I have a desktop and a steam deck. I would like to setup some old games I have on disc on the desktop. Then compress them and decompress on my Steam Deck without doing the full install again. I understand that with wine/proton prefixes they should be installed to a “fake c:/ windows hierarchy” can I just compress that and copy to a different Linux machine? Does it save which proton version was used? If I use something like Lutris or bottles can I import into them?
Yup, your save games are in your wine prefix so feel free to back them up and just use them again. Note that the game itself isn’t necessarily in the prefix, you could have installed it elsewhere.
I don’t think so, but it shouldn’t matter. You can change versions any time and it’ll just update your prefix.
Yes, you can set the prefix path to that folder you copied and it should pick up where you left things.
Cool, thank you! A lot of games on ProtonDB list specific versions of proton that work best for different games. That’s why I asked. But, I could just add a file in the root of the prefix with the version that worked (for troubleshooting purposes).
Do you have any preference for Lutris, bottles, vanilla proton?
I use Heroic Launcher, it supports GOG and the Epic Store, but adding DRM-free games to it is also as easy as Lutris.
I wonder if it would then be easy to backup the drm-free games to copy elsewhere…?