Lutris 0.5.21 Adds Steam Sniper Runtime and New Console Emulators

Just a week after the 0.5.20 release, Lutris, the popular open-source gaming platform for Linux, has launched version 0.5.21 with some exciting new features and fixes. Here’s a rundown of the key updates:

Key Highlights:

• Valve’s Sniper Runtime Support: Lutris 0.5.21 introduces support for Valve’s Sniper runtime, enabling runners to execute within the Steam Linux Runtime 3.0 container, enhancing compatibility with Steam-related games and applications.
• Expanded Emulator Support: New runners for ShadPS4 and Xenia have been added, broadening the range of emulators available for use on Lutris. Additionally, the Dolphin emulator runner now uses an AppImage build, which resolves previous dependency issues with libavformat, simplifying installation across distributions.
• Hardware Detection Enhancements: Lutris now improves GPU detection, particularly on multi-GPU systems. The platform correctly identifies GPU UUIDs and avoids selecting the wrong device in certain configurations. It also prioritizes the most descriptive GPU name from vulkaninfo, addressing issues where Intel Arc GPUs were identified generically as “Intel Graphics.”
• UI Improvements: The user interface gets some thoughtful improvements:
• Collapsible sections in the sidebar.
• The ability to sort uncategorized games.
• Fallback icons for missing assets when using certain icon themes.
• Fixes to prevent ghost categories from lingering after renaming.
• System Information Reporting: The system information panel now displays the Python version and reads the host os-release file when running inside Flatpak, improving diagnostics in sandboxed environments.
• Proton Migration: The Proton versions have been migrated from runners/proton to runners/wine, streamlining the internal structure. The Wine Wayland warning has been fixed to only appear when running under Wayland, avoiding unnecessary notifications in X11 sessions.

Bug Fixes:

Several bugs have been addressed, including:

• VDF parser fixes for handling escaped quotes.
• Error handling improvements for ZOOM Platform extras.
• A fix for sync_media, now reporting successful transfers instead of just attempted counts.

Conclusion:

Lutris 0.5.21 brings crucial updates, especially for emulator support, hardware detection, and UI improvements. Whether you’re gaming on a single GPU or multi-GPU setup, or you rely on Proton and Steam, this update offers better compatibility, performance, and a smoother user experience.

For full details, check out the changelog.