You’re right, my laptop does have a Nvidia card, but I thought one of the main benefits of Linux was being able to run on any hardware, or that’s at least what people have been saying since Windows 11 had certain requirements. I bought my laptop because it was only $250 (in 2017) but still had a 1080p screen and a graphics card, and I was a broke college student who couldn’t afford to be picky. If I could, why not pay a little extra for Windows as well?
Proton’s amazing and it’s made gaming on Linux significantly more feasible, but I struggled on the same laptop getting it to work, and needed to copy in flags and use old versions. It often works without a hitch but it’s still another thing to go wrong. Thankfully there are a lot more native Linux games due to Unity though.
Edit: Mint did give me an easy option to switch to proprietary drivers, but they were the wrong version and crashed when I tried to game. I ended up having to find them and download them manually.