I'm a few months into Linux Mint on my gaming PC and love it; 99% of my games work. The only one that doesn't so far is FiveM but that's because the devs appear to be very anti-linux unless you're hosting a server.

If not for work I'd already be there

Do it, just don't play the games that don't work on Linux. I switched 15 years ago and didn't look back. There are so many games at this point why bother with the ones that only work on Windows?

i mostly quit videogames in order to do this. it's nice to think that maybe I'll get some more of them back

From a gaming perspective: Get a new drive (NVMe/whatever your OS is on), drop Nobara on it, be done, have the option to switch back without a hassle if you need it for some special tasks or games.

And after 6 months find out that you never actually did that so delete windows/migrate it into a VM and enjoy the extra game drive you won.

That's at least what worked for 90% of my friends meanwhile.

The only person I know who routinely uses windows is myself- and I only do so,because I need certain MS Office stuff that I need for work. (And no,libre or Softmaker,etc. are sadly not a replacement for that. )

Best thing I ever did. I got tired of being told how I could use my computer and the spying or course.

I did it a few months ago, honestly after the initial learning it has been a great experience. That's including me having to fuck around with stuff because I chose to run extremely new graphics hardware, and that's kinda on me.

No. To use the Windows build you need to specifically request it in the game's properties

It was the other way around. The default was to run proton-enabled games, but not random titles, unless you enabled proton for everything via the toggle ("enable for all titles") which was off by default.

Now it's on by default and the switch is gone, so it's can't inadvertently be switched off.

That setting defaults to off. Changing the default to on means new users won't have to figure out it exists, and shows confidence in proton

Do you mean the setting called "Enable Steam Play for all titles" that was usually unchecked, that you'd have to go in and check, which some folks wouldn't do (because they might not have known they were supposed to?)

Yes it's very good they now changed this, because if you manually select a proton version you also override the default. Steam actually knows which proton to use for almost every game if the global setting is just on.

Integrating ProtonDB into the steam client would be a nice.

Steam deck compatibility is close enough to the same thing.

Right now, all you have to do is go to the settings of your non-steam game, go to compatibility, and choose a Proton version. I'm not sure if this change will automate it, but it's pretty much as easy as it can be already.

You can just add them and start them. If it doesnt work immediately, you can look at protondb which solution works best.