Out of the 11 games I've bought through Steam this year, I've had to refund one (1) because it wouldn't run under Proton, two (2) had minor graphical glitches that didn't meaningfully affect my enjoyment of them, and two (2) had native Linux builds. Proton has gotten good enough that I've switched from spending time researching if I can play a game to just assuming that I can. Presumably ymmv depending on your taste in games of course, but I'm not interested in competitive multiplayer games with invasive anticheat which appears to be the biggest remaining pain point.

My experience with running non-game windows-only programs has been similar over the past ~5 years. It really is finally the Year of the Linux Desktop, only few people seem to have noticed.

> It does sorta require Windows.

The vast majority of my gaming library runs fine on Linux. Older games might run better than on Windows, in fact.

Steam's Wine thing works quite well. And yes you need to fiddle and do work arounds including giving up getting some games to work.

Proton/Steam/ Linux works damn nearly flawlessly for /most/ games. I've gone through a Nvidia 2060, a 4060, and now an AMD 6700 XT. No issues even for release titles at launch.