First, let’s define what Wine is:
Wine
is open-source software that lets you use Windows software on Linux (or Mac via Crossover), by translating Windows code to Linux readable code.
Because it’s open-source software, there’s many different spins on Wine, which are called wine flavours. Within each wine flavour, there are different versions.
In practice, this is like Wine Version 1.2, or Proton Version 7.2, and so on.
In the Linux world, everyone wants to make different wine flavours depending on what they need for their software.
Generally, we have these 3 wine flavours.
Vanilla Wine
This is wine from the original source code, which can be found at winehq.
Proton Wine
Often referred to as just “Proton”, this is Valve’s take orbranch
on Vanilla Wine, made specifically for games.
Proton GE
Due to legal issues with gettingWindows files
(because Valve is a corporation), Proton GE was made by a community member named GloriousEggroll which uses these Windows files.As a result, this
wine flavour
is often the most used for games.
With Visual Novels, we’ll be mainly dealing with the Proton GE, and Lutris Wine wine flavours.
Generally, the easiest way to get (our) wine flavours & versions is to use ProtonUP-QT
.
We recommend using the ProtonUP-QT flatpak because it’s platform agnostic.
To get this, visit this link:
For Steam Deck, you can visit the same link and it’ll open the
Discover Store
for you.
Once you’ve downloaded it, open it up. The menus are simple.
Add version
Choose the one you need and hit
Install
. That’s it!
You can also use this for Steam
games as well: