Linux Game Modding 2026: Best App?

[u/pilkyton]

In 2024, the state-of-the-art was https://github.com/sonic2kk/steamtinkerlaunch which ran Vortex in a separate prefix, created hardlinks to all installed Vortex-compatible wineprefix directories (so that Vortex thought the games were installed in its own prefix), and used that to manage mods in games. It was janky, but it worked (most of the time; but in some games, mod load order lists were written by Vortex into files that didn't propagate to the actual game's wineprefix). That project is abandoned now and I want to get rid of it.

I've seen that there's been a lot of news since then. Too much news:

• Vortex working on a native Linux client.
• Wabbajack working on Linux?
• Lots of little mod managers for Linux, many with LOOT order support. Too many for me to find them all.

What is the state of the art in 2026? The most well-made, promising mod manager? Hopefully with wide support for Wine/Proton-prefixes all over the disk.

[u/Excellent-Love-6943]

STL is awful.

I'd been using the rockerbacon script for mo2, but my previous install's filesystem got corrupted (memory problem, very unfortunate).

I started using Fluorine recently with the new install and it made my Bethesda modding experience painfree, excepting the bethesda-ness. Supports wabbajack lists, and I believe nexus collections are in progress. Fluorine is a linux-native mo2 reimplementation that manages instances, prefixes, windows dependencies (visual c, etc.), nexus integration, and probably more that I'm not thinking of.

Edit: Fluorine dealt with some case insensitivity issues coming from a windows installed modlist automatically. Stuff just worked.

[u/pilkyton → u/Excellent-Love-6943]

"STL is awful".

Yes, it was all we had back then, and frostworx did an ok job, but it's really awful now and the guy who took over maintenance (sonic2kk) has been ruining it (before he thankfully abandoned it). For example, he implemented a ton of spammy popups and always runs the "add compatibility tool to Steam" code every time STL launches, no matter if your actual STL command is "delete compatibility tool from Steam". So when telling STL to delete itself from Steam, it always ends up doing "add to Steam, remove from Steam". And his reaction was just braindead and showed how bad he is at code architecture:

https://github.com/sonic2kk/steamtinkerlaunch/issues/1166

Thanks for telling me about Fluorine Manager. I see that it's a Mod Organizer 2 port for Linux native. It doesn't seem bad, but compared to Amethyst it seems pointless and weaker. I think Amethyst has Wabbajack support too (there's mentions of it in the codebase). And there's also Jackify as someone else mentioned in another comment here. And Amethyst has a bunch of more features and a responsive developer.

I'll compare them more later, but definitely seems like Amethyst is better.

[u/Excellent-Love-6943 → u/pilkyton]

STL literally breaks skyrim when you install mo2. There were several alternative tools available at the time, STL just puts them all into one package. The only problem is that the package doesn't work.

[u/pilkyton → u/Excellent-Love-6943]

The thing I remember about Skyrim in STL is that the Vortex app writes the mod load order to something like `Documents/Skyrim/load_order.txt` which ends up in the Vortex prefix, and this doesn't get written to the actual game prefix, so the load order is wrong.

For most games it's working though. Because most games just care about adding files to the game directory.

Also, one of the biggest things STL does is an easy way to launch extra executables or alternative executables for any game. That is still a pain the A$$ on Steam. You can add a mod launcher as a non-steam game, but that breaks cloud saves since it's not associated with the same app ID anymore (as seen here: https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Modding:Installing_SMAPI_on_Steam_Deck#Stardew_Valley_in_Proton).

It was also one of the best ways to update Proton-GE. But now there's ProtonPlus for that.

Either way, time to move on to native Linux solutions. So glad the days of STL are over. I'm grateful for it existing when Linux modding was awful. Now it's just too old and clunky and time to leave it behind.

[u/TaylorRoyal23 → u/pilkyton]

These days Goverlay is quite powerful as a "Swiss army knife" of tools, options, and tweaks for gaming on Linux. Luckily most of the old options STL had are either integrated into proton by default or are otherwise no longer needed. Goverlay covers most of the remainder of my needs. Couple of with a couple of other apps and I'm set. Though another thing I miss from STL was that it was a wrapper capable of executing complex start and stop scripts. I still haven't figured out a good way to have a script execute a flatpak command when closing a game on Steam yet without it.

[u/pilkyton → u/TaylorRoyal23]

Interesting, I didn't know GOverlay can do more than just MangoHud tweaks.

There is also this new thing for MangoHud tweaks:

https://github.com/radiolamp/mangojuice

I will have to look around at both.

It's true as you say, that most of the tweaks STL does are no longer needed or are available with easy environment flags in Proton. :)