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.
hardpenguin 20 hours ago
officernice 19 hours ago
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
ContainerRunner 17 hours ago
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 themes.
Last edited by Grimy1540 on 11 Feb 2025 at 2:56 am UTC
Yeah you're not wrong and gets me thinking how hard this could be, especially when different distros might put files in different places. Would make it very hard to auto-scan for games with how the file system works
Even if it takes more initial setting up, if the gui works as smooth as it does on windows I'd be happy
Those talking about htpc, I've been using my pc on a sofa in front of a TV for about 3 years now.. I use a keyboard/touchpad combo (logitech k400) and honestly never used my controller to navigate or launch games, and works great.. though you might have to run a usb extension cable so the receiver can actually pick it up
chickenb00 7 hours ago
Those talking about htpc, I've been using my pc on a sofa in front of a TV for about 3 years now.. I use a keyboard/touchpad combo (logitech k400) and honestly never used my controller to navigate or launch games, and works great.. though you might have to run a usb extension cable so the receiver can actually pick it up
I set my wife's PC up as an HTPC in 2016ish with a K400 as the main driver, and it's been great. A wireless Xbox controller lets her play all her games. It's tied our living room together ever since.
fenglengshun 6 hours ago
For me, the main focus is the store. IIRC Playnite is the only launcher with support for JASTUSA store, the favored store among visual novel enjoyers aside for Steam and GOG (if they even care about those two). I was surprised by how much extensions it has - Lutris looked small compared to Playnite.
I can see why a lot of people are excited because of that.
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