UMU comes from GloriousEggroll who is well known for making protonGE that’s required to run several games on linux/deck.
It’s not a launcher by itself, but rather something that can be built into other game launchers like Heroic, Lutris, and Junk Store. Right now most all steam games that don’t have anticheat run great on deck without any tweaks. However many of those same games don’t run by default if you install them from Epic/GOG/etc using one of the previously mentioned launchers. The games often require additional windows components to be manually installed with winetricks/protontricks, and many have lesser performance than their steam counterparts.
UMU is supposed to help other launchers have comparable compatibility and performance to what we see in steam native games. This project will hopefully improve the 3rd party launcher experience a lot.
“Why is it called UMU if it is a Universal Wine Utility? … Oooooh, nevermind.”
So the reason provided by the dev is:
Why is it called UMU?
An umu is an above-ground oven of hot volcanic stones originating from Samoans. After the stones are heated, the top layer is removed and the food placed on top to heat/cook. We chose the name because Valve’s containerization tool is named pressure-vessel. We’re “preparing” the pressure vessel similar to how you would use a stove top pressure-cooker – by placing it on our umu’s “stovetop”
