POL-POM-4 VS kernel-ark

Should the website www.playonlinux.com indicate the situation more clearly too? Any clarification? What do you think of this "mess"?

I noticed the Call of Duty series on Steam, so I expect most or all of them will play perfectly fine on Linux Mint in Steam. If you want to play Windows games outside of Steam, there are apps like Lutris and PlayOnLinux that make running Windows games on Linux pretty easy. https://lutris.net/ https://www.playonlinux.com/ https://www.protondb.com/search?q=call%20of%20duty

If you will to run a game with Wine, use the release version. You can also use PlayOnLinux (I feel old mentioning this), Lutris, and Bottles (this new one I didn't tested yet).

So, I don't use WINE directly. Instead, I use PlayOnLinux, which hides most of the complexity for you. It handles all the WINE stuff on your behalf. It looks like you're using Ubuntu (please remember to include your Linux version in future!), so you can install PlayOnLinux from the standard repositories.

I believe POL is basically dead, see the repo here: https://github.com/PlayOnLinux/POL-POM-4/commits/master where there were only 10 commits over the last 2 years.

https://www.playonlinux.com/ is a good resource to get Windows Apps up and running easily and has a compatibility list of most software

There are also GUI front-ends for WINE. PlayOnLinux has been around for a long time, and Bottles has recently come on the scene. I don't know how to use WINE, but I can use it because of those two apps.

If you want to know if a game is playable or not and it doesn't have a linux version, then the best way I know of is looking it up on lutris. You can't look on protondb, because it's only for Steam games. You can also look on wine and playonlinux, but they usually aren't as exhaustive as lutris.

I find WINE quite complicated to use, so I use PlayOnLinux, which is a front-end for WINE. Unless you need expert mode, it's way easier to use PlayOnLinux than to have to fiddle with setting up an app directly with WINE.

EDIT: Actually, I tested this just now by setting module.sig_enforce=1 in the kernel cmdline and it doesn't work. It turns out Fedora/Ubuntu/etc ship this custom patch in the kernel that explicitly allows using platform (secure boot) keys for verifying kernel modules: https://gitlab.com/cki-project/kernel-ark/-/commit/07db43366d560153fd1d418cfebe2370fb20697e. The patch is not in the upstream kernel yet, so Arch doesn't have it.

kernel patched with cherry-picked zen patches (also used in TKG kernel on Arch https://github.com/Frogging-Family/linux-tkg/blob/master/linux-tkg-patches/6.1/0003-glitched-base.patch) kernel patched with OpenRGB (https://gitlab.com/CalcProgrammer1/OpenRGB/-/wikis/OpenRGB-Kernel-Patch) kernel patched to enable amdgpu for pre-polaris cards by default instead of radeon kernel patched with steam deck support kernel patched with microsoft surface support (https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/tree/master/patches/6.1) kernel patched with asus-linux patches for better asus laptop compatibility. (https://gitlab.com/asus-linux) kernel patched with simpledrm fix/workaround for nvidia (see: https://gitlab.com/cki-project/kernel-ark/-/merge_requests/1788 ) kernel patched with ACS override IOMMU patch for better vfio iommu group control (https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/add-acs-overrides.patch?h=linux-vfio) kernel patched with Lenovo Legion Linux support (https://github.com/johnfanv2/LenovoLegionLinux) kernel patched with customizable USB polling rate support (https://github.com/KarsMulder/Linux-Pollrate-Patch + https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/Linux-Pollrate-Patch) kernel configured with ashmem, binder, and android support for Waydroid QSG_RENDER_LOOP=”basic” set for nvidia cards — fixes nouveau Wayland freezes. The nvidia proprietary driver sets this anyway after installation. This fixes the issue of KDE Wayland often times freezing on first login before nvidia proprietary drivers are installed. latest mesa release version provided for AMD/Intel desktop/GL drivers, mesa-git vulkan drivers provided for latest vulkan fixes/updates, built and updated regularly (every few weeks to a month on average) glibc patched with clone3 disabled (fixes CEF compatibility in applications using outdated CEF such as Discord, Steam beta) glibc patched with broken commits reverted to allow EasyAntiCheat to work for Rogue Company dnf max parallel downloads increased to 6 gst-editing-services disabled — causes WINE to hang when creating new prefixes lspci symlink from /usr/sbin/lspci to /usr/bin/lspci for Dying Light: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/forum/topic/2766/post_id=17381 ‘nobara-controller-config’ package provided for easy installation of xone and xpadneo drivers and firmware. gnome variable refresh rate patches added for mutter: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/1154 gnome mutter check-alive-timeout increased from 5 seconds to 30 seconds. This is the amount of time gnome waits before trying to determine if an application is not responding. At 5 seconds it almost immediately triggers for league of legends (and some other applications) if those applications are still in the loading phase. We feel 30 seconds is a much more reasonable wait time. gnome mutter patched with x11 fractional scaling: https://salsa.debian.org/gnome-team/mutter/-/raw/ubuntu/master/debian/patches/ubuntu/x11-Add-support-for-fractional-scaling-using-Randr.patch gnome mutter wayland and x11 fractional scaling enabled by default: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/HiDPI#Fractional_scaling gnome shell patched with https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/merge_requests/2358 to allow gnome-extension-manager to auto-update without needing gnome-extension-app installed. (They both function the same but gnome-extension-manager allows management of extensions without a browser). gamescope version regularly updated goverlay version regularly updated mangohud version regularly updated vkbasalt version regularly updated vm.max_map_count = 16777216 set by default for Star Citizen xwayland patched with fix for locked fps on some systems: https://build.opensuse.org/package/view_file/home:hwsnemo:xwayland/xwayland/xwayland-vsync.diff?expand=1 supergfxctl and gnome extension + kde plasmoid enabled for laptops. Vendor agnostic and works with any combination of intel/amd/nvidia gpus.

kernel patched with simpledrm fix/workaround for nvidia (see: https://gitlab.com/cki-project/kernel-ark/-/merge_requests/1788 )

kernel patched with futex2 kernel patched with fsync compatibility kernel patched with winesync kernel patched with cherry-picked zen patches kernel patched with OpenRGB kernel patched with AMD CPCC kernel patched to enable amdgpu for pre-polaris cards by default instead of radeon kernel patched with steam deck support kernel configured with ashmem, binder, and android support for Waydroid kernel patched with windows surface support kernel patched with simpledrm fix/workaround for nvidia (see: https://gitlab.com/cki-project/kernel-ark/-/merge_requests/1788 ) QSG_RENDER_LOOP=”basic” set for nvidia cards — fixes nouveau Wayland freezes. The nvidia proprietary driver sets this anyway after installation. This fixes the issue of KDE Wayland often times freezing on first login before nvidia proprietary drivers are installed. mesa-git provided for AMD/Intel drivers instead of latest release, built and updated regularly (every few weeks to a month on average)

Do do indeed, but they also curate their own downstream patches for the kernel and system libs. Their kernel repo is here https://gitlab.com/cki-project/kernel-ark. You have to specifically opt in to vanilla mainline builds of the kernel via https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Kernel_Vanilla_Repositories.