That part wasn’t aimed directly at you; It was more to head off the inevitable responses that always happen any time the argument gets started. Sorry if it sounded snarky.

Proton isn’t an emulator; It’s a compatibility layer. All it’s doing is taking the Linux<>Windows stuff and converting back and forth. There’s very little efficiency loss, (and some games even run better because Linux tends to be a lighter OS.)

The big issue with Linux is anticheat. Some of the largest anticheat companies have chosen not to support Linux, or the game devs have disabled Linux support on their end. But to be clear, that’s not a choice Linux has made; It’s a choice the game devs made to exclude Linux players, because they want kernel-level control which Linux won’t allow.

Gaming on Linux used to be a big hassle, as it basically required devs to write a native Linux version of the game. But nowadays Proton does that translation for them, and is so lightweight that it’s negligible. If you have any doubts, check out protondb, which is a published list of game compatibility ratings. Gold will play just fine in 90% of cases. Platinum is going to be seamless. Native means there’s a specific Linux version. And Steam Deck Verified simply means the devs have set specific controller/aspect ratio/frame rate/etc settings for when the game is booted on a Steam Deck. Even if it’s not SD Verified, the rating will tell you whether or not the game will boot and run.

SteamOS is just Arch with some tweaks. Game compatibility isn’t even determined by SteamOS; Proton is doing all of the heavy lifting. So as long as the game works with Proton, it’ll boot on Linux.

Nvidia GPUs are absolutely still a problem on Linux. It’s a problem that can be worked around, but it will require working around.

It’s honestly one of the biggest issues with Linux imo. If we want to encourage widespread adoption, it becomes really difficult to persuade people when they find out their GPU is essentially incompatible without major massaging. Especially since Nvidia is the most popular GPU seller on the market.

And the “it’s so easy, people just don’t want to learn” messaging doesn’t actually encourage long term use; If someone has been told that changing is easy but immediately encounters issues, then you’ve just made yourself an untrustworthy source of information in their eyes. They’re more likely to go “welp I guess it’s not for me” and just stop trying. If they’re at least presented with a realistic use-case and some of the most common pitfalls, they’ll be much better equipped to actually soldier on and learn. Just like teaching someone to ride a bike, going “it’s so easy, just keep peddling” does nothing to help when the person is laying in the grass with a scraped knee.

I can’t believe this is relevant…