Faugus Launcher 2.5.5 Adds Draggable Launch Arguments, Drops a Few Buttons
The latest quality-of-life update for the Steam-free Linux game launcher improves launch-argument management and quietly removes some features.
Faugus, the lightweight open-source launcher for running Windows games on Linux without Steam, released version 2.5.5 today. It's a quality-of-life pass rather than a feature bomb. The update lands just three days after 2.5.4. That's a blistering cadence for a project maintained almost entirely by one person under the handle @Faugus.
Faugus exists to do one thing well: get your non-Steam Windows games running on Linux. No terminal required, at least not on your side of the screen. It wraps the Wine and Proton stack behind a clean GTK4 interface. You can launch titles from GOG, the Epic Games Store, Battle.net, or the EA App without ever opening a Steam account. A stray .exe in your Downloads folder works too.
What actually changed
The headline change is drag-and-drop for launch arguments. Past versions made you manage custom command-line flags through fiddly buttons. Now you can drag arguments between your Presets list and the Launch Arguments list, then reorder them freely. It's the kind of tactile detail that's easy to overlook until you've lost it.
It also removes two things. The manual Protonfix picker and the old Launch Arguments buttons are gone. Faugus says most Protonfixes get applied automatically by Proton anyway, so a manual selector was mostly redundant. You can still force a fix via launch arguments like GAMEID=umu-123456. Anything you'd previously configured gets converted into launch arguments during the upgrade, so your settings don't just vanish.
For the uninitiated, UMU is the glue layer that lets you run Proton games without Steam at all. The name comes from a Polynesian above-ground oven of hot volcanic stones. Valve's own container tool is called pressure-vessel, and UMU is basically priming that vessel on the "stovetop." It's worth knowing, since it's exactly why Faugus can offer a Steam-free experience without reinventing a compatibility layer of its own.
The rest of the update rounds things out nicely. Faugus collapsed the Add/Edit Game toolbar into a single dropdown menu and now hides the mouse cursor during gamepad use for a more console-like feel. It also skips redundant cover-art downloads when a title loses focus without changes, and bundles python-psutil into the AppImage to dodge a potential runtime dependency.
One real bug fix rounds out the batch. A startup crash tied to older versions of libmanette when a gamepad is connected is now resolved.
Where 2.5.5 fits
That brings Faugus to a near-monthly release rhythm. The 2.5.x series in particular reads like a sustained refinement pass. Version 2.5.4 arrived on October 27 and delivered real-time settings changes plus a big memory win — roughly 84 percent less RAM after scrolling through a 1,000-game library. Earlier in the month, 2.5.1 improved GPU selection and dropped stale Proton options, while 2.5.0 on October 15 added interface navigation sounds and a Proton Manager that now tracks "Latest" builds.
None of that would exist without the project's defining milestone: the GTK3 to GTK4 rewrite in the 2.0 release of July 2026. Everything since has been iterative polish on that modernized foundation.
A small project with an outsized reputation
Faugus is MIT-licensed and lives under the GitHub org by the same name. The Arch AUR package is kept separately by community member flxrbr, whose listing carries 105 votes. The project itself was created on June 3, 2024, and now sits at roughly 2,600 stars and 94 forks. Community contributions come mostly as translations through Weblate, with donations pushed via Ko-fi and PayPal.
It's a rather lean app for what it offers, though that's the whole point. Faugus doesn't try to out-feature Lutris, Heroic, or Bottles. It doubles down on being simple, fast, and good-looking, then leans on UMU for the messy compatibility work. The tradeoff is real: you cede some granular control. But for anyone suffering launcher fatigue and who just wants a game to actually run, that focus is its real selling point.
Faugus 2.5.5 is available now. Head here to the GitHub release page.
