Wine prefixes are not a distro feature. They have been in wine for a LOOOONG time.

Well considering that ANDROID LINUX is the most common OS on the Planet - I'd beg to differ. But that's a different discussion. And in much of the world, Linux if far more used because of being free than Windows.
They've been in MacOS for a long time, but were not required in Linux, and now they are.

The Configuration Menu was all you ever had to deal with, and now you're lucky if you can even get to it.

They are not required; your default prefix is ~/.wine/, like it has always been. Again you're upset about something in Ubuntu.

If you are trying to run the .exe using your system's WINE installation, it has nothing to do with GOG. If you are wanting to run GOG's WINE-wrapped games, then you need to actually run it the way GOG intended, otherwise, you're just running gameX using the globally configured WINE in your system.

I think you really need to educate yourself about what WINE is, and how it works.
Ha ha - this is one of the funniest things I've read in ages! I started using Ubuntu with Dapper Drake - back in 2006. Prefixes were a thing back then too.

If you're teaching Linux, I feel sorry for your students.

Yep. The environment variable was added in 2000: https://source.winehq.org/git/wine.git/commit/de1d5ad444ad05157b8f9fc2224d69ee7ebccac9 By the sound of it, they're probably teaching Ubuntu's GUI more than they're teaching Linux. :-)

I've heard of those $6 Windows Pro keys. Aren't those grey market?


Otherwise I generally agree with you that running Windows games under an appropriate version of Windows is the path of least resistance.

I have a Linux machine and a windows machine. I have moved over to mostly Linux for gaming and other things, while I still occasionally browse on Windows or back to it for games that only run on Windows.

All the games that I have that list they run on Linux, run on Linux without Wine thus far. The biggest obstacle I've found is 64 bit Linux vs. 32 Bit. Many of the games that say they run on Linux do not run for 64 bit...which is unfortunate and requires one to do research to figure out which files they need in order to run the games.

I should probably list the games I've gotten to run on 64 bit without any hassle, could make it easier for others who have updated linux with 64 and such.

For running Windows games I normally just use a Windows machine rather than fighting it through with Wine...UNLESS...the game is platinum (easy to get running in Wine without much hassle).

Your "I" really needs to get out of the basement more often. Wouldn't MS criminally take over PC market by secret agreements with IBM as well as stealing CP/M code and price damping, Windows wouldn't even exist. This is exactly due to some proprietary developers, who are either short on funds or have signed contract on "exclusivity", so they choose just one platform and rest of humanity has to find way to run their software. Since MS robbed the OS market share to itself, this is why native Linux is harder to exist, hence Wine has a place to mimic Windows. MS is monopolist (think about size of monetary resource) and created barriers like DirectX just for this.

About why Prefixes happened, its result of Windows platform defects multiplied by Wine mimicry. About similar library stuff like on Linux, when older Software A needs Library X ver. A and newer Software B needs same Library X but ver B. Windows tries to solve it with WinSxS, which causes cruft to grow in size of tens GB; Wine instead has Prefixes (isolated containers), where one can tune which library to install / override to make. There is open chance for Wine Prefix to save space through deduplication through hardlinking, but the mechanism is similar to Windows. So you will have to learn and use one or another.

This is not the end, however, as MS tries to address and lure the people like you with its (Windows subsystem for Linux) WSL, who don't exactly understand nor care about the event/logic chain. They don't remove the barriers (think - hard tactic) which have been causing issues with Linux on purpose since forever, but they ALSO create a comfy place (soft tactic) where their barriers do not exist, but that place is entirely in their control, in order to catalyze issues with some of the Linux user base. Hard outside life + Soft spot inside own fence -> ideal catalyst to suck people in.

I recommend to value and write the crossplatform software; understand how and why this technologies are chained (about native and wine); and understand the logical chains behind technology.

Do:
1) mkdir -p ~/.wineprefix/wine32
2) mkdir -p ~/.wineprefix/wine64

make sure that ~/.local/share/wineprefixes/ is empty prior to this, this is default folder for "winetricks".

3) ln -s ~/.wineprefix ~/.local/share/wineprefixes

4) Add these two miniscripts to your .local/bin or bin in $home,
"winerun32":
#!/usr/bin/env bash
DXVK_HUD=0 WINEDLLOVERRIDES=winemenubuilder.exe=d WINEDEBUG=-all WINEESYNC=1 DXVK_LOG_LEVEL=none WINEPREFIX=~/.wineprefix/wine32 wine ${1}

and "winerun64":
#!/usr/bin/env bash
DXVK_HUD=0 WINEDLLOVERRIDES=winemenubuilder.exe=d WINEDEBUG=-all WINEESYNC=1 DXVK_LOG_LEVEL=none WINEPREFIX=~/.wineprefix/wine64 WINEARCH=win64 wine64 ${1}

You can now execute the software with "wine32 your_binary32" or "wine64 your_binary64" and it will be stored in two central prefixes, one for 32, one for 64.

You can also invoke that line in "Exec=" line, in your own desktop launchers (.desktop files), just remember to use absolute paths and prefix it with "env".

Here is how I launch Stalker Anomaly mod, its 64bit graphics intensive:
Exec=env DXVK_HUD=0 WINEDLLOVERRIDES=winemenubuilder.exe=d WINEDEBUG=-all WINEESYNC=1 DXVK_LOG_LEVEL=none WINEARCH=win64 WINEPREFIX=/home/userp/.wineprefix/wine64/ wine64 /home/userp/.wineprefix/wine64/drive_c/Anomaly/AnomalyLauncher.exe

Has anyone who wants more native Linux games ever published any kind of guide about how to develop for Linux?

It's easy to build a Win32 binary that uses stable APIs and works on any version of Windows going all the way back to the '90s. But if you build a Linux binary, what distros would it even work on? Maybe big time developers already know all about this, but I would bet that some indie developers don't know the first thing about making a Linux build, and that's the only reason they don't bother.

That's too open ended, because there are so many different ways to develop software in general and games in particular (using custom engine? in what language? pre-made engine? which one?). Binaries are distro-agnostic. They just need their dependencies met, just like on windows. In practice this means you have a hard dep on a few things (glibc & co), which are relatively stable and present on all mainstream distros. And then you bundle a copy of most of the rest of the things you depend on. The exact opposite is true. Indies are pretty damn good about Linux support. I've no stats but it seems like almost half of all indie games today release with Linux support. It's the big companies that generally don't give a rat's ass. Where are all the Linux native releases from CDPR, EA, Bethesda, Ubisoft, Blizzard..? Nowhere.

There are actually a lot of old Windows games that don't work on Windows 10 but run on Wine. Soulbringer for example.

https://icculus.org/finger/flibitijibibo
TL;DR: If it can be ported to *Stadia* of all things, it can be ported to Linux.

Developers creating Linux specific versions is never going to happen in earnest as long as its market share is under 1%.

Thats why MS killed Nokia and DR-DOS at certain time points. The carpet's been laid (and paid with blood) prior to the rabbit entering the cage, marketshare is not something users decide or influence. But there is good news - marketshare is only applicable for closed source proprietary projects, while in full control of the milking entity. Linux is not such project, its more of a spirit and principle, hence it never needs to reach any percentage, it will never be dropped so long there is interest in it, even one installation suffice.

They happen since many years. Just some devs do it, whilst other find excuses. Can't judge both, their choice.