From what I've seen there has been some confusion over the state Lutris as the last version was seemingly 0.5.18 in Dec 2024 and "nothing since". However version 0.5.19 is available as a tag within the github repository from Feb 2025, and they're working on 0.5.20. It sounds like there is some issue with the 0.5.19 git, and development overall has slowed down as the lead dev is working full time.

I think a lot of this shows how open source software is so dependent on a small number of active people keeping projects going and there isn't money flowing into otherwise very important and popular projects.

I like Lutris but I think Heroic is probably more fully featured than Faugus at present.

Faugus is an UMU-Launcher. UMU Launcher is essentially a open implementation of the Steam Runtime Tools and Steam Linux Runtime, which can run independently of Steam itself - it essentially aims to be Proton as you get in steam, without needing steam running. It aims to be a single shared implementation to simplify Proton fixes and implementations which are otherwise fragmented and duplicated - each game gets fixes applied individually by each of the existing games launchers in their own projects. It's a laudable aim, but it's not clear whether it can achieve it's aims as Lutris, Heroic, Bottles etc are still doing their own things. So at the moment it's another launcher?

Haven't even heard of Faugus until this post, so I won't be able to sell you on it.

I used Lutris for quite a while but had to drop it because there's some really bad network coding in there that causes it to essentially DDoS my DNS server if it can't give what it expects. For example, when I had installed Dead Space Remake, it was looking for OG assets, which has been moved to a new location, and Remake took that original location. It was sending well over 1000 DNS requests a second for several seconds before my DNS server would 10 min blacklist my PC. If took me 2 weeks to figure out exactly what was happening because I wasn't noticing it was Lutris specifically and was thinking my NIC drivers were killing my connection.

I moved to Heroic and tbh, I don't see anything in Faugus that Heroic isn't already doing. I have GOG, Epic, and Amazon games in there, cloud saves with GOG, achievements with GOG (but no pop-ups), and they've been using umu for a long time. Also automatically adds my games to Steam with assets. They also have a Wine manager and will actively check for game updates.

Does anyone know what Faugus does better? I'm interested, but like OP, I'd have to be sold on it too.

LinuxNext has a nice long video about it.

https://youtu.be/poeATq07XbQ

My understanding is that lutris is actually in maintenance mode (still around but not being updated) so this is meant to be a replacement for that... and bottle is a more general purpose tool without the gaming enhancements, hence this is being promoted these days.

From what I understand which isn't much: Faugus gave me the impression it's using that Debian based Steam runtime and makes it sound like Lutris, Bottles, etc don't even if you're using Proton. Does it matter? You tell me.

In practice I've not noticed any difference when I tested it out on a couple games to experiment. I don't use Faugus because Gamescope doesn't work yet according (last read a couple months ago) to their github page. If the old projects are dying then whatever. I'll use Faugus Launcher when it's actually ready.

I liked the GUI so far anyways so I won't be upset if I have to switch.

I just use heroic for everything now. seemingly umu is just built in and I can get hdr working without too much fuckery if any depending on how much I remember of setting up the previous game that has that feature

Lutris feels dated, bottles never felt like a gaming related launcher, heroic isn't an option for me because of electron, which pretty much just leaves Faugus.