I don't think that the most forums give you really any kind of support for games - except the forum is specialized on games itself. But the distribution is very good from my point of view. :-)

I am aware of your project but was under the false impression its sole purpose is to package .tar.gz into Debian archives, which as it turned out is only part of the story, which I've read about in the forum thread you opened for this purpose.

Another thing that might have caused the confusion is the number of games in your GOGmix already advertised with Linux support here like BG1&2, Beneath a Steel Sky, Dragonsphere, Witcher 2 etc.

I also remember going to your official wiki and wanted to learn more, but the homepage is in French and you know how useful those online translators are when dealing with sentences as a whole. Have you considered translating those few paragraphs in English?

Btw, do you also write POL scripts?

Anyway, your poject certainly deserves to be mentioned and yourself acknowledged for it as it makes everything even better when a community member takes an initiative!

Actually its goal is more to turn *anything* into .deb packages, but there are projects to add support for other packages formats (.rpm, .tar.xz, etc.).

You’re right, I should have done this long ago!
The French presentation itself is not very good, so it might be a good time to rewrite all this.

Not yet, but I plan to write a translator ./play.it -> POL once I’ll know enough about the POL scripts syntax. (at least for Windows games)

Thank you, such kind comments are the fuel of this project ;)

Unfortunately you can forget allmost all non-proprietary games and game clones because you simply don't get one with alright music. Bad music prevents almost every game from being good.

The only drawback of Linux Mint is that it is not a true GNU/Linux distro (not completely free of proprietary code).
Since gamers have to use proprietary software anyway that drawback doesn't really matter.

Apart from Unity and Canonical Linux Mint is pretty much Ubuntu, though.

Is there anywhere I can read about what it exactly is/does and what makes it any better than POL? I've been on your site about five times and never understood what's the point of it.

Well, I’d say POL is great as long as it works without surprises ;)
When tinkering becomes a necessity it may be easier to go directly with WINE if you know you way around it, simply because there’s no additional layer to mess with on top of it.

Yeah, writing a concise presentation in English really becomes a top priority ;)

To make it short, this project is a collection of scripts that build .deb packages from any kind of game installers. Thus you can install your games easily and with a good integration with your Debian-based distribution (menu entries with icons, saved games and settings in $HOME, possibility to uninstall it from your usual packages manager, etc.).

As for the differences with POL:

_the main one: ./play.it scripts build .deb packages only (yet), so it is of no use on distributions not using this package format.

_saved games and settings are not kept in the WINE prefix, but in separated directories (~/.local/share/games/*game-name* | ~/.config/*game-name*), making it easier to backup your saved games and/or transfer them to another machine. These directories are kept even if the game is uninstalled, so if you re-install it at a later date you will still have your old saved games preserved.

_games are installed system-wide, so on multi-users systems you don’t need to install them once for each user. Each user gets his own saved games/config directories, and even his own mods configuration on games allowing for mods.

_./play.it scripts are not limited to WINE games. I write scripts for DOSBox/ScummVM compatible and native games too.

There are quite a lot of other differences, but these are the most interesting ones for the user ;)

Okay, Thank you. That sounds very useful. I've already tried to make my own tar.gz archives/installers for non-native games but when I weren't able to when Wine installations were very complex.
I'm not interested in system wide installations but I'm sure I can change that.
What? Why? I use POL simply as a GUI and it never has kept me from getting a game to run. Is it easier to do without a GUI in some cases?

I think the closest you'll get to the Windows 8 start menu on Linux is the Unity Dash/Launcher, which is used by default on Ubuntu.

A future (but not-so-distant, let’s say in a couple months) version of the ./play.it scripts will allow to chose between a .deb package or a .tar archive as the final target. The main idea behind this is to allow to add easily new formats to the list through a stable API.
Even with the actual format it should not be too hard to tweak the library to not build a .deb package targeting a system-wide installation. I’m of course available if you want to try it and would like some help ;)
(there’s no documentation yet, but it is another thing coming in the next months)

Well, I’m more at ease without a GUI, and I know WINE inner workings quite well so I might be biased ;)
Of course if you feel more comfortable going through POL you should in no way drop it!

It is about what Ubuntu initially mission stood for. Its not about "Start Screens" - you can get that if you want. Its about very good base for long term easy to manage working system.


It builds on Debian instead of Ubuntu, just like what SteamOS does. You see, Debian is very large project. Its a binary distribution. It has very large collection of installable software. But you can always build from source - tools are present.

Its packages are first created(experimental), then checked for conflicts(unstable aka sid), then bugs are ironed out(testing).

Then testing is "frozen", its bugs are fleshed out, translations finished - and it becomes "stable".

Testing still can get broken packages and bugs. Stable is fully stable, ready to use, package updates are rare - mostly security updates are pushed. You don't have to worry about messed up system.

Ubuntu uses Debian to build own repository tree - it mostly uses sid and testing. Mint builds on top of Ubuntu by just adding a few packages.

Contrary to Debian, Ubuntu has 6 month release cycle - when software becomes release ready, its "Debian testing" equivalent. But the problem with regular Ubuntu release is - its support window is rather small.

Ubuntu LTS is stable equivalent, but Debian stable is supported longer and can be easily upgraded to next version.

Also Debian does not include anything Ubuntu-specific.I mean - Ads, proprietary software bound to your Ubuntu-account, it uses systemd or sysvinit instead of upstart, and has no "coffee"-marketing.

Then specifically, what Solyd does, is to adapt Debian Stable to Desktop.
It has installer with modern graphics (Debian uses Pseudo-graphic installer for large compatibility instead),a good set of (Debian) packages, good design (themes, backgrounds etc) and few own GUI tools to control the system. It also packages own software, that is missing from Debian.

All Solyd stuff comes from dedicated repository - so its easy to detach it and have clean Debian - if you want. Or you can add Solyd repo to any existing Debian installation and add the software to the system.

Compared, Ubuntu is a commercial company that basically tries to squeeze money using Linux. This is what sets Debian or Solyd apart from it. So, if you are looking for anything that Debian stands for in Ubuntu, you will find nothing. Ubuntu builds on hype, Debian - on solid work and freedom, Solyd on ready-to-use Debian. From software perspective, you can always pick so called back-ported software into stable Debian. Software that is currently in testing and was ported back to stable. This includes kernel (you can also use Liquorix desktop kernel) and a lot of software.

If you are to learn Linux fast, then nothing would be faster than using Solyd as base and work with Linux from Scratch in its VM. The amount of technical problems, surprises or maintenance will be exceptionally small without much knowledge or experience.

Are you referring to 3rd party projects like Alien?

That would be most interesting. If it also means you could easily translate in the opposite direction, ./play.it would receive a huge boost overnight.

This puts the project in true perspective. You should definitely document all of if, at least in the official thread.

Maybe Gnome 3 desktop environment offers what you're looking for. Take a look at this picture.

Could this be the reason?