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Running Windows Games on a Hobby OS with Wine

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Why This Matters

This article highlights the current capabilities and limitations of running Windows games on a hobbyist Linux-based OS using Wine. While some titles like FTL are fully playable, many popular games face partial functionality or crashes, underscoring ongoing challenges in compatibility and performance. This progress demonstrates the potential for gaming on alternative OSes, but also emphasizes the need for continued development to improve user experience.

Key Takeaways

FTL Works Fully playable.

Steam Partial Installs and updates; crashes on Chromium startup due to a broken GetInterfaceAddresses() .

iexplore.exe Partial Simple sites render; complex pages crash with the same root cause as Steam.

Factorio Partial Window opens but does not progress past loading.

Spooky's Jumpscare Mansion Partial Starts but runs too slowly to be playable.

Noita Partial Starts but runs too slowly to be playable.

Plants vs. Zombies Broken Blocked by Steam DRM before reaching the main menu.

Half-Life Broken Assert failure in Wine's C++ runtime. Likely a missing implementation in the port.

Firefox / Chromium Broken Installer fails; does not reach a runnable state.

SCP: Containment Breach Broken Does not start; cause not yet diagnosed.