https://www.nexusmods.com/news/15433 As we move into 2026, Vortex is shifting back to the centre of our development roadmap. While we have spent the last couple of years exploring new territory with the Nexus Mods App, we have decided to consolidate our efforts and bring all that innovation directly into Vortex. Over 1.4 million modders use Vortex every month to mod their games, and we’re committed to improving their modding experience.
Our plans for the year include a steady, iterative modernisation of the Vortex user experience. We’ll be investing in the developer experience, which will allow us to focus on quality-of-life improvements, specifically streamlining navigation, simplifying game management, and introducing more intuitive controls for load orders. You can expect the interface to become cleaner and more responsive as we integrate the design lessons learned from our recent projects. Our goal is to make modding more accessible and reliable without disrupting the workflows that long-time Vortex users have come to rely on.
We’re also committing to supporting Vortex on SteamOS. We’ll be targeting vanilla Steam hardware like the Steam Deck and Steam Machine. We won’t be officially supporting any other configurations, but as Vortex is an open source project community developers will be free to extend support for their preferred Linux distros as they please.
Here’s an early proof of concept (subject to change) of the updated Vortex navigation:
I get the feeling only supporting steamos means the Linux version will only support steam games, yes steamos can run Heroic but I’m not sure they know that
Sounds great. It took me like 12 hours to get modded New Vegas working on the Steam Deck. While completely worth it, I’d very much like the process to be just a little bit easier.
Now all I need is for fitgirl repacks to run on linux
Lutris is your answer. https://youtu.be/LZUhBRJwp4M
Works perfectly for me.
Create new empty lutris app, run installer in prefix, set install path to virtual c:, after that you set the executable and that’s it
They do.
Use bottles or something to run the unpacker, then just add it as a new game to Steam, or set up your your own WINE/Proton environment or use some other tool that does that.
They do! It has been a while since I used one but there are ways to get them running well. I had to always check the ram limiting option and there were some permission issues I was running into when I used the default directory.
Then I also ran into issues getting the games to launch using Lutris, instead of adding an exe as a game I would have to run it through Lutris like it was an install exe every time… But I’m pretty sure I just had things misconfigured and was too lazy to try and fix it.
I entirely do not understand why Lutris even exists at this point.
Get a game, add it to Steam, if its gonna work, it’ll work.
Lutris? Gooood luck.
Cuz I don’t want to be dependent on a corporation. If, god forbid, Valve starts to enshitify, I don’t want to go back 10 years in Linux Gaming. And Lutris works just as fine as Steam. So having options is always nice IMO.
Do they usually not? I had no problems with the Starfield repack running it in a proton prefix.
Good. I want to be able to easily mod my Palworld with monstergirls after I have switched to Linux.
If they can get Collections working on Linux… I’d be able to play some modded New Vegas/Fallout 4/Skyrim again! :D
Hey if you’re interested I’m playing modded New Vegas check out a Tale of Two Wastelands. It’s a total conversion collaborative mod project that combines 3 and New Vegas into a single streamlined experience, and so much more.
Oh, my friend! You are preaching to the choir here!
Tale of Two Wastelands was the first time I was fully immersed in a video game. I played for over 200 hours through that game. All the DLC, any encounters or places I could find on the map, the whole works.
I also got some mods for either Fallout 3 or NV that made static models like cargo flaps or old electric wires animated to seem like they have wind going across them. I can try to find them again if you’d like!
I thought I was smart and zipped the game (TTW) so that I could always have it ready to go, but alas, I think I was stupid and didn’t back it up or deleted it for some reason. ;(
Very nice!
I haven’t tried modding on Linux in a while, so seeing “SteamOS” support is nice to see as that probably means proton support.
Last time I tried modding Fallout New Vegas on Linux…it didn’t end well.
they already had a mod manager that they worked on for years that worked on linux. i used it in december for cyberpunk and stardew valley and it worked better than vortex. they discontinued it a few days ago.
And it worked fine with finding the game’s folder under .steam?
I mostly mod Bethesda games, so MO2 is the defacto and it’s what I default to. So I’m kicking myself right now for not trying other mod managers if MO2 just wasn’t the right tool for the job…
yep, worked perfectly with linux steam and proton
I died a little when I learned they were canceling their Linux mod manager project the other day, but if they are making Vortex run on Linux instead I have some hope.
some hope
I read this news as: “The Linux proof of concept has graduated and will be merged into the main app”.
Nah, its more like they spent a year or two trying to figure out how to actually support linux, and disastrously failed, and the new plan is ‘let proton handle it’.
They spent a few years trying to make a linux piece of software, … and have totally abandoned it as a failure, and are now just saying the new plan is to… make the old app … do the thing … that they initially started the project of the new app to do … because they could not figure out how to make the old app do it.
… Uh huh.
They’re claiming they’re going to support SteamOS and also the hardware of a SteamDeck or SteamMachine.
This makes no sense.
Blam, I’m running Bazzite on my Deck or Machine… does their new idea of Vortex work on that?
Does it… only work on SteamOS, so… its… gonna be a flatpak?
If its gonna be a flatpak, it would work on nearly any linux OS, so why say its only targetting SteamOS?
Or… will it require you going into SteamOS, manually disabling the thing that by default prevents you from fucking with the core read only by default OS, and setting up custom Arch packages from the AUR, or will they have you do a fully manual install?
None of what they have said actually makes any sense.
Conclusion: They’re utterly incompetent with all things linux and have no idea what they are even talking about, much less how to create actual linux software.
Meanwhile Limo does 90% of what you need a native linux mod manager version of a Nexus app to do, has done so for 2 years now, and is free for them to fork.
But they’re not doing that.
… they’re morons.
NexusMods is to mods as CrunchyRoll is to anime.
Sounds like it’s time for a new community effort instead
I’ve been using Limo and I like it; it’s quite flexible but not very noob friendly, which is a two part problem.
First is how deployers work and which ones you should set up (not easy to intuit).
The second is inconsistency. Primarily in packaging from mod authors: archives based on path structure of game root
./*, library root./game/*, partials inside the game folder hierarchygame/folder/./*, loose files, … And unavoidably: sometimes mods include INI or other game related files that go somewhere else entirely…All of that is manageable, but not easily, especially for people who just want to click to install a mod like how the Steam Workshop works.
I’ve been using Limo for 2 years now to run 10+gigs of mods for FONV, CP77, and Kenshi, on a Steam Deck.
I have been doing that since before NMM even claimed to support modding CP77 on Linux. It never really correctly did.
Limo is not that hard, it just isn’t an easy button.
And oh dear god the horror, you have to download all the files you want instead of just clicking once to download a collection.
And even worse, use your brain a little bit to figure out how to unfuckup mistakes make by amateur modders, gasp, the horror!
I’ve been modding since the 90s and its actually hilarious to me the level of no-thinking, on demand convenience people demand.
Go try to set up a full KSP Realism Overhaul install.
They just straight up tell you that if you can’t figure out how to follow their instructions, which are correct and do work… you’re not smart enough to play the mod overhaul.
We need more of that energy, to counteract consumerism and AI driven brainrot.
I tried using Limo though and as you said, it is not noob friendly but i finally decided to use Windows mod managers in prefixes instead… Althrough i might give it try once again
Once I got the hang of deployers (and got used to repacking poorly packaged mods…), I found Limo to be better than managing mods manually… But yeah, the windows alternatives have way better UX
Oh yeah I think I heard of that. Sounds like it may just need a bit of specifics applied to mods. Fingers crossed.
Mod Organizer 2?
Works but gets annoying very fast because you have to set up a distinct MO2 install/wine/proton instance for every single different game you want to mod, and half the guides / autoscripts for how to properly set up MO2 on linux are half broken to fully broken on half the forms of linux they claim to work on.
That being said, if you can find a version that works for your setup, and you’re primarily only modding one game at a time… its a reasonable solution.
I love how the new UI is just ripped directly from Discord lol
There’s only so many ways to do a docked panel layout. At some point something is going to resemble something else.
Is it? I only see the sidebar being identical.
I’ve been using Mod Organizer through Steam Tinker Launch.
Since Vortex also uses mod profiles and instancing, I may switch just to make things easier. However, MO is pretty damn good.My experience says: don’t. Vortex uses some weird-ass GUI toolkit that doesn’t like running on Wine. Mouse-related events (hover, click, drag) sometimes don’t fire. If MO works for you, Vortex is probably not worth the effort.
They said they’re releasing a native Linux version
They’re completely incompetent at all things linux and are not capable of doing that in a way that is not horrendously broken.
If this was not the case, they’d be talking about how they are forking Limo, after having spent the last year or two attempting to develop a linux app, and failing so hard they dropped it.
I know, I was talking about the state of Vortex as of today.
i got pissed off with mod organizer when I lost an entire fallout 4 run because it just suddenly decided my mods didnt exist anymore. Just poofed, into the ether. and no, it wasnt cause a fallout update, this was before the latest update debacle.
that’s literally not how any of this works…
Not how any of this is supposed to work.
