Game Installation
| Fedora does not support some of these platforms out of the box due to current policies, thus requiring some additional steps to use. The most common need is setting up RPM-Fusion repository as instructed here. And setting up Flathub. |
Games can be installed and played in several ways, here are some of them:
Game Launchers
Flatpak
Some proprietary but native Linux games have flatpak builds (RuneScape or Minecraft.) Flatpak is an excellent platform for native proprietary games, and pretty much any Linux app where you don’t want the hassle of an RPM.
Below is a list of popular game launchers available as flatpak apps that you can install from Flathub
Heroic Games Launcher
A popular FOSS Epic Games, GOG, and Prime Gaming launcher that uses Proton-GE: a custom version of Proton made by GloriousEggroll
Lutris
Lutris is an Open-Source gaming platform for Linux. It installs and launches games so you can start playing without the hassle of setting up your games. Get your games from GOG, Steam, Battle.net, Origin, Uplay and many other sources running on any Linux-powered gaming machine. Lutris is also available in the default Fedora repos and the software stores, making it an absolute breeze to install.
Emulators
Some of them are already packaged into Fedora. Most are available as Flatpaks. Retroarch (combined frontend for a lot of older (pre-2000) emulators) is trending these days. Retroarch is already in the repos. We also recommend Gnome Games, a Retroarch frontend designed to better integrate with the GNOME Desktop.
Native Game Launchers
These are game launchers that are better installed as native RPMs to avoid problems or quirks specific to their Flathub version.
Steam
Steam’s Proton is the single biggest thing that has boosted Linux gaming. When anyone thinks of Linux gaming, they think of Proton. Valve as a company has done a lot to encourage Linux gaming. All of Valve’s self-published games are Linux native including Half Life Alyx which is a VR title. You can see how to install Steam here
| While Steam Proton is open source, the Steam client is not. |
Open-Source Games
There are many excellent open-source games as well! Try running
dnf groupinfo “Games” or checking out Flathub’s games list.
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