Release Day 2022.7.14

It’s Release Day again!

Two more weeks of work have been done and it’s time to celebrate another release day!

This release brings many new features, performance improvements and bug fixes.

News

Ok now let’s get to the point. What’s new in this version?

Soda - For an Even More Sparkling Experience

With this release we introduce a new default runner, designed to solve compatibility issues and decrease the risk of regressions given by Wine’s fast development.

Soda - new default runner

Why?

The decision to create a new runner took a long time and was not easy, the first tests began months ago. The main reason that led us to this choice is mainly the direction that Bottles is taking and the need to offer a runner that is as compatible as possible with the type of software run by our users (mostly games) but without penalizing all others.

Caffe (the previous runner) is based on Wine and strictly follows its updates, quickly receiving all improvements but also any regressions. Although Caffe provides extra patches that fix some of these and improve software compatibility, it was not always the best choice and users were forced to choose third-party runners that might not be officially supported when used in Bottles.

We had to find a compromise, a development branch that would be kept separate from Wine but at the same time receive improvements and fixes. We therefore chose to base the new runner on Valve’s Wine, the base used for Proton. It was not very complex since we use TKG for our runner builds and this allows us to compile a variant based on this version of Wine as well as allowing us to apply a large number of patches and possible custom without too many complexities (we will never stop thanking the TKG team for the enormous and valuable work they do).

As a result was born Soda, a runner based on Valve’s Wine, with patches from Proton, TKG and GE. This runner is designed and tested for Bottles and is officially supported, giving us the freedom to fix any problems independently.

The versioning of this release will be different from Coffee and Vanilla since Valve’s Wine is based on Wine 7.0 and follows its own release cycle. Each Soda release will be based on the most up-to-date branch and will be marked with a number indicating its build (e.g. 7.0-2).

About the name.. well we think it will be a sparkling experience 👀.

Will Caffe be Deprecated?

No. Like Vaniglia, we will keep Caffe updated with latest Wine updates and patches.

Experimental Sandbox per Bottle

We announced the intent to provide a bottle sandbox several months ago, a sandbox that would allow the permissions of the environment in which the bottle lives to be restricted. With this release this is present as an experimental feature (in early development).

The sandbox uses flatpak-spawn when Bottles is installed as Flatpak and bubblewrap for all other formats.

As always, to activate the experiment, you need to access the Bottles preferences and activate the dedicated toggle in the Experiments section, then restart Bottles.

New Installers UI

Since the launch of the installers, we have collected all the reports and suggestions and redesigned the user experience according to these. We really like the result and it gives the user a clear view of what is happening and the status of the installation.

Once the desired installer is chosen, a dialog is shown asking for confirmation, any other settings follow if required, and the installation process is then displayed in a minimal, clean interface.

The progress status is no longer silent and now shows what is happening (e.g., whether it is installing dependencies, configuring bottle parameters, installing components, or something else).

Ubisoft Connect Integration

Work continues to integrate Bottles with the Windows software it runs. We are still in the gaming context, and after Steam and Epic, comes support for the Ubisoft Connect launcher.

Once the integration is enabled and Ubisoft Connect is installed in the bottle, Bottles will be able to detect the games installed through the launcher and will list them in the program list. These will be launched through the launcher so as to benefit from the cloud and all necessary implementations and controls.

Library Mode Improvements

Work continues on Library Mode, the multi-bottle library for cataloging all installed programs.

Now the library can be reached from the dedicated tab directly on the main screen of Bottles. We also started the integration with covers, added support for Steam, Epic Games Store and Ubisoft Connect integrations, fixed the icons and cleaned up the design in general to make it more uniform with the libadwaita redesign.

All other changes

There are many other changes and improvements in this release. Below are some noteworthy ones, for all others, please refer to the GitHub organization.

New experimental feature: sandbox per bottle
Soda is the default runner based on Valve’s Wine plus some TKG/GE patches
Installers has a new refreshed UI with more info and tracking process
Ubisoft Connect integration
Wine LoL runners are now unlocked in Flatpak
New “standalone” option in bottles-cli to generate a custom script for running programs in a bottle without passing though Bottles
Some performance improvements
New CLI download progress bar with speed, size and eta
New SteamManager which improve performances a bit
Improved UI for experimental library mode
Discovered Epic Games are now launched brought the Epic Games Store, using Cloud Sync and Anti cheat
Core dependencies are now checked on boot on non Flatpak packages
Now setting the env var DXVK_CONFIG_FILE=bottle_root will automatically point to the dxvk.conf file in the bottle root
Some dialogs improvements (thanks to @TheEvilSkeleton)
A dialog warning of the sandbox is shown by launching the first executable
Improved bottle template caching for smallest sizes
Runners now show a description of their purpose and composition
Minor UI improvements
Fix for broken templates not being re-generated
Fix dependencies keys not being removed on uninstall
Fix duplicated dependencies on re-install
Fix a regression in hiding auto-discovered programs
Fix a regression in adding entries to the library, were not supporting the new programs structure
Fix Wine-GE builds being detected as Proton builds (thanks to @nicobatty)
Fix a regression in the issues similarity check for the crash report dialog
Fix issue of being able to add colon to bottle name (thanks to @axtloss)
Fix issue of invisible checkbox in ‘launch as terminal’ dropdown (thanks to @axtloss)
Fix a bug in External_Programs migration when its structure was compromised
Fix duplicated programs when re-executing installers
Fix UI disappearing on two-finger swipe
Fix a regression in Environment Variables dialog not storing new entries on first save
Fix states not being displayed on first state generation
Fix regression in bottles-cli edit option
Vietnamese translations thanks to @lebao3105, @CuCai2413
Chinese (Simplified) translations thanks to Eric
Dutch translations thanks to @flipflop97
Norwegian translations Bokmål thanks to Stian Øverbye
Russian translations thanks to @Knebergish, Nikita Epifanov, @Smoque
Czech translations thanks to @vikdevelop
Polish translations thanks to @Mikutut
Catalan translations thanks to @rogervc
Swedish translations thanks to @alvarlagerlof, @Lemonmeth
Japanese translations thanks to @ryonakano
Hungarian translations thanks to @Jabybaby
Serbian translations thanks to Andrija Djakovic
Indonesian translations thanks to @engkih
Portuguese (Brazil) translations thanks to @vitorhcl
Korean translations thanks to @PolyPaul