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 with the whole app (code, renderer and bundled files/) packed into electron/resources/app.asar, plus a plwl launcher, a plwl.desktop template and install.sh:

tar -xzf PLWL-<version>.tar.gz
cd PLWL
./install.sh   # copies to ~/.local/lib/PLWL, adds ~/.local/bin/plwl + a desktop shortcut, launches the app
# or run without installing:
./plwl

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.