We made it!

The more I use my "Lutris console" (a Ryzen+Radeon powered computer running nothing but a minimal installation of Ubuntu 19.04, Steam and Lutris), the more I realize that we have finally made it! I can start Steam and play native games such as Rocket League, Borderlands 2 or Rise of the Tomb Raider... or use Proton and play GTA V, Doom, Dishonored 2 or Bioshock Remastered… I can also run Lutris and have my GOG library available in a few clicks, with games like Darksiders Warmastered or Shadow Warrior 2 running smoothly and in all their DRM-free glory! Other non-native game clients are also not an issue and I can casually launch Assassin's Creed: Odyssey in Uplay or Titanfall 2 in Origin. And I have yet to catch up with all the recent releases but I hear that new titles such as Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry 5 or Seikiro are fully playable on Linux! Not only I'm able to choose from an unprecedented number of games, run them smoothly at high settings, but I'm able to do so on a fairly cheap (~ $600) computer running an unmodified version of Ubuntu 19.04 beta requiring no proprietary drivers or other PPAs at all!

We have pretty much closed the gap between Windows and Linux gaming. Sure there are still some improvements left to be made in order to make Linux a top-tier gaming platform but we'll eventually get those taken care of (I'm thinking about support for Easy AntiCheat games on Linux, mostly). The future is also optimistic for Lutris itself. The recent 0.5.1 release greatly improved on the stability of the client and features like GOG integration are now more mature. In future releases, I want to focus on improving the quality of the client, fixing known bugs and making sure the experience is as smooth as possible. Within a few releases, we should be able to focus the development of Lutris only on new features, linked to Patreon goals. I've already started adding a few goals and I'm happy to announce that the first one of them has been reached, with a total of $650 of donation per month! This goal will focus on implementing a proper tray icon and fixing some issues with how Lutris windows are displayed (and add some kind of "run in background" mode). Also expect in the next few days an additional PPA where we'll push beta releases. This will ensure better user testing and more stable releases.

The past few months have been an interesting ride and an incredible learning experience. When I finished my last contracting job, I was left with a little savings for the months to come, a feeling of being overwhelmed by a project that didn't feel under my control anymore and a desire to fix things, to bring Lutris to the next level and make it thrive. The following weeks consisted of a lot of refactoring, completing unfinished features, deleting whole chunks of unwanted code, rethinking the visual layout, re-architecturing some fundamental aspects of the application… While there is no such thing as a perfect code base, the current state of the Lutris client is a lot more maintainable than its late 2018 version. The project feels under control again and I feel comfortable making it grow steadily, even after getting back to a full time job.

I would like to send a huge shout out to everyone who has supported the project on Patreon, Liberapay or via direct Paypal donations. Thank to all of you, I was able to work on Lutris for a few weeks more and was able to reach the point where we are now. I believe that those last few weeks of work made the whole difference between a stressful mess and a future-proof project! With those solid foundations we can focus on polishing Lutris, or the Linux desktop ecosystem in general, to make it as attractive as possible to the widest number of gamers. This growth in our player base is one of the key points in attracting game publishers and get them to release native versions of their games. Technologies like Google Stadia will eventually help the adoption of Vulkan in the game industry and get more game developers familiar with this API. While, by itself, this does not guarantee more Linux ports, combined with the excellent performance of our current stack and a considerable increase in Linux players, I wouldn't be surprised to see some major publishers jumping on the Linux train. Until we have them on board, let's just make Linux an even better gaming system, let's just continue making our own DXVK based "ports" and most importantly let's just enjoy our vast selection of games we have at our disposition right now!