Simply put, it will download and set up Windows applications for you. Moreover it makes tweaking Wine/Proton settings much easier by utilizing their features to create configs for individual programs. There’s no magic there, it’s “just” a tool that makes the process easier, you could do all of this yourself.
If for example you want to install the EA App, Lutris will have some community provided install script that downloads the binary (.exe) and does the initial setup (create folder + default config).
You will need a “runner” to run the app. You need to install this first. Since it’s a Windows app, Proton is the safest bet. Lutris has a menu where you can enable runners, tweak the default config and download different versions of that runner. Under Wine, you’ll find not only that, but also Proton versions (because it’s based on Wine). These are patched to work with Lutris I believe. Just pick the latest proton version without the “-lol” suffix (they are patched for League of Legends and may not work with other stuff) and download it. In the future you can download later versions here and also see what apps you have running on what version. If you remove a version, all apps running on it will run on the default version in the future (which is usually the latest one you have installed).
Then you can search for the EA App on Lutris and try to install it. If it doesn’t work, maybe try a different Proton version. You will see that the app takes on the default configuration for Proton (plus some other stuff you probably shouldn’t change). If you tweak that, it will be tweaked only the this specific app, which allows for custom configs per app. You can change the Proton version used for this app from the default to any other you have installed. If you don’t do this, it will just use the default version. If you do this but then unistall the selected version, so an invalid version is set, it will also default to the default version.
Simply put, it will download and set up Windows applications for you. Moreover it makes tweaking Wine/Proton settings much easier by utilizing their features to create configs for individual programs. There’s no magic there, it’s “just” a tool that makes the process easier, you could do all of this yourself.
If for example you want to install the EA App, Lutris will have some community provided install script that downloads the binary (.exe) and does the initial setup (create folder + default config).
You will need a “runner” to run the app. You need to install this first. Since it’s a Windows app, Proton is the safest bet. Lutris has a menu where you can enable runners, tweak the default config and download different versions of that runner. Under Wine, you’ll find not only that, but also Proton versions (because it’s based on Wine). These are patched to work with Lutris I believe. Just pick the latest proton version without the “-lol” suffix (they are patched for League of Legends and may not work with other stuff) and download it. In the future you can download later versions here and also see what apps you have running on what version. If you remove a version, all apps running on it will run on the default version in the future (which is usually the latest one you have installed).
Then you can search for the EA App on Lutris and try to install it. If it doesn’t work, maybe try a different Proton version. You will see that the app takes on the default configuration for Proton (plus some other stuff you probably shouldn’t change). If you tweak that, it will be tweaked only the this specific app, which allows for custom configs per app. You can change the Proton version used for this app from the default to any other you have installed. If you don’t do this, it will just use the default version. If you do this but then unistall the selected version, so an invalid version is set, it will also default to the default version.
Really sounds a lot more complicated than it is