Correct, it’s less efficient than Wine, but more compatible. Adobe and Microsoft software still has issues in Wine, so a VM is the best option for them.

To explain some terms in over simplified ways:

VM = Virtual Machine = Making a virtual sandboxed computer that runs full Windows inside it.

Wine = Wine Is Not an Emulator = A translation layer that converts Windows Program Commands into Linux Program Commands.

Wine has to be crafted for every needed Windows command, in order to translate the command into something Linux can understand. So if a program is using a Windows command Wine hasn’t seen before, it’ll fail.

VMs instead run an entire OS, in this case Windows, so that we don’t have to craft every command, as Windows handles the program like normal, and then the VM provides Windows with virtual hardware to work with instead. Naturally, making pretend hardware and running an entire OS inside another OS eats up more resources, so VMs are worse than Wine in that regard.

No. If something runs in Wine, still use that. WinApp is basically a Windows VM combined with some other tools to allow Windows apps on the VM to run more seamlessly and native feeling. It makes picky apps like the Adobe and Microsoft suites happy since it’s using full Windows to run them, but this means there’s more overhead than running an app through Wine or natively.

I did find this

I would definitely recommend trying WinApps first, which that guide seems to be for. Never tried to get it running on Bazzite/SilverBlue/Universal Blue though, so can’t help you there.

Should at least change the link to the GitHub repo then, as the site is dead and the domain could be picked up by somebody malicious.

https://github.com/CrankshaftForSteam/crankshaft

Great list, but remove Crankshaft. It’s basically dead now, and pretty much everything it could do is now possible in Decky, including video capture.