Yes, you can either add the game as a non-steam game and force proton, or use Lutris or Bottles (with proton or other WINE runner). For repacks with installers, you can launch the setup.exe with Lutris or Bottles (install the game to 'fake' drive_c and move it), just make sure you include dependencies that require it (usually .net framework).

Source: most of my steam library on my steam deck is plundered loot

Linux is paradise when it comes to emulation 🎮

Lutris is good for that. It can be confusing at first if you don’t know how Wine works, but it’s very easy to use and doesn’t require Steam.

not purchase games?

😏

Yes, Steam doesn’t do anything

You can just as easily use Wine/Proton as your runner as you can set up Steam to use Wine/Proton as your runner

yes but steam is so easy

Sure. I've run several modern ... repurposed... games and it usually works through lutris.

Yes, but it will take some learning time

It's getting pretty easy to ditch Windows these days. Microsoft got too greedy and desperate, and actually using the damn platform they built is getting harder and harder, especially if you don't want the nagging and annoyances that come from them trying to turn your computer into their subscription revenue stream. My impression is that Valve is aware of the problem, and wants to make sure that their store works regardless of which operating system you prefer.

You'll be just fine. So long as they fix the issues with anticheat software at some point. Gaming on linux is great these days in most cases though.

I'm just hoping 12 is better.. somehow.. and soon? I loathe 11.

You don't need GOG Galaxy. I play my GOG games through Heroic Games Launcher on my Artix Linux system.

Path of Exile is rated Gold on ProtonDB and according to reports works out of the box through Steam Proton.

I haven't tried installing gog but I do play path of exile on Linux, with a controller. Flawless ( my distro off choice is nobara)

The problem with Linux as a desktop is that all the money and investment goes into server use cases. There really aren’t many companies investing into the desktop. I think Valve might he the only big company with a major interest in it, but they’re mostly focusing on their own closed ecosystem. It’s the classic chicken and egg problem.

So if magically we see desktop usage go up, investment will go up, and we’ll see much more momentum.

Regarding viability though, I think that’s not going to be solved with more investment. The problem is the millions of people making trillions of documents in MS Office. Microsoft goes out of their way to make it extremely difficult for competitors to achieve 100% compatibility. Unless that changes through regulation or something (since it’s clearly anticompetitive), I don’t think the hypothetical linux desktop wave will survive very long.

Adobe, Autodesk, and a few others are also at fault for not supporting linux, but that’s a different issue. They’ll go where the money is, and if Linux usage goes up, they’ll have to support it or risk losing their strong market positions.

It’s all an annoying chicken and egg problem.

A lot of responses and none of them are false but the main reason for the improved gaming performance is DXVK, it translates DirectX 9 and 11 to Vulkan and is used by default on every DX9/DX11 game on Linux when you use Proton.

The Vulkan stack on modern GPUs is much more optimized compared to DX9 and 11. It has gotten so bad that many Windows people use DXVK on Windows to solve performance issues and even Intel uses DXVK (or similar technology) for their Arc GPUs.

not OP but similar situation. My Linux desktop is just more snappy, despite being 5 years old (and the work Win11 laptop brand new). I already have customized with my shortcuts and apps. I don't have to listen to the fan spinning up every time I open a new window (exaggerating a bit, but not much). Also I am not tied to work filters. If I want to read the news online for 5 minutes in a coffee break I don't risk being monitored and potentially evaluated. But really, I've been a Windows and Linux user for 20-odd years. I've always found that Linux installed on the same hardware of Windows is just smoother and faster. Windows is getting so much bloatware (from MS or enterprise apps) that it doesn't even have a fighting chance.

My comment isn’t really a viable argument but I’ve been thinking about how an advert for Linux would be:

“The top 500 supercomputers in the world run Linux, don’t you want to feel like having a supercomputer at home? Why wait? Get your Linux for free today!”

Not really to be taken seriously, but if you want a real argument and example:

My laptop is really laggy with windows 10, and it came preinstalled with it. Recently I tried dual-booting Linux and Windows, and Windows was simply too slow. I am so accustomed with Linux’s speed that I wiped Windows off it. Never again.

Memory management and file IO is far more efficient in Linux. So much so that I even got better performance in Windows running Debian in a VM for some very file-intensive stuff. And by better performance I mean a factor of about 10.

Most desktop environments are really efficient at what they do and minimize the background resources they take. Just checked my system and GNOME takes ~350MBs RAM (~700MB including gnome-software) and literally 0.0% CPU, it's insane. I looked up Windows 11 and it seems like it can use up to 4 GBs (!) of RAM all by itself.

You should probably just go ahead and switch now. It's not going to get any better, at least not over one iteration. Maybe Windows 14...

Running AAA games with kernel level anti-cheat (aka malware) would be an example.

Windows-exclusive software like some ERP client, specific hardware drivers etc. Also, there's no real alternative for Excel, unfortunately (LibreOffice isn't good enough).

For me, there are a few work-specific tasks that require our Windows-only VPN client in order to perform them. Fortunately, the bulk of my job isn't like that.

Ironically enough, some of the Linux certification exams only work on Windows and macOS.