Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Valve is betting everything on Linux right now... They've been working on Linux support since at least around the time that Microsoft introduced the Windows Store... so for the last twelve years or so. And, man, a couple of months ago I figured out how to run Steam as a separate user on my Xorg system. Not-at-all-coincidentally, I haven't booted into Windows in a couple of months. Not every game runs [0], but nearl…
I used to game on Linux back in the late 2000s through Wine. And I always found the mouse support to be jarring, even if I could get support to a decent level, for some reason the mouse input was never quite as fluid as it should have been. And now I'm reluctant to move back to Linux for gaming, even though they've clearly come so far. I guess I should just go ahead and give it another shot.
You should absolutely revisit. Proton has changed the game. Literally the only game I've tried that was remotely difficult to play in SteamOS is Minecraft, likely because Microsoft owns it now. But I was able to get that working too (if anyone's wondering: you want Minecraft Bedrock Launcher, which is in the Discover store if you're on the Steam Deck and here[1] if you're somewhere else; basically it downloads and runs the Android version of Minecraft through a small translation layer, which is essentially identical to the Windows version).
Speed also is greatly improved from previous solutions. Games played through Proton are often very close in terms of performance to playing them natively.