Doesn't work on Linux

[בתאניה]

You would think if everything else works on linux via proton compatibility mode that this would also, but nope..

Literally everything else that I have tried runs on linux flawlessly by choosing the right proton version, even brand new, just released games..

[Tim]

That is because Wallpaper Engine is not a game. Wallpaper Engine must be deeply integrated into the operating system, it's unfortunately not as simple as "run proton to magically make it work". Linux also has wildly different desktop managers which significantly differ and some of them do not even support any type of live wallpapers at all (most notably Ubuntu). See our lengthy write-up here why there is no official Linux support:

https://help.wallpaperengine.io/en/functionality/linuxmacos.html

Long-story short: It's not that easy and if it was, we would have done it already.

[בתאניה]

Originally posted by element109:

https://github.com/catsout/wallpaper-engine-kde-plugin

Thanks for the link, ill check it out.

[בתאניה]

Originally posted by Tim:

That is because Wallpaper Engine is not a game. Wallpaper Engine must be deeply integrated into the operating system, it's unfortunately not as simple as "run proton to magically make it work". Linux also has wildly different desktop managers which significantly differ and some of them do not even support any type of live wallpapers at all (most notably Ubuntu). See our lengthy write-up here why there is no official Linux support:

https://help.wallpaperengine.io/en/functionality/linuxmacos.html

Long-story short: It's not that easy and if it was, we would have done it already.

I know Unity Engine works on Linux, and last I checked wallpaper engine was made with it, so that's why I figured it would work with a proton compatibility mode..

[Tim]

No, Wallpaper Engine supports Unity-apps as wallpapers, but this is just a "side feature". The core of Wallpaper Engine is a custom-written engine by us with a focus on high performance on the desktop. This is why a port is just not that simple.

The KDE plugin linked by the other user can get a lot of basics to work but this only works for KDE-based Linux systems (like Kubuntu) and even then it causes a lot of functionalities of the desktop environment to break (some basic functionalities stop working, frequent crashes of the desktop environment etc.) and does not render wallpapers correctly. It's a typical case of the pareto principle in computing. The first 80% of work takes 20% of time and the last 20% would take 80% of time. So on paper, it looks like this plugin is really close to a port, but in reality it's actually very far away from something that could be shipped to paying customers. It is very, very difficult to port an entire custom game engine (Wallpaper Engine is basically a simple game engine) to Linux and integrate that into a desktop environment.

And on top of that, Linux has not one but a dozen different desktop environments, some of which do not support live wallpapers at all. So we would need months to get this to work and if we exclude popular distributions like Ubuntu, we would be doing all of this for less than 1% of the Steam user base, coupled with the fact that it would also mean a lifetime of ongoing maintenance effort.

[D4rkness]

For everyone:
I will add on to this, someone on linux made an unofficial plugin for KDE Plasma (the second-most commonly used desktop environment on linux, and the most windows-like, extremely popular DE) that enables wallpaper engine support https://store.kde.org/p/2194089/

For the users:
The best distro i can recommend that uses KDE Plasma is Fedora KDE Plasma Spin, very user friendly with everything set up out of the box, the built in app store UI is also used for installing KDE Plasma plugins, give it a try for this app!

For the devs:
i will say that enabling linux support isnt as bad as the steam statistics make it out to be, since most distros only either use KDE Plasma or GNOME (which is what ubuntu uses) (both of these desktop environments support plugins, so its possible to build plugins that enable wallpaper engine support), so it isnt quite as difficult as needing to focus specific support on every single distro (though i will admit it isnt easy either, but its not like some insurmountable task), you only really need to focus support on KDE Plasma and GNOME.

Hope this helps!

[ThotamousPrime™]

Originally posted by Vex:

For everyone:
I will add on to this, someone on linux made an unofficial plugin for KDE Plasma (the second-most commonly used desktop environment on linux, and the most windows-like, extremely popular DE) that enables wallpaper engine support https://store.kde.org/p/2194089/

For the users:
The best distro i can recommend that uses KDE Plasma is Fedora KDE Plasma Spin, very user friendly with everything set up out of the box, the built in app store UI is also used for installing KDE Plasma plugins, give it a try for this app!

For the devs:
i will say that enabling linux support isnt as bad as the steam statistics make it out to be, since most distros only either use KDE Plasma or GNOME (which is what ubuntu uses) (both of these desktop environments support plugins, so its possible to build plugins that enable wallpaper engine support), so it isnt quite as difficult as needing to focus specific support on every single distro (though i will admit it isnt easy either, but its not like some insurmountable task), you only really need to focus support on KDE Plasma and GNOME.

Hope this helps!

I was also just looking into this, I may be dumb but I'm having trouble finding the "wallpapers" to subscribe too in the workshop. Have you found that? Or just skip that step? Because I can't find it anywhere