Glossary

DLL

Dynamic link library — System libraries that are usually needed by games. See here for details.

Wine

Program to run Windows apps on Linux — Translates all Linux calls to system functions to their Windows counterparts and vice versa. See here for details.

Prefix

Dedicated Wine environment — Basically one instance of a fake Windows installation. A Wine prefix mimics a complete installation of Windows with all the necessary files, libraries (see DLLs), and the Windows registry. See here for details.

Winetricks

Script to install DLLs or edit configurations inside a Wine prefix — This can be executed from the command line, but usually tools like Lutris integrate it into their UI, so you can just press a button somewhere. See here for details.

YAML

File format. Stands for "Yet Another Markup Language" — This is the format that Lutris installation scripts are written in. It is indentation-sensitive, so you need to take care of how many spaces you indent something when editing a script. YAML is understood by any decent code editor which can help you with formatting and spotting mistakes more quickly.

Flatpak

Linux package format. You usually get it from flathub.org — If you're on SteamOS or Bazzite, this is the standard format to install software and you don't need to do anything else. If you're on another Linux distro and you're not sure about this, visit this website for instructions: https://flathub.org/en/setup

Proton

Compatibility software to run Windows games on Linux. Built on top of Wine, made by Valve. — See here for details.

ProtonTricks

Wrapper around Winetricks, used for the same things but for Steam games.

GOG

Good Old Games. Gaming platform. — Probably the best platform to acquire older games since they provide game versions that can be installed and run without much or any hassle. They ship a version of Gothic I that includes Union and is only compatible with 64-bit Wine prefixes by default (older versions without Union are still present under "Extras").