PLWL — Portable Linux Wine Launcher

A portable launcher for Windows games and applications on Linux.

Portable layout

Everything the launcher needs lives next to the executable:

./files/
  wines/           imported Wine / Proton builds
  wineprefixes/    wine prefixes
  apps/            imported app folders (optional)
  data/            launcher config (apps.json, settings.json)
  translations/    translation files

Running

npm install
npm start

Building & installing

./build.sh produces build/PLWL-<version>.tar.gz: the Electron runtime renamed to olcxja.plwl/ (binary olcxja.plwl/olcxja.plwl) with the whole app (code, renderer and bundled files/) packed into olcxja.plwl/resources/app.asar, plus the olcxja.plwl.png icon, install.sh and createshortcut.sh:

tar -xzf PLWL-<version>.tar.gz
cd PLWL
./install.sh        # copies everything to ~/.local/bin/olcxja.plwl/,
                    # installs the icon (olcxja.plwl.png) + shortcut
                    # removes the extraction folder, launches

./createshortcut.sh # portable mode: only installs the icon + shortcut

# or run without any shortcuts:
./olcxja.plwl/olcxja.plwl

Importing from a wine prefix

Besides copy/move/leave, an app can be imported from a wine prefix: pick the prefix, then the app folder inside its drive_c. Nothing is copied — paths are stored relative to the prefix, so wine sees the app as if it were normally installed on C:\ (registry entries pointing to C:\... keep working). Both layouts work: plain wine prefixes (drive_c at the top) and Proton-managed ones (drive_c under pfx/). The app stays tied to that prefix; removing the launcher entry never deletes files from the prefix.

"Open with PLWL" in the file manager

The desktop entry (MimeType + Exec %f) makes PLWL show up in Dolphin/Nautilus under Open With for Windows executables (.exe, .msi, .bat, .cmd, .lnk). Opening a file that way shows a small popup in the launcher where you pick the Wine/Proton version and the prefix for this run — both default to the launcher's defaults, nothing is imported into the library. A second launcher instance hands the path to the running one and exits (same single-instance mechanism the shortcuts use).

Wine & Proton support

System Wine — uses the wine binary from PATH.
Imported builds — drop any wine or Proton build into files/wines/. The folder may contain the build directly, or one level of nesting (zip-extracted layouts are detected automatically).
Proton without Steam — fully supported. Proton is invoked like Steam does it: STEAM_COMPAT_CLIENT_INSTALL_PATH points to a fake steam client folder, STEAM_COMPAT_DATA_PATH is a per-build compat folder, and the prefix lives at <compat>/pfx which PLWL links to its own prefix folder. No Steam installation required (GE builds work out of the box; for a few Valve builds that refuse to run without a client, PLWL fakes a minimal steam folder in files/data/fake-steam).

Translations

All UI text comes from JSON files in files/translations/. The data object carries the language names; texts maps keys to strings, with {0}, {1} ... placeholders filled at runtime.

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