comments in the internet, where people believe PlayOnLinux is dead, because the news are currently only shown on the english version of their webpage. That is my motivation for posting this comment.

For those interested, have fun by testing it and maybe it is even the author of this site a look and article worth ;).

If you haven't already done so you can send Liam (the owner of this site) a message to let him know.

For those interested, have fun by testing it and maybe it is even the author of this site a look and article worth ;).

If you haven't already done so you can send Liam (the owner of this site) a message to let him know.

He should know, because my post was held for moderation, due to it was my first comment here. Would write an article by myself, but english is not my first language and I am new to the linux community. Do not want to write unintentionally any hoax.

Kind Regards.