Vortex on Linux?

[MorielAtta]

Yeah, I know Vortex doesn't run on Linux but tonight I've been banging my head futiliy against a wall to try and get it installed either via Lutris or via Steam Tinker Linux. Neither one works even though all the online installation instructions say it should just work.

 

OK. So I'm a programmer. I've been doing this for decades. Vortex is open source. So I can just make my own Linux native version of it, right? :D

Realistically, though, how much effort do you think that would be? If it's reasonable and it would be accepted I'm willing to give it a shot, though I can't honestly say how much time a week I'd be able to devote to this, so that's why I'm asking what experienced Vortex developers think of this idea. Is it too much for one person to take on?

 

 

[Tannin42]

Yes, Vortex is open source and you can make a Linux native version.

In fact, Vortex should mostly just build on Linux with a few optional components failing.

 

The question is how far you want to go. The basis of Vortex is written platform independent. There are a few windows-native libraries but this is for the most part because node.js is mimicking posix and while that works on windows, it's not covering all of windows' functionality or would perform badly. Those native modules wouldn't be required on Linux/Mac OS as in: you wouldn't have to port them, just replace with simple JS code.

 

Just because Vortex builds and runs on Linux doesn't necessarily make it particularly useful out of the box though. It will work fine with games that run natively on Linux but to manage games that are emulated through wine/proton, you'd either need (part of) Vortex to also run in that same sandbox as the game or you need to extend Vortex to know about wine and deal with it specifically.

And then you might need to support different ways to configure wine. E.g. as far as I understand it, the steam deck uses a separate sandbox for each game whereas someone setting things up themselves might run all games in a single sandbox.

 

Another user (NicBomb) has done quite a bit of work on Linux support (https://github.com/NicBomb/vortex) unfortunately he also insisted on changing the build system and on making sweeping coding style changes in his fork which made it impossible to merge his changes to the official repo or vice versa.

[JFIrish]

If you manage to get it to run on Linux without issues, could you provide a version for others to download? Currently running Windows 7 but with some of the difficulties created by Microsoft recently, I will not be forced into downgrading to Windows Virus just so I can still play NV modded.

[showler]

Making a Linux version of Vortex would be a worthy, but difficult, endeavor. If it was easy I'm sure that Nexus would have done it already.

[tajetaje]

Making a Linux version of Vortex would be a worthy, but difficult, endeavor. If it was easy I'm sure that Nexus would have done it already.

The new NexusMods.App will (technically it already does) run natively on linux once it releases, so hopefully just a year (or maybe less) and we'll finally have an amazing mod manager that runs on Linux.

[zpangwin]

I guess having a native version of vortex would maybe be worthwhile for those playing native games.

 

But if talking about a native version of vortex that can manage windows games being played under wine/lutris/bottles/proton/etc I don't see a huge advantage over just running it under wine (etc). Am I missing something? I mean, sure, if someone really went above and beyond and handled a lot of complexity like covering all the {native-game,game-in-wine,game-in-bottles,game-in-lutris,game-in-proton,flatpak,snap,etc} scenarios as Tannin hinted at, then it would probably be much simpler for newcomers and save them from having to install it under wine/lutris/proton. No argument that it would be cool to have one app that could manage it all vs having to manually deal with symlinks between different wineprefixes.

 

But as far as Vortex under wine, I've used it under wine in the past and don't remember any major issues, there's a winehq report from June 2023 says that basically all core functionality works.

 

Out of curiosity, I just tried reinstalling in a wine prefix after doing

WINEPREFIX="/path/to/wineprefix" winetricks dotnet6

and then let Vortex run the fix dotnet thing on first launch. I didn't test it very thoroughly or anything but launched fine after that and seemed to find my game (Morrowind) without any issue. Might try it out more as I get time but so far so good.

 

Even worked while running wine in firejail if you want to secure the wineprefix.

 

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Edit: from tajetaje's suggestion, I also read up on the new NexusMods.App a bit and looked through it a little on github. Didn't run it as the impression I got from looking thru the github issues and such was that it is extremely early development and needs some time to add in basic things. Is good to see that there is at least an interest in being cross-platform but things like the last line here (emphasis mine):

 

 

Q: I see tests run on Linux, Windows and OSX, are you targeting all those platforms?

A: Yes, the CLI runs on these platforms and we run our CI on each of these OSes. What games are supported on these platforms (e.g. do we support Skyrim through Wine on Linux?) is yet to be determined.

 

 

Make it seem like something that could just as easily get axed or relegated to second-class citizen or "maybe later" by the time things get released. Not trying to be pessimistic but I've been burned on Linux-support promises elsewhere in the past and refuse to get my hopes up anymore. So would be appreciated but will see how it goes.

Edited October 8, 2023 by zpangwin