From my understanding, at least one other necessary component is dxvk, and that wine is not enough.
If I dont use lutris or some other manager, how can I game on linux? do I have to configure dxvk? do I need soemthing else too? vulkan?
Is there a guide that explains it?
You really want to be using a separate prefix for each game, to keep any game-specific tweaks and settings separate.
Managing that without something like lutris or bottles IS A HUGE PAIN IN THE ASS, DO NOT EVEN TRY IT. Literally no-one does this. You will not find a guide.
But if you insist, yes, you’ll need a version of wine, as well as dxvk. Both you can install yourself.
Vulkan you should have already on most distros.
Then there’s a litany of optional windows dependencies that you can/have to install within a prefix, using winetricks, some of which will be necessary to run some things, while others will break other things.
But seriously. If you want to fiddle with the details, while not going insane with tedious prefix management, just use Bottles.
My issue with lutris is that when I used it before and something didn’t work, or used to work but broke, I was completely at a loss, because I did not understand what all it is doing exactly. It just felt that what lutris is doing is a bit too obfuscated or unclear to me.
Is bottles any better on that front?
Yes. I find prefixes in bottles much easier to configure. It’s all the same stuff, but the UI is simply better IMO.
But if that’s the problem you were having, setting off to manage wine yourself will only make it worse. You would be massively increasing the amount of legwork you’d have to do, not decreasing it.
Also grab protonup while you’re at it. It can download specific proton/wine versions for you and put the files in all the right places for the extra versions to be selectable in bottles/steam.