Lutris is a

free and open source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

game manager for

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

-based

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

s developed and maintained by Mathieu Comandon and the community, released under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the Four Freedoms (Free software), four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was th ...

. For games that require using

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...

, community installer scripts are available that automatically configure the Wine environment. Lutris also offers integration for software purchased from GOG,

Humble Bundle Humble Bundle, Inc. is a digital storefront for video games, which grew out of its original offering of Humble Bundles, collections of games sold at a price determined by the purchaser and with a portion of the price going towards charity and t ...

Steam Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization ...

, and

Epic Games Store The Epic Games Store is a digital video game storefront for Microsoft Windows and macOS, operated by Epic Games. It launched in December 2018 as both a website and a standalone launcher, of which the latter is required to download and play gam ...

; those can be launched directly through the Lutris application. Additionally, Lutris supports over 20 emulators including

DOSBox DOSBox is a free and open-source emulator which runs software for MS-DOS compatible disk operating systems—primarily video games. It was first released in 2002, when DOS technology was becoming obsolete. Its adoption for running DOS games i ...

ScummVM Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion Virtual Machine (ScummVM) is a set of game engine recreations. Originally designed to play LucasArts adventure games that use the SCUMM system, it also supports a variety of non-SCUMM games by companies ...

MAME MAME (formerly an acronym of Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is a free and open-source emulator designed to recreate the hardware of arcade game systems in software on modern personal computers and other platforms. Its intention is to preserve ...

, Snes9x,

Dolphin A dolphin is an aquatic mammal within the infraorder Cetacea. Dolphin species belong to the families Delphinidae (the oceanic dolphins), Platanistidae (the Indian river dolphins), Iniidae (the New World river dolphins), Pontoporiidae (the ...

PCSX2 PCSX2 is a free and open-source PlayStation 2 emulator for Windows, Linux, and macOS that supports a wide range of PlayStation 2 video games with a high level of compatibility and functionality. Although PCSX2 can closely mirror the original gam ...

and

PPSSPP PPSSPP (an acronym for "PlayStation Portable Simulator Suitable for Playing Portably") is a free and open-source PlayStation Portable, PSP video game console emulator, emulator for Microsoft Windows, Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android (operati ...

. In 2013, when Steam support was first added to Lutris, ''OMG! Ubuntu!'' noted that the database of Lutris games had thus far been limited. They also noted that while it was possible to submit installers for the Lutris database, each addition needed to be manually approved by the Lutris development team.

History

Lutris began as a piece of software called Oblivion Launcher, which was created in 2009 by Mathieu Comandon. He wanted an easier way to manage his games running on Linux, especially the ones that ran using

. Lutris began development on

Launchpad A launch pad is an above-ground platform from which rocket- missiles or space launch vehicles take off vertically. Launch pad may also refer to: Computing * Launchpad (macOS), an application launcher introduced in Mac OS X Lion * Launch Pad (s ...

, with the repository being created on May 5th, 2009. The first public release, 0.1, was on November 29th, 2009. In 2010, development moved to GitHub.

History

References

See also