Use Proton for Windows games on Steam. Use Bottles for everything else: Office, Adobe apps, business tools, non-Steam games. Both run on Wine, which maps Windows API calls to Linux without a virtual machine. DXVK and VKD3D-Proton handle the DirectX side. Wine 11.0 closes most of the remaining gap to native Windows.

This guide covers the full stack in 2026: what each piece does, how to set up Proton and Bottles, how to tune DirectX translation, and what still breaks.

Screen sharing on Wayland fails because Wayland’s security model blocks apps from grabbing other windows or the full desktop. The fix has three layers. First, install the right XDG Desktop Portal backend for your compositor. Second, check that PipeWire is running as your media daemon. Third, set your browser or app to use the portal capture path, not the old X11 one. Once these align, screen sharing works in Zoom, Teams, Discord, and Google Meet on any major Wayland compositor .

PipeWire hits sub-10ms recording latency on Linux once you set the quantum (buffer size) to 64 or 128 samples at 48 kHz. You also need real-time scheduling for your user, through the rtkit service or an audio group with PAM limits. Most “PipeWire doesn’t work” complaints trace back to broken ALSA UCM profiles, Bluetooth codec fallbacks, or WirePlumber rules that quietly override your audio routing. This guide covers every layer of the stack, from PipeWire’s design down to ALSA period sizes, so you can stop guessing.