umu-launcher

Unironically, I had the most success with old windows programs not when using wine directly but using proton with steam. I personally use umu[1] to use proton without directly needing to run steam. I wrote a small KDE script for .exe files so I can just double click them and they run lol. Or for setups I can right click them and just install them as a setup and it automatically creates a app shortcut I can open. [1]https://github.com/Open-Wine-Components/umu-launcher

There is also UMU Launcher[0] which is basically all that without the Steam integration/dependencies so you can run games from GOG and other stores (it is a command-line tool but launchers like Heroic can use it behind the scenes). I used to install dxvk, etc manually but in recent months i switched to it as it tends to work much more seamlessly for games (i did disable its autoupdates though). [0] https://github.com/Open-Wine-Components/umu-launcher

Lutris doesn't have to mean Wine. It can launch apps via Proton too (and so can Heroic). I think it uses https://github.com/Open-Wine-Components/umu-launcher behind the scenes, not sure, but so far I haven't run into any issues with this approach.

Lately I've been using umu-launcher [1] which is a wrapper and compatibility tool for the proton used by steam and I'm quite satisfied about it. It's shipped with configurations for 3000+ games, might be worth a try if you're having trouble with the configs. Take it with a grain of salt, I don't have much experience in running windows application on Linux, I just had some problems with wine and I discovered umu to be pretty straightforward and easy to use. [1] https://github.com/Open-Wine-Components/umu-launcher

There are now third party launchers for proton, such as: https://github.com/Open-Wine-Components/umu-launcher As well as "game libraries": Lutris, Bottles, Heroic Personally I use this alias to launch an exe via proton: alias proton='SteamGameId="${SteamGameId-1000}" PROTON_USE_WINESYNC=1 STEAM_COMPAT_CLIENT_INSTALL_PATH="$PWD" STEAM_COMPAT_DATA_PATH=$HOME/proton /usr/share/steam/compatibilitytools.d/proton-cachyos/proton waitforexitandrun' # cd /gamepath # proton Game.exe