Minigalaxy: a small GOG client for Linux that only does the three things you need

The three core features, and the optional ones around them

The README names the most important features first, and they are three. Log in with your GOG account. Download the Linux games you own on GOG. Launch them. Everything else is listed as an addition, and the list is a good indication of what the client actually covers. Update your games, install and update DLC, select which language you would prefer to download your games in, change where games are installed, search your GOG Linux library, show all games or just the ones you have installed, view the error message if a game fails to launch, enable displaying the FPS in games, use the system's ScummVM or DOSBox installation, and install Windows games using Wine. The ScummVM and DOSBox integration is a nice touch, because it means a classic adventure title does not need its own runtime shipped, and the FPS display is the kind of small thing a user asks for once and then relies on.

The GOG API break, which is the story the README leads with

The Important section is the one to read first, and it is blunt. GOG has changed some of their API responses around May to July 2026, the exact point in time not known, and this required changing how Minigalaxy retrieves some pieces of data. The consequence is stated without softening: any version of Minigalaxy from before that date will not be able to show and install all Linux and Windows games correctly, and the first release working with the new APIs is 1.4.2. This is worth pausing on as an evaluator, because it says something about the project beyond the version number. A client that talks to a store's private API is coupled to that API whether it likes it or not, and when the store changes the responses the client has to change with it. The dates being imprecise is the tell, since nobody upstream announces a deprecation for an unofficial interface, so the project found out by breaking.

Wine install behaviour changed, and the wizard directory matters

The Backwards compatibility section covers the second compatibility note, and it is a warning rather than a promise. Minigalaxy version 1.3.2 and higher change some aspects of Windows game installations through Wine, and it will try to adapt already installed games to the new concept when launched through Minigalaxy. The Windows installer in Wine now uses a two step attempt, first an unattended installer, and in case that fails the regular installation wizard opens. The request that follows is emphatic: please do not change the install directory c:\game given in the wizard, as this is an elementary part of the Wine fix. That is a detail worth respecting if you are reading the code, because the wizard path is not a user preference but part of how the prefix is laid out, and changing it breaks the mapping the client relies on.

Where to install it, and the one route that works everywhere

The installation section is organised by distribution, and the reach is wide. Debian and Ubuntu have it in the official repositories since Debian 11 and Ubuntu 21.04, with sudo apt install minigalaxy, and the latest .deb is also on the releases page. Arch and Manjaro have an AUR package. Fedora has had it in the official repositories since Fedora 31. FreeBSD has it in the official repositories. Gentoo has it in the GURU overlay, which needs the repository enabled with eselect. openSUSE has it in Tumbleweed and since Leap 15.2. MX Linux has it in the official repository, where the package installer is preferred over a manual .deb. Solus and Void Linux have it in their official repositories. And Flathub carries it as io.github.sharkwouter.Minigalaxy, installed with flatpak install flathub and that identifier. For other distributions the README gives the development route, which is a clone, the translation compile script and then the bin/minigalaxy launcher, or a release tarball from the releases page.

sudo apt install minigalaxy

git clone https://github.com/sharkwouter/minigalaxy.git
cd minigalaxy
scripts/compile-translations.sh
bin/minigalaxy

The dependency set is short, and PyGObject is the binding constraint

The runtime dependencies are two. PyGObject at 3.30 or later and requests, and the project classifiers describe it as an X11 GTK application for end users on POSIX Linux with a topic of games and entertainment. The README's system requirements list is longer, with GTK+, Python 3.10 or later, PyGObject 3.29.1 or later, Webkit2gtk with API version 4.0 support, Python Requests and gettext. The distributions that do not get a package are listed with the reason, that they do not contain the required version of PyGObject, and those are Ubuntu 18.04, Linux Mint 19.3 and openSUSE 15.1. That is the real constraint on the project, not the code, because PyGObject binds to the GTK version the distribution ships and there is no way around it from Python. The README also notes that other distributions may work as well.

Nineteen languages, translated through Weblate

The interface is available in nineteen languages, including Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, English, Dutch, French, Finnish, German, Italian, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Taiwanese Mandarin, Turkish and Ukrainian. The translation workflow is in the Contribute section, where the project asks for help translating on Weblate, and the repository holds the source translations in a data/ directory. The setup.py shows how they are compiled, with a call to scripts/compile-translations.sh during the build and a glob over the data/mo tree to collect the compiled .mo files, and a per-language data_files entry that installs each into share/minigalaxy/translations. The Contributor instructions also list bug reporting, testing issues tagged needs testing, and the help wanted and good first issue labels, so there is a defined path for a new contributor to take on a small piece.

The repository layout, and the packaging around it

The top level of the repository shows a project that is packaged for many distributions rather than shipped as a single artefact. There is a debian/ directory for the Debian package, an appimage-recipe/ for the AppImage, a data/ directory holding the desktop file, the icons, the metainfo and the translations, a scripts/ directory, a minigalaxy/ package for the code, a tests/ directory, and a setup.py alongside a pyproject.toml. The pyproject.toml declares the metadata, the GUI script entry point mapping minigalaxy to minigalaxy.minigalaxy:main, and the package data for the .ui files and icons. The setup.py is the older packaging path and does the translation compilation, the desktop file and icon installation, and the metainfo file. There is also a THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.md, and the licence is GPL-3.0-only, with the licence files list naming both LICENSE and the third party licences file, which is the correct arrangement for a GPL project that ships others' code.

Upkeep and where the project stands

The releases are 1.4.0 on 2025-07-09, 1.4.1 on 2026-01-22 and 1.4.2 on 2026-07-05, and 1.4.2 is the release that works with the changed GOG APIs, which puts it close to the date of the change itself. The last push to the repository was on 2026-10-11, the repository is not archived, and the primary language is Python. The homepage is sharkwouter.github.io/minigalaxy, and the author is Wouter Wijsman. The support surface is a Discord server for help, the issue tracker for bugs and feature requests, and the Weblate project for translations. There is a packaging status badge pointing at repology, which is the way to find out whether your distribution packages it, since the README lists the distributions that carry it but that list ages.

Editorial conclusion

Minigalaxy suits a Linux user with a GOG library who wants a small native client instead of a browser and a Wine prefix for the Windows games, and who is happy to install it from a distribution package rather than a store. It is the wrong choice if you want the full GOG featureset, since the project describes itself as a simple client, and a poor fit for a distribution without a recent PyGObject, because the README lists three distributions it does not ship for on that basis. Before installing anything older than 1.4.2, read the GOG compatibility note, because versions from before the API change will not show or install all Linux and Windows games correctly.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. License: GPL-3.0
2. Project website
3. README
4. Releases
5. sharkwouter/minigalaxy on GitHub