Creator of the popular free and open source video game library manager Playnite has a positive update on a Linux version, with plans for it during 2026.
Back in February, GamingOnLinux covered the latest update from the creator on their plans for it, where they noted “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.”.
Somewhat? I used it on Windows pretty extensively, I’ll try to pitch what I liked about it.
Basically, it supports “plugins” that allow it to auto-import games from all kinds of places, such as Steam, GOG, Epic, and even more obscure options like itch.io, or local modded Minecraft instances. It could also auto-scan folders for ROMs, and could be configured to launch those games in an emulator. It also did its own playtime tracking locally, which worked for any of these launchers and options, which was great to have all in one UI.
It also had really cool options, like different “launch actions”, so you could setup commands to run a game modded or launch it vanilla, for example, which was excellent. Really it could be configured with any commands to run before and after starting/stopping any game you can think of.
Not to mention it had the best controller big picture UI on Windows, which I still kinda miss since switching to Bazzite and Steam Big Picture Mode. I was able to access everything I just described with just a controller, once it was configured. Giving it up was truly the hardest part of switching to Linux for me, it’s phenomenal software.
I’m not certain what it will look like on Linux, whether it’ll just integrate with Heroic to launch games through it, or try to reimplement those features. But it’s certainly worth watching, and I’ll definitely give it a look again once they bring their big picture mode to Linux. Quite exciting news for me!