Overview page: https://www.gog.com/en/anniversary
Direct sign up for Galaxy Linux beta: https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/t/YEF5EV/
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I’m excited for this. I’ve been hoping this would happen for some time. Hopefully GoG will provide a friendly counterpart to steam to keep each other honest. Never consolidate!
Might not be a huge deal for current Linux users, because of Heroic and Lutris are well known and widely used, but for gamers who are about to switch from Windows this could be another reason to do so.
I saw many “how to switch to Linux” guides where they had to stop at the gaming section and explain Proton/Wine/Heroic/etc
It sounds much easier: If you want to game on Linux there is a native Steam and GoG clients.
Lots of people loves achievments and cloud saves.
Will this for example run games based on dosbox natively on Linux?
Excited that it finally exists, but just looking at the release graphic I’m concerned of how heavy handed their AI use may have been.
I know every software engineer uses AI to code now. It’s just sometimes it’s vibe-coded slop and sometimes it feels more like AI-assisted human code.
I’d say I’m cautiously optimistic, but I feel more like a pessimist who really wants to be proven wrong.
I know every software engineer uses AI to code now. It’s just sometimes it’s vibe-coded slop and sometimes it feels more like AI-assisted human code.
I don’t. After seeing how poorly coworkers did with it, I never will.
Fine i guess. Just a bit worried about all that vibe code. I hope it will not turn out to be hyper-hackerable.
I am not really interested in it, because I like that I have most of my digital games in Heroic and I am really annoyed that I have to use Steam in it’s own interface. Using a dedicated programming for GOG is the last I want.
But great for everyone who wants or needs a dedicated Gog client.
I have had problems running games in Heroic. Hopefully GOG Galaxy works better.
good, but maybe it’s too little too late ? but still, competition is always a good thing to have
Better late than never. Heroic does a very good job for me, but we will see what the new GOG era can deliver.
Not ever too late. They offer a lot of good products for dirt cheap. Don’t give up on Gog just because everyone is on the steam dick (myself included). The best part is you own your game from GOG. They give you full offline never online installers for all the games on here.
Whilst I definitelly didn’t use this when I had Windows and much prefer general launchers like Lutris and Heroic which aren’t tied down to specific game stores (and thus, amongst other things, aren’t constantly trying tosell you and market you shit, or purposefully designed to make it hard for you to run your games outside them) and instead use those store’s REST APIs to do things like download and install the games, it’s a good sign that finally GOG is making a version of their launcher for Linux.
i want to play this map in worms
Would be fun island vs island map
That being said, I think Armageddon and WMD support PNG images?
I wonder how they’re gonna handle windows games. Whether they’ll use system’s version of wine or ship something of their own like Proton on Steam. Very curious.
They’ll like use the ULWGL–Unified Linux Wine Game Launcher for that. It’s basically all the tech Bottles, Steam, Lutris, etc worked on thrown into one project to prevent duplication and share prefix stuff between launchers.
Edit: Whoops, I guess the project was renamed to UMU.
Why wouldn’t they just use Proton.
That’s what I’m interested in. Whether they intend to just use whatever is available (which is absolutely ok) or they’re going to ship their own solution fine tuned however they want and need it (which would be obviously fork of wine/proton).
I imagine they’ll use UMU.
I’d expect them to handle it same way as lutris. Default version + bunch of other options
Isn’t proton just wine with a few other things like DXVK? And all open source, so they could just fork or even copy it directly. Proton is based on a fork of wine too.
So far I use Lutris for GOG games. Does galaxy still work offline and not act as DRM in any way? So anything already installed could be launched with it?
Galaxy is just for automating installation and updates and implementing cloud saves and achievements. The installation is identical to one made with standalone installer and can be launched from the executable without running Galaxy client. Already installed games can be imported to Galaxy library.
Proton is kinda tied to Steam, but UMU already replicates those dependencies so you can run it outside Steam client, so GOG could do something similar and I doubt Valve would object cooperation if GOG wants to participate developing Proton.
Any changes GOG make to wine/proton would have to be open source anyway
Of course, but I meant Valve could be willing to help GOG to integrate Proton into Galaxy if they start contributing to development.
Yes, proton is basically “wine deluxe” as I understand it, so they might use it just as it. I just wondered whether they’ll use available solution or plan to use some modification of their own.
I guess we’ll see, hopefully, soon.
At first, probably not at all?
Get the basic system and cloud saves working first.
I would say so. But I wonder what’s their overall endgame vision.
This is huge.
Will probably still use Heroic, but I’m happy to see more choices
This is good news.
I’m really hoping that Valve will end up being a better stewart of the PC ecosystem than Microsoft in the long run.
Sometimes, It does really feel like the PC ecosystem can wither and die without them. I know we’re all enthusiasts here but I need to remind myself that we really do benefit from the larger ecosystem of PC owners. Without that demand being present, personal computers would really be for a few choice people and not all of us.
If the larger ecosystem collapses under the weight of one company (like Microsoft or valve) then there are bigger problems to solve like supply chain, trust, and support that no free and open source project will be able to handle. Not because it’s free and open source, but because the problems are just really really big and they take a lot of money to fix.
More people working on these problems is a good thing. I’m happy to see so much more happening on Linux regardless of my preferences.
People might have to learn how to double click an icon on their desktop instead of on steam, the horror
The good news is that Valve is not the steward of the PC ecosystem, even (or especially) on Linux. Everything they’ve contributed to Linux is open source, and they don’t control it. Even if Valve disappears tomorrow, or enshitifies, there are tons of Linux distros and the packages are all public.
I think the greatest strength valve has is being privately owned, rather than having to answer to investors. Combined with them genuinely appearing to care about the state of gaming, it’s a big thing. Especially with their contributions to open source and Linux gaming.
Microsoft and such are all about the money, quality assurance has quietly been abandoned over the years.
Here’s hoping we aren’t disappointed years from now.
This is true, but also kind of depressing that Capitalism is now so insidious that people treat gaben like some kind of benevolent philanthropist for choosing to sit on a huge ongoing cash cow that makes more money directly to his bank account than he’s physically able to spend, rather than IPO it.
On a scale of rich guys, he’s currently one that hasn’t done stuff to upset me. But of course, he’s no God. And the moment he or his company turn into soulless money whores, the trust will evaporate. But for now I’ll be happy that they’re contributing to things that don’t directly generate cash for them.
The bar is so low it’s through the floor.
Dude loved his yachts (plural) so much that he literally bought the company that makes them.
He’s a billionaire; he’s not a good guy.
The fact that they are privately owned is the reason why they are even capable of caring about things besides profit above all else. Large groups of people like boards of directors and shareholders are only capable of caring about things in their lowest common denominator that virtually every person cares about, such as having more money.
Note how all VC-owned and publicly traded companies behave like perfectly predictable clones of one another. They are all just apparatuses for money production, with the actual product they sell, their literal means of making the money, an afterthought.
Only capable…? You are aware that they are legally binded to maximize profit, right? Not doing so is a literal crime for the board.
Yep. If Valve ever announces an IPO, they should be considered dead and we should all start to migrate away.
To where? Leaving behind your library? I doubt it. They would have to do a lot worse than that, but it would be a cataclysmic event for PC gaming and their days would be numbered…
Moving away could just mean not buying more stuff there rather than not playing what you have already bought.
I’m really hoping that Valve will end up being a better stewart of the PC ecosystem than Microsoft in the long run.
Outside companies can’t really contribute to Windows development and have no say, so it’s 100% up to Microsoft to look after the Windows ecosystem.
On Linux however, Steam can contribute to the kernel and both audio and graphics systems. All this apart from delivering their Steam service. The same will be the case for GOG, although they probably can’t afford much, and the same will be true for Epic if they want.
Linux has mainly been held up by server development on the professional side, and desktops have been mostly been an afterthought among the ones with the money. Even Linus Torvalds does not use Linux as his personal computer. So most of the Linux desktop was developed by personal private interests with help from Red Hat.
But despite that Linux desktop is pretty damned awesome today with strong alternatives to Gnome. 😀It can never be the responsibility of Valve alone to keep the Linux desktop alive and thriving, they are merely part of it, and they have been a great boon for Linux, like Red Hat used to be who developed most of the GTK graphics back end, Gnome desktop, Pulse Audio and systemd.
Linux desktop is a very very different ecosystem than Windows, in the way it works, kind of like how Eric Raymond tried to describe in his book The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Unfortunately he failed, and the book and ended out as mostly nonsense, but the book is famous anyway, because it does try to describe the gist of it.
Sometimes, It does really feel like the PC ecosystem can wither and die
The traditional PC is dying, no doubt about it. PC used to be a universal tool for everybody, it isn’t anymore, many people have scrapped their PC, and now just use their phones and sometimes also tablets. The PC is a special interest tool today, and as such it will survive, but at a smaller scale than it used to be on. But as a special tool, it will also keep developing for those special “needs” like gaming, and the PC remains way ahead of any other form of game system in almost every way.
Edit:
Linus Torvalds does indeed use Linux desktop today, he Apparently uses Fedora.
But for many years he didn’t.Could you please correct the misinformation regarding Linus Torvalds in the body properly and not just in an appended edit notice? Thank you.
No
Linus Torvalds does not use Linux as his personal computer.
Yes he does. I would imagine the same one he built on camera in 2025 for his desktop. He has been seen with mac laptops, but they had ashahi linux on them.
Edit: I should add around 2011-2015 he did daily drive a mac, so a long time ago.
around 2011-2015 he did daily drive a mac,
That’s what I knew, I never heard he changed to actually using Linux, last I heard he said the Linux desktop isn’t good enough for daily use.
I’m glad if he actually uses Linux desktop now. 😀Wow, i have been using desktop Linux longer than Torvalds!
Me too and it is honestly hilarious.
Same here.
I thought Linus used Fedora and that systemd was made by Poettering as a personal project unrelated to his work at Red Hat.
I’m pretty sure Red Hat financed it, although it was a pet project of his.
Last I heard Linus was using a MAC.Edit:
Apparently Linus does use Fedora now.His most recently stated preference is definitely Fedora: Linus Torvalds on Linus Tech Tips
He specifically likes it (over say Ubuntu) because it’s easy for him to build/replace the kernel whilst at the same time, it’s a “just installs - just works” distro with no tweaking required.
Edit: I see no evidence that Linus has EVER used MacOS as his daily driver, despite using Mac hardware several times.
This is all way off topic, but “Even Linus I INVENTED LINUX Torvalds doesn’t even use it” is wrong.Yes I was not aware he had done that, I have LTT blocked on Youtube because he’s an asshole, so didn’t see it.
When I started using Linux in 2005 Linus was definitely using MAC, and I heard that a few times within the first decade. Linus also expressed that Linux desktop is not suitable as a daily driver.
https://linux.slashdot.org/story/05/03/09/1314250/torvalds-switches-to-a-mac
Torvalds Switches to a Mac
I’m surprised it was a bit hard to find, and I had thought I’d find better sources on it, but apparently it’s hidden behind things that have happened since.
And yes, he is running Linux on it ;)
It’s literally right there.
Edit: The article needs to be dug out of the waybackmachine: https://web.archive.org/web/20050309174306/http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/0,39023165,39183867,00.htm
Torvald’s response came quickly and succinctly. “My main machine these days is a dual 2GHz G5 (aka PowerPC 970) - it’s physically a regular Apple Mac, although it obviously only runs Linux, so I don’t think you can call it a Mac any more ;)” he said.
OK then I’ve been mistaken for 20 years. 🙁
But the context that he was running Mac and he criticized the Linux desktop for not being suitable for a daily driver, lead me to this obvious conclusion.For some reason I have never seen an article before that he uses Mac but with Linux on it??
Preach, brother/sister! <3
Really happy to see this. Hopefully others follow.
For those of you who were able to switch to Steam, I understand why this isn’t very interesting for you, but GOG has a huge library of very old games that Steam does not have, so this is still a pretty big deal, even if it took a really long time.
Not to mention DRM free!
GOG also adds community patches to old games very often, so their releases work better than their Steam equivalent.
Also because of their no-DRM policy, some Windows games from GOG are actually more compatible with Wine because the DRM was removed.
In my Steam collection I actually have a situation of a game which won’t run in Linux from Steam no matter what I do, yet the pirate version of that game runs just fine in Linux (and in fact that’s the only way I can enjoy my purchase), whilst in my much larger GOG collection I have no such situation.
When I buy a game I check if it’s on GOG first.
I have a HUUUGE steam library… Thanks to a few years of Humble Monthly. But really I prefer GOG.
Yeah I usually do the same. Offline installers are a pretty big benefit. I like to know a lot of games are available offline.
Also because of their no-DRM policy which forces games publishers to remove any DRM from their titles before they can sell them there, older Windows-only AAA games sold there don’t have the $&/"%*$# DRM that often makes them almost impossible to run under Wine or Proton.
I mean, you still have games from GOG that won’t run under Wine no matter what you do, but at least you don’t have the situation like you have with Steam were the game you bought won’t run in Linux yet a downloaded pirate version of it runs just fine.
To add, they originally repack(so it run on modern computer) and sell old game, which is why they named it Good Old Game.
I’m just happy that i can play Witcher 1 and 2 i bought on GOG last time.
Heroic Launcher connects with GoG, so you don’t need to wait for this. I’m still happy it’s coming, but we do have other options.
Same with Lutris.
Personally I prefere store independent launchers that aren’t constantly trying to sell me shit or market shit to me, or which were designed to try and tie me to their ecosystem.
None the less, that GOG is actually puting out a version of their launcher for Linux is a good sign, even if I personally won’t use it same as I did not use it back when my game machine was Windows.
One nice thing about GoG Galaxy, at least a version I used a very long time ago, is it is actually an agnostic launcher as well. It could connect to Steam, and other services, to automatically manage your unified library. I have no idea if it’s still like that on Windows or if the Linux version will be like that. It was very non-judgemental and not pushing purchases, like Steam does. This was like a decade ago though, so that may not be true anymore.
I also bought those games when they were on sale!
Personally, I like the Ultima series of games
For me if the GOG client can’t offer better support than Lutris I don’t see a reason to use it over Lutris. Not going to lie, the bar is kinda low as I don’t particularly love Lutris but the bar is there for the GOG launcher.
If they manage to implement a working pause an resume function for downloads, I am in.
Spent the day trying to download Indiana Jones’ 120 GB of madness. Lutris crashed after 5 Gb, because I dared to move a window. Heroic showed me a pause button, but after I pressed resume it forgot about the 8 GB already downloaded and started at 0% again. I ended up using aria to fetch the offline install files directly, sitting at 110 GB at the moment. Hope the install goes smoother.I started with Bottles, then switched to Lutris, which dramatically improves the experience. I now (and for a while now) use Heroic Launcher. It’s my preference. Lutris has still been useful, in particular for installing Escape from Tarkov from an install script for Singleplayer Tarkov (or whatever it’s called now). Heroic doesn’t support that as far as I’m aware. It does connect with Steam, GoG, and Epic though, so you can buy and play games from those through it.
You’re assuming those will work on GoG, that might not be the case unless they do something like Proton, otherwise those old games are Windows/DOS only and so you would have to manually download the binaries and run then through wine or something, so Galaxy coming to Linux wouldn’t affect this.
Proton is not part of Steam. It’s a package that you can run games on from anywhere. Yes, this will need WINE and likely Proton, and it’s easy enough to have the launcher use those, as Heroic and Lutris already do (or as you can do from the terminal).
I know it’s theoretically easy, but that doesn’t mean GoG will do it.
It seems like a particularly stupid design choice to make a launcher for Linux and yet refuse to do something that both simple and required for most Windows game to work in Linux which is launching them with Wine AND DXVK, same as Lutris and Heroic do.
You’re basically just insisting that they could be purposefully incompetent.
Sure, technically, they could, but then what would be the point of spending money on a GOG Galaxy Linux version given that only a small fraction of the games in their store have a native Linux version?
It took them over a decade to implement the most requested feature which could have probably accomplished in one afternoon as GoG Galaxy is an electron app, and they didn’t, I’m not holding my breath expecting them to be competent.
Sure, and were also assuming it works at all. What’s your point? It’ll almost certainly have something like this or there’s no point in them making it at all.
Regardless, it still doesn’t even rely on them because, like I said, you can do it yourself from the terminal. You could just write a simple script to launch the game and they’d run. Proton exists. It isn’t a Valve thing that they have to remake.
It’ll almost certainly have something like this or there’s no point in them making it at all.
GoG has native games for Linux, at the time the feature was initially requested to GoG Proton wasn’t a thing and we had to do janky stuff to run windows games on Steam. I’m not saying GoG won’t do it, I’m saying people are assuming it will just because everyone else does, which might not be true. Hopefully it is, but it’s just an assumption.
Lutris & Heroic already install all windows GOG games into Wine +/- Proton prefixes using some simple automation. The bar for an official GOG launcher to achieve the same isn’t that high if they want to go down that route. Proton is freely available and open source, so GOG can use it too if they want (and would be sensible to do so).
All of those old games just run through wine or dosbox. They install just fine through GoG Galaxy. GoG Galaxy has been on macOS for years.
I’ll probably just keep using Heroic because it unifies libraries. If it ever becomes possible to bring in the steam library as well, it’d be great.
My experience with Heroic has been extremely unreliable as compared to Steam. I don’t know why but hopefully the folks at GOG can iron out those kinks.
It’s mostly worked well for me, but unfortunately it has to sync my GOG library every time I open it before I can see any games at all. Epic just loads fine, but I only get those free games because I can. 😅
I’d like to see itch.io support as well.
Ooh, yes. Actually, I’d put that over Steam in priorities. Steam is serviceable as is. Itch needs more love.
