Experience: I have a bit of experience with Linux. I started around 2008, distro-hopped weekly, decided on Debian until around 2011, when I switched to Windows as I started getting interested in gaming. Tried switching back around 2015, this time using Arch Linux for about a month, but had some bad experiences with gaming and switched back to Windows. I have had a Debian and Arch VM in Virtual Box since then for testing different applications and a more coherent environment to work with servers.
Understanding: Which brings me to now, I am really interested in using Linux for gaming, I know there is Proton from Valve and that they have been really pushing Linux gaming forward with it.
Thoughts: I have been contemplating dual booting by installing Debian to an SSD and simply using the UEFI boot menu to choose instead of having to install to the EFI of Windows.
I guess, I should just do it, as it won’t affect my Windows installation, and I could test different games and if all works well, move over. This would also allow me to try different distributions, though my heart is for Debian, I even like Debian Unstable.
Note: I am sorry for the wall of text, I am just kind of anxious I guess.
Since that’s going to depend a lot on your own personal Steam library, you can check what works well on Proton with this site. https://www.protondb.com/
You can even enter your Steam Profile link in there and it will show you the ratings of the games you own. Of the 155 I own, 86% had a gold, platinum or native rating.
I had very few that actually failed to run, most of the rest is silver with a few bronze.
Native means the game was built to run on Linux without Proton.
Platinum works perfectly with no tweaks.
Gold works great, but may require some tweaks to work best.
Silver runs with minor issues but is playable.
Bronze runs but may crash or have issues preventing comfortable play.
Borked is unplayable.
I drew the line between silver and gold. If I moved it down one spot to between bronze and silver, almost everything I own would run. I think this is fantastic. This is literally running games that weren’t designed to run on Linux at all, and almost all of them run perfectly.
But is it easier than before? A few years ago I had to set up every game in playonlinux first. Not that big of a deal, but I just want every game to work out of the box like Windows, not set up every game first.
