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Popular game launcher Playnite will get Linux support but it's still a while away

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Last updated: 10 Feb 2025 at 2:14 pm UTC

Playnite is a very popular free and open source video game library manager, one used a lot on Windows and a developer has confirmed they will be working on Linux support.

The launcher supports linking games from Steam, Epic, EA, GOG, Battle.net, Ubisoft Connect and other services. This includes emulation, a fullscreen mode, theme support, an extensions system and much more. It's an incredibly feature-filled app.

Right now, there's no Linux support, but that will eventually change. They're currently waiting on Avalonia UI, an open source framework for building user interfaces with .NET, to get some improvements though. As noted by a developer on GitHub they said:

2025 update

Upcoming major release (P11) will be on modern open source and multi-platform .NET runtime but will still use Window only WPF based UI. This is for several reasons, one of the main ones being that Avalonia's developer experience is not, in my opinion, good enough to be used in project like Playnite. Playnite heavily depends on community made extensions and themes, often developed by hobbyist developers, not professionals, and Avalonia is simply not user friendly as much as I would like it to be for us.

We are 100% moving to Avalonia at some point in future, it's just not going to be with Playnite 11 release.

So current plan is to release Playnite 11, continue developing it for Windows only and once Avalonia's DX improves (they are promising major tools improvements with their upcoming Accelerate program), I will start porting P11 to Avalonia.

Once we have polished Windows version of Avalonia based Playnite, I'll start working on Linux version. I don't want to make just straight port of Windows version, that wouldn't be good enough. I would really like to have Linux specific feature available on release, like Wine/Proton specific features, Epic and GOG plugins using Legendary and heroic-gogdl respectively, stuff like that.

To sum this up, Linux version is definitely something I plan to work on in future, it's just going to happen later than originally planned.

As far as macOS version, no idea about that. It's definitely not something I would look into sooner than having Linux version more or less done.

Really great to see more and more support for Linux everywhere.

If you need an alternative right now on Linux / Steam Deck the most comparable would likely be Heroic Games Launcher and Lutris.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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About the author -
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. You can also follow my personal adventures on Bluesky.
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10 comments Subscribe

hardpenguin 12 hours ago
This is a truly awesome project and having it on Linux would be terrific
akselmo 11 hours ago
  • Supporter
This app is the only app I miss from when I used Windows.
officernice 10 hours ago
Never heard of it before. Can anyone with experience hold it up against Lutris? What are some pros and cons?
conveXion 10 hours ago
  • New User
For me the main benefit was being able to use Playnite in full screen mode on an HTPC so that when launching into Windows the PC would basically act as an interface not unlike Steam Big Picture, but leaner and quicker. Also being able to choose your own art work is nice. Cartridges on Linux is pretty close to basic Playnite except without the fullscreen option so trying that out would give you an idea of what it's like.
Doktor-Mandrake 10 hours ago
This is so exciting!

I recall seeing the dev on reddit few years back saying he'd look into possible linux support

This would be fantastic, I've wanted playnite on linux for a LONG time now, playnite is awesome
Doktor-Mandrake 10 hours ago
Also I hope it includes something like lutris support as lutris is handy alone for its community installers, currently I use lutris to help install games then add them on heroic and using heroic as my main launcher
ContainerRunner 9 hours ago
I missed Playnite on Linux too. It looks better than all the other clients, integrates with a lot more stores, including even Itch.io, and the metadata feature is also nice to have. Currently, I use Heroic or the official clients directly (e.g. PrismLauncher via KRunner), but I don't use my computer as an HTPC, where controller input and easy setup are important. I think this is where Playnite would be a perfect as a universal launcher for all games, an idea I gave up before.
puddingslave 6 hours ago
there was a reddit discussion not long ago looking for Playnite alternatives. lots of people liked Cartridges and Pegasus Frontend; both are available on FlatHub and GitHub.
dibz 5 hours ago
I'll cross my fingers, but won't get my hopes up. Projects like these that are deep in the MS ecosystem rarely end up working well on Linux, with the vast majority ending up janky at best. There are exceptions, but that's what they are -- exceptions.
Grimy1540 50 minutes ago
Wow! Great news.

Playnite was all I used when I used to be on Windows. I miss it greatly and have had trouble adjusting to Steam's library interface, and didn't find Lutris customizable and feature-rich enough for me.

Development on Playnite has not been very consistent, and I expected the developer to just forget about Linux support, but maybe not. We'll see if it's actually usable and most of the features work, especially the plugins and extensions.
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