Manage and run Windows apps on Linux with ease
Written by Sk
The most common reason to dual boot Linux with Windows OS is Games!
Linux is great, but it sucks on Games support. Not just games, some propriety software from Adobe and Microsoft still lacks Linux support.
Thankfully, there are a few software exists to run Windows applications and games on Linux.
Some notable applications are CrossOver, PlayonLinux, Lutris, and Wine etc.
In this guide, we will discuss about yet another similar application called
Bottles, which allows us to run Windows software on Linux.
What is Bottles? Bottles is a free, open source graphical application to manage Wine prefixes in a new way. Using Bottles, we can easily run Windows software and Games on Linux operating systems.
You can run all windows executables such as
.bat, .exe, and .msi in Bottles. It will automatically detect all installed applications. No need to manually add to the programs list!
Isn't it similar to PlayonLinux, Lutris, Winetricks? You might wonder.
Yes, Bottles is similar to PlayonLinux and Lutris, but better. It is little more polished application than its counterparts and has a few extra features and a nice UI. Of course, Lutris can also effectively manage the wine prefixes.
As far as I observed, Lutris is a game manager (not just for Windowsgames), while Bottles is a GUI wrapper for wine to run and manage Wine prefixes, where Windows software can run (games or not).
Let us discuss a few features of Bottles.
1. Bottles environments Bottle introduces a concept of Environments. The Bottles Environments are nothing but a bundle of ready-to-use configuration settings,libraries and dependencies that helps us to smoothly run Windows apps and games on a Linux PC. You can create bottles based on the environment. Currently, Bottles offers three Environments:
Gaming (forgames),
Software (for Windows apps), and
Custom (make your own custom environment).
2. Manage multiple windows prefixes Managing multiple Wine prefixes can be a pain, and is time consuming task. Thanks to Bottles application, it simplifies the process for day today use. You can create different prefixes for different applications if you want, called different "bottles".
3. Built-in dependency manager and Task manager As you already know, each Windows application requires one or more dependencies to work properly. Fortunately, Bottles ships with an integrated dependency manager. The dependency manager will automatically installs the dependencies required by a windows app or a game. And Bottles application comes with a built-in Task manager to monitor all wine processes.
4. Customization Bottles is highly customizable. You can tweak your Windows environment as you please. You can choose and use various runners and optimizations such as dxvk, vkd3d, gamemode, esync, fsync etc., for better gaming performance.
There are two types of runners in Bottles. They are:
WineProtonAutomatic installation and management of Wine and Proton runners is supported. You can also change the runner for any Bottle on thefly! It checks runner updates for each Bottles and automatically repair Bottles in case of breakage.
HeadsUp: Therunners are compatibility layers which allows Windows software tobe installed and run on Linux systems. Bottles are environments where the runner configures the system and where the Windows runs and is installed.
5. Restore Bottles to previous version Yet another notable feature of Bottles application is
Versioning The features allows the users to easily restore Bottles to previous working state when something goes wrong!
6. Configuring Bottles is easy! Sometimes I find it little difficult to manage the prefix itself in Lutris, because all the configuration is pretty decentralized. Bottles is really good for running general applications, especially because you don't usually NEED advanced configuration for them.
7. Bottles are sandboxed Running Windows applications with Bottles is safe! Bottles are fully isolated from the rest of the operating system. The files can not access your Linux operating system's HOME directory. For now, Bottles Flatpak package version is only fully-sandboxed! The other versions provides partial sandbox support.
8. Backup Bottles We can backup and import bottles from older version and also from other managers such as Lutris, PlayonLinux etc.
Install Bottles in Linux Bottles is available as Flatpak, AppImage, Snap, AUR, and on system package managers.
1. Install Bottles using Flatpak The officially recommended way to install Bottles is using Flatpak.Because Flatpak is the only version that supports full-sandboxed version. Many recent Linux distributions comes with Flatpak pre-installed Just in case, if Flatpak is not available on your Linux machine, you can install Flatpak
HowTo Install And Use Flatpak In Linux After installing Flatpak, run the following command to install Bottles using Flatpak:
$ flatpak install flathub com.usebottles.bottles
2. Install Bottles from AUR If you're running Arch Linux and its variants like EndeavourOS, Manjaro Linux, you cna install Bottles from AUR using
Paru or
Yay AUR helpers.
Or,
If you want to install unofficial latest build, run:
Or,
3.Install Bottles using package manager Bottles is packaged for a few Linux distributions and is available in the default repositories.
To install Bottles in Fedora, run:
- - -
Install Bottles in Void Linux:
$ nix-env -iA nixos.bottles
To install Bottles on openSUSE Tumbleweed, run the following as root user:
# zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/games:tools/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/games:tools.repo
# zypper refresh
# zypper install bottles
For openSUSE Leap 15.2, run the following as root
# zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/games:tools/openSUSE_Leap_15.2/games:tools.repo
# zypper refresh
# zypper install bottles
...
edited by FsFOOT from BBcode converted by https://www.garyshood.com/htmltobb/links:
https://usebottles.com/https://docs.usebottles.com/faq/why-bottles