Playnite, a popular design-focused front end for Windows PCs will release on Linux. Eventually.
For gaming, having a reliable front end to categorize and catalog all your games can sometimes be a value-add that alters your outlook on the expansiveness of your gaming library. Steam has been around for over 20 years and its store routinely features sales on what feels like a never-ending cycle. AAA games can be purchased for rates sometimes lower than $10 USD, but over time, the backlog will grow, and depending on how that’s presented, some games become members of an endless backlog.
Source: Playnite
Frontends can group games from multiple different stores, and increase the sense of never-ending dread from looking at a collection of titles that you’ve either bought, haven’t played, or have fond memories of playing.
However, seeing how expansive a collection has become can shed light on how many titles you have at your disposal. The line between madness and fervent collector grows thinner by the day.
Playnite, Explained
Source: Playnite
Playnite is one of the most popular frontends for gamers using Windows, and an assortment of launchers like Steam, GOG Galaxy, Epic Play Store, or Ubisoft Connect can all display their games on the platform.
Even beyond that, it supports standalone titles users may have gotten from other sources, self-contained metadata, themes, and other various forms of customization.
Unlike retro handhelds, style-focused themes and launchers aren’t all that common on the PC front. There will always be deskmodding (RIP rocknydesk 🤘) but singular apps that not only support themes, but already have nice preexisting ones are rare, or limited to those that prioritize emulation like Emulation Station or Launchbox.
This isn’t inherently a bad thing, however. Most game launchers have come a long way from their designs of yore. Steam has multiple designs throughout its platforms like the well-known PC app, its mobile apps, SteamOS, and Steam Big Picture.
With Playnite coming to Linux, it opens up a potential new world for Linux handhelds to dive right into. For instance, the Steam Deck currently runs a custom distribution of Linux that relies heavily on Valve’s SteamOS for integration, but with Playnite, we’ll have to wait and see how it can be incorporated on the device purely meant to run SteamOS.
No Linux Support? But Why?
Source: Playnite
Playnite’s main developer, Josef Nunez explained a bit more about why Linux support has yet to come to the app over on GitHub:
We are 100% moving to Avalonia at some point in future, it’s just not going to be with Playnite 11 release.
So current plan is to release Playnite 11, continue developing it for Windows only and once Avalonia’s DX improves (they are promising major tools improvements with their upcoming Accelerate program), I will start porting P11 to Avalonia.
Once we have polished Windows version of Avalonia based Playnite, I’ll start working on Linux version. I don’t want to make just straight port of Windows version, that wouldn’t be good enough. I would really like to have Linux specific feature available on release, like Wine/Proton specific features, Epic and GOG plugins using Legendary and heroic-gogdl respectively, stuff like that.
To sum this up, Linux version is definitely something I plan to work on in future, it’s just going to happen later than originally planned.
It seems the only thing stopping Playnite from hitting other platforms is the development progression of Avalonia. Avalonia is an app that allows developers to use Microsoft’s .NET compiler to build versions of their apps, relatively easily, for other platforms. Ryujinx, before it met its untimely demise, utilized Avalonia for both its Linux and macOS versions of the app.
As we wait for Playnite to add Linux support, we can dream of what handhelds will be like with the additional frontend available. We may not see Playnite on smaller handhelds like the Anbernic RG34XX or TrimUI Smart Pro, but it does pose the question of how much the landscape of retro handhelds can change should it be supported on devices like the ASUS ROG Ally X or Steam Deck.
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