Steam is absolitely the EASIEST way to run games on Linux.
It abstracts Wine, Proton and all the other dependencies so you don’t have to think about it much.
You just install it, download and play exactly the same as you would on Windows.
Don’t some games have a “Windows only” logo on them? Are you saying it will use Wine to launch Windows only games?
I haven’t tried it yet out of sheer laziness, since I already have several Linux bare metal/VM instances running. Right now I have a Windows machine mostly dedicated to Steam. I have sometimes launched Steam on my macs.
Yes, that’s right. Steam can play windows-only games via Proton, which is the exact same thing they are doing on Steam Deck. Steam Deck is what really motivated a lot of work in this area, and why the situation is so good these days.
It sounds like you’ve already got plenty of Linux machines, so perhaps try it for yourself and see.
Well, damn. I might have to get a low-end “gaming” machine and use Linux on it. Windows is so frustrating to use - I don’t want to have my identity managed by their stupid fucking cloud just for a low-end gaming machine. They try to hide the local user path and they seem to keep trying to further enshittify everything about trying to use an OS for the way I want to use it. (Reminds me: I need to read Cory’s book)
I’ve used Windows off and on for years - I mostly stopped paying much attention to MS once I was able to use Mac/Linux for my work daily driver, and only use it in anger for things like gaming and mining.
Just note that (unless they’ve changed the default), you need to enable a setting in Steam to make it always use proton, or it will look like reality matches up with your previous expectations. I believe the setting is under compatability in the steam global settings.
Also be aware that the steam deck compatability icon cares about two things that might not apply to a linux desktop: it loses points for keyboard/mouse centric games (which work fine if you actually use a kb/m instead of controller), and it also cares about how that game will perform on steam deck hardware, though if your gaming PC isn’t very strong, that one might be useful for you.
Protondb has the more accurate compatability info, though it’s crowd sourced, so might not have up to date info on more obscure titles (though it does seem kinda like every single game has at least a small community obsessed with it that consider it the greatest game).
Eyedust@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
Don’t forget Lutris. It may take a bit more tinkering than Steam, but if you have loose games or use multiple games launchers, Lutris can combine them all into one neat and tidy launcher.