Easily run Windows software on Linux with Bottles(usebottles.com)
usebottles.com
Easily run Windows software on Linux with Bottles
https://usebottles.com/
67 comments
I don't understand any of these "bottle" solutions. All they're doing is running Wine. You can already run Wine without any of this.
Bottles has certain sandboxing capabilities on top of wine. Plus, Bottles can download and manage various wine versions, separate from your distro's offerrings. It's pretty neat. Of course, technically, you could do almost everything it offers manually via scripting and your own wrappers, but that can be said about almost any software. Heck, C and C compilers are nothing else than syntax sugar for writing assembly.
To expand on this, at least historically, Wine unfortunately didn't progress in a straight line, often new versions came with additional features or bug fixes which made some applications run or run better, while others ran worse.
Wine can get quite complicated to configure.
It tends to work best when each app has its own isolated wine prefix. This lets you tweak wine settings/params as needed for each app.
This is how I do it for games using Lutris. I have a few games that work best on particular wine versions that won't be able to share the same prefix.
It tends to work best when each app has its own isolated wine prefix. This lets you tweak wine settings/params as needed for each app.
This is how I do it for games using Lutris. I have a few games that work best on particular wine versions that won't be able to share the same prefix.
Title made me think of Lutris. I thought Lutris allowed exactly this with a "fancy" launcher UI on top. You have the game you want to run and then it is installed into a per-game WINE prefix.
From my experience, Bottles and Lutris are pretty similar in terms of the overall experience they try to provide. The main difference (at least at the last time I had used each of them) was that Lutris has a lot of flexibility in being able to have third-parties define and publish configs to be usable, whereas Bottles seemed to have more of a "batteries included" approach to having recipes mostly built-in but with the ability to swap out individual pieces manually (e.g. "use this exact distribution of wine, override this DLL with these flags", etc.). I don't recall Lutris having as good support for modifying configs without having to manually modify the JSON recipes, or Bottles having as much support for sharing recipes to be able to automate them rather than manually clicking around in the GUI to make the choices, but it's possible one or both of them has improved in those areas since I last tried them.
Nowadays, I tend to just run pretty much everything through Steam/Proton. I set `Proton-GE` as the default override for all my games, and then "install" things by adding them via the menu for third-party apps in the Steam UI. In the rare cases that I need to tweak something, I use `protontricks` to invoke `winetricks` on the prefix for the game, and things tend to just work after maybe installing 1-2 things at most.
Nowadays, I tend to just run pretty much everything through Steam/Proton. I set `Proton-GE` as the default override for all my games, and then "install" things by adding them via the menu for third-party apps in the Steam UI. In the rare cases that I need to tweak something, I use `protontricks` to invoke `winetricks` on the prefix for the game, and things tend to just work after maybe installing 1-2 things at most.
Bottles is a fancy GUI for Wine that makes it a lot more friendly to many users. It also includes Installers/presets for many software/games that makes it even easier.
And I can manually create a container with cgroups, namespaces, seccomp, etc...
But I still prefer a management tool on top like docker/podman/rancher.
Having used both manual wine prefixes and Bottles... I quite like Bottles and keep using it.
Your comment has serious "But dropbox is just rsync!" vibes. The ease of use is the point.
And at least Bottles does ease of use without losing too much control, unlike some of the very "game" specific tooling like heroic or lutris.
But I still prefer a management tool on top like docker/podman/rancher.
Having used both manual wine prefixes and Bottles... I quite like Bottles and keep using it.
Your comment has serious "But dropbox is just rsync!" vibes. The ease of use is the point.
And at least Bottles does ease of use without losing too much control, unlike some of the very "game" specific tooling like heroic or lutris.
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When you install multiple apps or games into the same wine prefix, it can get pretty messed up. I haven't tried bottles, but I imagine they make a separate prefix for each app so things dont get cluttered up as much.
By analogy, not to make fun but to clarify, "I don't understand any of these "Chat" solutions. All they're doing is running the LLM. You can already run the LLM through the API without any of this."
It is about convenience. For people willing to leave Windows but not their games, any hurdle taken down, no matter how small, is a win.
It is about convenience. For people willing to leave Windows but not their games, any hurdle taken down, no matter how small, is a win.
Do you also not understand docker? It lets you create separate wine sandboxes with different wine versions, they are isolated from each other, and they are independent of the system-wide wine installation.
Wine prefixes are not sandboxes.
They are not system sandboxes. They are wine sandboxes.
It’s all about isolation I think
It is a bad idea to use wine in isolation. Even if it comes with bottles
Its just another iteration of snap, docker, etc. Basically allows you to create a platform independent distribution of a windows app by sacrificing storage space and a little bit of performance.
It has nothing to do or in common with Snap or Docker, it's just a way of making sure windows game/app has the best wine configuration (including libraries) to allow it to run.
Wine bottles are not a software distribution method.
Wine bottles are not a software distribution method.
It's an easy way to spin up wine prefixes, and it also installs known working environments for many applications.
In that sense - it's actually incredibly similar to docker/snap. It's isolating the application with all the needed dependencies in it's own prefix, with a nice user experience on top.
It also distributes a large number of things: https://usebottles.com/database
In that sense - it's actually incredibly similar to docker/snap. It's isolating the application with all the needed dependencies in it's own prefix, with a nice user experience on top.
It also distributes a large number of things: https://usebottles.com/database
It's not distributing software, it's distributing config files to setup a prefix.
A prefix is no more isolated than a folder and setting an env variable to control library lookup location.
This is in stark contrast to docker/snap which distribute actual software packages and use name spacing for isolation.
A prefix is no more isolated than a folder and setting an env variable to control library lookup location.
This is in stark contrast to docker/snap which distribute actual software packages and use name spacing for isolation.
What point do you think you're making here?
A prefix isolates a wine install. Bottles intentionally pushes users into a "one per application" strategy with Wine prefixes, isolating the wine install and deps for that application from other applications. Generally a great strategy for using Wine, even if you'd prefer to do it yourself.
And Bottles is a much more convenient wrapper compared to doing that manually and managing them yourself (which I've also done).
Bottles also distributes the instructions to configure a "generally working" prefix for a large number of desired applications.
If we go back to the docker analogy - they're giving you the Dockerfile, not the image. I'm not actually convinced that's such a "stark" contrast. If anything, it's semantic peanuts (and mostly for legal reasons given the popular applications tend to be copyright protected games, rather than OSS software which makes up most docker images).
A prefix isolates a wine install. Bottles intentionally pushes users into a "one per application" strategy with Wine prefixes, isolating the wine install and deps for that application from other applications. Generally a great strategy for using Wine, even if you'd prefer to do it yourself.
And Bottles is a much more convenient wrapper compared to doing that manually and managing them yourself (which I've also done).
Bottles also distributes the instructions to configure a "generally working" prefix for a large number of desired applications.
If we go back to the docker analogy - they're giving you the Dockerfile, not the image. I'm not actually convinced that's such a "stark" contrast. If anything, it's semantic peanuts (and mostly for legal reasons given the popular applications tend to be copyright protected games, rather than OSS software which makes up most docker images).
Interesting. The UI looks way better than Lutris and Heroic Launcher. Anyone tried all three of them and went with Bottles? I first tried Lutris and then switched to Heroic, but I am not too keen about Electron apps, although Heroic works quite well.
I've tried lutris and bottles and stuck with bottles.
My experience with getting battle.net on lutris was miserable. After staring at the UI trying to add battle.net I was informed to go to a site, pull back a script on there and I had no indication of what it was doing to my machine.
However, bottles ships with scripts to set it up for you. I created a bottle in the location I wanted, installed battle.net and logged in and it worked.
Its not without problems, if I accidentally start battle.net twice, my CPU utilisation shoots up to 100% and is stuck there until I kill the bogus bottles process.
There's also a problem of the battle.net bottle bricking itself completely (I have to move the game files out, delete all bottles configs and recreate the bottle) if I change the runner.
Whether these issues are bottles fault or not I can't say.
But concept of what a 'bottle' is is easy to understand. The configuration is very rich and works well. I pick a pick a directory, pick a runner, install what I want, enable mangohud and I'm golden.
My experience with getting battle.net on lutris was miserable. After staring at the UI trying to add battle.net I was informed to go to a site, pull back a script on there and I had no indication of what it was doing to my machine.
However, bottles ships with scripts to set it up for you. I created a bottle in the location I wanted, installed battle.net and logged in and it worked.
Its not without problems, if I accidentally start battle.net twice, my CPU utilisation shoots up to 100% and is stuck there until I kill the bogus bottles process.
There's also a problem of the battle.net bottle bricking itself completely (I have to move the game files out, delete all bottles configs and recreate the bottle) if I change the runner.
Whether these issues are bottles fault or not I can't say.
But concept of what a 'bottle' is is easy to understand. The configuration is very rich and works well. I pick a pick a directory, pick a runner, install what I want, enable mangohud and I'm golden.
I won’t hear a bad word said about Heroic launcher. It’s almost literally magic. Up until I tried it I was still dual booting windows on my gaming laptop.
When they got GOG cloud saves to work with cyberpunk 2077 I sent them money.
When they got GOG cloud saves to work with cyberpunk 2077 I sent them money.
I generally like heroic, but it often has annoying bugs which persist for several months.
I tend to use Bottles only for applications rather than games for some reason, but it works well for both. What I like about it for that use case is that it almost encourages adding multiple apps per bottle. This makes it quite easy to have one bottle for say all your dotnet apps etc.
I tried those 3, and decided to go for bottles. The configuration needed in order to run Windows programms were really really easy, and I like the fact that I can keep all the Windows programs neatly organized in a single place, not only games (as Lutris and Heroic are intended to).
I also tried just wine, but Bottles is a handy wrapper.
I also tried just wine, but Bottles is a handy wrapper.
I've used all three that you've listed (plus several more).
I generally stick to Bottles whenever I can. It's a very general solution for running windows software on linux, with a nice UI.
I've used it for both gaming & non-gaming applications. Everything from running battle.net on my steam deck, to Alan Wake 2 on my desktop, to running specific Victron configuration software on my laptop for programming my solar inverters.
It's not perfect (occasionally recipes get out of date, and sometimes you still need to go get a specific version of Proton-GE, or download some of their dependencies manually, for example) but generally speaking... It's a pretty good interface.
Keeping all the configuration/dependencies alongside the individual apps is great.
It's much less "Game specific" than either Lutris or Heroic.
I generally stick to Bottles whenever I can. It's a very general solution for running windows software on linux, with a nice UI.
I've used it for both gaming & non-gaming applications. Everything from running battle.net on my steam deck, to Alan Wake 2 on my desktop, to running specific Victron configuration software on my laptop for programming my solar inverters.
It's not perfect (occasionally recipes get out of date, and sometimes you still need to go get a specific version of Proton-GE, or download some of their dependencies manually, for example) but generally speaking... It's a pretty good interface.
Keeping all the configuration/dependencies alongside the individual apps is great.
It's much less "Game specific" than either Lutris or Heroic.
I went with Heroic for everything gaming and I have not stumbled on anything better since.
I use Bottles for emulating general software.
I use Bottles for emulating general software.
Is this some form of wine-wrapping? Or do these people code the windows emulation themselves?
All of these on-top-of-wine solutions are always a cat and mouse chase when a game or app is updated. You end up with several days to weeks and sometimes eternity to get some configuration fix
All of these on-top-of-wine solutions are always a cat and mouse chase when a game or app is updated. You end up with several days to weeks and sometimes eternity to get some configuration fix
Count me as a person who could never figure out how to directly use WINE. All of the special configuration knowledge is seemingly spread across dozens of forum posts. Best case, you will find some obscure post which ends with, "Never mind, figured it out!"
I have been using Bottles for a while now, and it has been painless to launch a few necessary Windows programs.
I have been using Bottles for a while now, and it has been painless to launch a few necessary Windows programs.
I found back in the day the best documentation for how to run X with Wine was to read the lutris source for that app.
Did it for Overwatch
Did it for Overwatch
I think so, I mean it's called Bottles. It looks like a GUI for Wine that doesn't give Wine enough credit for doing the real work. I have a feeling it just runs Wine.
https://github.com/bottlesdevs/Bottles/tree/main/bottles/bac...
https://github.com/bottlesdevs/Bottles/tree/main/bottles/bac...
Or be like me, and get Counterstrike almost working, but with some show stopping bug, continually for a decade, before giving up gaming for good only for steam Linux to be released.
if it makes you feel any better i doubt cs runs on steam Linux
Considering that Valve has a native Linux release for Counter Strike (as well as all their other titles), I doubt you looked much into this.
yeah to be fair i last looked 5 years ago.. how did they resolve anticheat? last i tried VAC was kind of a showstopper. if its evolved thats awesome
I think they basically just gave up. From what I hear VAC is a bit of a joke.
Every Valve game released has a native Linux version. That includes every counter strike game.
But that’s only occurred in the last ~5 years, no?
Kind of. Valve started actively porting their stuff in 2013, around the time Microsoft released Windows 8 and rumors started flying around that you'll only be able to use Windows Store to download apps.
So, way over 5 years. But time flies by fast.
So, way over 5 years. But time flies by fast.
The Bottles Flatpak uses the Wine flatpak as its base, which means it should be relatively soon up to date with the latest wine version
https://flathub.org/apps/org.winehq.Wine
https://flathub.org/apps/org.winehq.Wine
"easily" until you update wine and then nothing works anymore :)
That's one of the key points of Bottles. Wine instances are isolated from your system installation. Both the data and runtime. You update wine manually through Bottles if and when you want.
I want to try Bottles again to see if it really does solve more problems, but I honestly find it a bit disappointing how there isn't really that great of a solution for managing Wine prefixes holistically. I always wanted to like Crossover, because I like Code Weavers, but in the end all of the solutions felt like ducktape over the problems.
Which might make one think that it's hopeless, but clearly it isn't. Steam shows us that this sort of concept actually can work reliably. I don't know how Steam actually manages the prefixes, but you never have to think about it and it always chooses a known-good Proton version. Lutris seems like it wants to do the same basic thing Steam does, and it is very useful, but often times Lutris's "known good" settings somehow don't work.
This is a shame, this problem feels like it can be solved and make Wine vastly more useful. (Though in the end, improving upstream Wine will always be better than trying to build layers on top of it like this... but building layers on top of it like this helps us with running Windows software now, which is still pretty useful.)
Aside from having better automatic bottle management and setup of software with "known good" settings, I'd like to see more things tried. Some software doesn't actually need a persistent prefix... maybe there could be a concept of an ephemeral prefix of some sort instead, to make those softwares work more reliably. And when software does have a prefix, it sure would be useful to be able to "undo" things, using snapshots. Features like this would go a long way to make Wine prefixes easier to manage for people who are less technical.
Which might make one think that it's hopeless, but clearly it isn't. Steam shows us that this sort of concept actually can work reliably. I don't know how Steam actually manages the prefixes, but you never have to think about it and it always chooses a known-good Proton version. Lutris seems like it wants to do the same basic thing Steam does, and it is very useful, but often times Lutris's "known good" settings somehow don't work.
This is a shame, this problem feels like it can be solved and make Wine vastly more useful. (Though in the end, improving upstream Wine will always be better than trying to build layers on top of it like this... but building layers on top of it like this helps us with running Windows software now, which is still pretty useful.)
Aside from having better automatic bottle management and setup of software with "known good" settings, I'd like to see more things tried. Some software doesn't actually need a persistent prefix... maybe there could be a concept of an ephemeral prefix of some sort instead, to make those softwares work more reliably. And when software does have a prefix, it sure would be useful to be able to "undo" things, using snapshots. Features like this would go a long way to make Wine prefixes easier to manage for people who are less technical.
Isnt proton wine version for games that Valve pays Codeweavers to make?
I believe Valve and Codeweavers collaborate on Proton. However, Proton is very similar to upstream Wine in practice, and you can use Proton as a drop-in replacement for Wine if you want to. Lutris will happily download and run builds of Proton for you.
That's the whole point of it being in a "bottle", each bottle has its own self-contained instance of wine.
You can configure each bottle to use a specific version of wine, they are independent of the system. Rtfa before you make statements like that :)
I wonder if it wouldn't be easier to package programs directly into flatpaks or docker images (with appropriate WINE and whatever other dependencies baked in). Obviously in some cases there are licensing restrictions on redistribution, but even then it seems easier to have a per-app flatpak/container that either takes a binary you supply or downloads it for you as is appropriate.
Zoltan has you beat. Fresh install if Zoltan runs directx installer ( dxdiag runs perfectly ) and so does Dungeon Siege - Legends of Aranna. Perfectly. Better than windows 10. It's not listed on Bottles, so I will check back in 6 months.
For what it's worth in a fit of nostalgia I found that dungeon siege runs well under bare wine.
Is this an option to get creative cloud apps like photoshop running on Linux. I have a friend for whom this is the cough bottleneck to switching over.
In all honesty, trying to shoehorn the CC apps to run on Linux just isn't a viable solution. As someone that does a ton of photo and video stuff it was a sticking point for me for quite awhile as well. Luckily, I don't make my living from my photography, so I was finally able to just dive head first into the open-source tools to start figuring out a new workflow.
I dunno ablut easily. If you just have some random exe installer Bottles is not super helpful. Probably easier if your software is in the Bottles catalogue.
It has a literal "run executable" button. How much easier so you think it could get?
But that just runs the installer. What about the program that is then installed? I remember this being a bit of a hassle, and not having a super great UX. It works, by all means, but it's just a lot worse than Windows, which is admittedly a lofty standard for exes.
After running the installer (or any exe) bottles scans the registry for certain keys (I don't know the specifics) and if it finds that new programs have been installed, it automatically adds an entry under "Programs" in the Bottles UI (which is under the "run executable" button).
You also have the option to manually add installed executables under the "Programs" section, or into the "Library" section (Library is global, programs is per-bottle-sandbox)
You also have the option to manually add installed executables under the "Programs" section, or into the "Library" section (Library is global, programs is per-bottle-sandbox)
Bottles is absolutely fine for random exes...
Yes - it's not entirely preconfigured for you like the recipes in their catalogues, but most runners work just fine for general windows applications.
I have thrown several bottles together just to run plain ol' exe installers, and they absolutely work, in about the least effort you can put in for this sort of thing (entirely GUI based, mostly click 3 buttons and go).
ex - I have a bottle for running victron VEConfigure 3 to configure solar inverters. A bottle for running Carbide Create for Carbide 3D. A bottle for running windows CAD software. Lots of random things.
Yes - it's not entirely preconfigured for you like the recipes in their catalogues, but most runners work just fine for general windows applications.
I have thrown several bottles together just to run plain ol' exe installers, and they absolutely work, in about the least effort you can put in for this sort of thing (entirely GUI based, mostly click 3 buttons and go).
ex - I have a bottle for running victron VEConfigure 3 to configure solar inverters. A bottle for running Carbide Create for Carbide 3D. A bottle for running windows CAD software. Lots of random things.
> Run Windows in a Bottle. Easily run Windows software on Linux with Bottles!
What does it even mean?
Is it somehow related to Gnome Boxes?
What does it even mean?
Is it somehow related to Gnome Boxes?
It's a pun on Wine, the syscall translation layer that lets you run Windows programs on Linux without hardware virtualization.
A working Wine configuration includes a directory that functions as a virtual C;\ drive, has a registry, and various other settings. You can actually have multiple of these if you specify which one to use at launch time through the environment variable WINEPREFIX, which points to a directory containing the relevant config files and other data directories.
A "bottle" is a user-friendly way of interacting with this functionality, managing these prefixes and their settings, and recommending known compatibility fixes for them. It may also involve managing multiple Wine versions, perhaps including some with patches.
It seems comparable to a lot of older tools in the same vein like CrossOver Linux (by Codeweavers, who maintain Wine), PlayOnLinux, Lutris (gaming-focused), and Cedega (gaming-focused and defunct).
A working Wine configuration includes a directory that functions as a virtual C;\ drive, has a registry, and various other settings. You can actually have multiple of these if you specify which one to use at launch time through the environment variable WINEPREFIX, which points to a directory containing the relevant config files and other data directories.
A "bottle" is a user-friendly way of interacting with this functionality, managing these prefixes and their settings, and recommending known compatibility fixes for them. It may also involve managing multiple Wine versions, perhaps including some with patches.
It seems comparable to a lot of older tools in the same vein like CrossOver Linux (by Codeweavers, who maintain Wine), PlayOnLinux, Lutris (gaming-focused), and Cedega (gaming-focused and defunct).
Thanks, your reply should be copy-pasted and put on that website.
They're using terminology like "Windows prefix", which in reality appears to be a Wine prefix.
They're using terminology like "Windows prefix", which in reality appears to be a Wine prefix.
It's not related to Gnome Boxes. It is an application that makes using Wine easier and more robust.
The statement means to say that it allows you to run Windows applications inside an isolated environment (a "bottle").
is there somewhere a more technical description? I want to know about the technology stack before I install software which uses up several 100 MB