For me Linux gaming is Steam/Proton. If is works with Steam/Proton, I am playing them. I find that native Linux games are not updated regularly or at all. And Steam wants games to run with the Steam deck. And they are willing work to make that happen.
And game companies know there are a lot of Steam decks out there. And it is not hard to put some effort to see that it runs on that equipment.
All this is a big help for the Linux community. Many gamers don't know that they don't need to buy windows to game. Linux/Steam/Proton is a great option. That is why I make a point to tell people that I am playing Baldur's Gate 3 on my Linux Ubuntu gaming PC. This is how I found out that Linux can play games and switch from Windows. Another Linux gamer told me it was possible.
Agreed. It’s just so sad to me that GOG to this day does not seem to understand their target audience. Seems to me that people who value DRM-free Games overlap vastly with the group of Linux users and still GOG Galaxy is not available on Linux. I would absolutely love GOG Galaxy natively on Linux with Proton integration. Sure we can run it with Lutris etc. but this has been asked from GOG for years. I tried buying everything on GOG instead of Steam until that point where that whole Proton and Steam Deck integration happened. Now I buy everything on steam, just for convenience. I would love to buy everything from GOG but there are just to many hoops to jump through.
Yes I think you're right, there's probably a significant overlap in the target audience of GOG and Linux users. I guess the reason why GOG hasn't released a Linux version of GOG Galaxy might be because a large portion of their catalogue is Windows and doesn't want to include something like Proton or Wine support. I don't think it absolves them from criticism however.
@Hairyblue@Uluganda yeah I care less about a Linux native game than a game that has DRM and anti cheat that works with proton. I’ve found that all the games I play on Linux that run on proton run so well on X11 (haven’t gone to Wayland yet).
Considering wine and thus proton don't support Wayland the games will just run through XWayland so should perform the same as on X11.
Personally haven't encountered any issues outside of things that are caused by X11 limitations
If there is one, I tend to use the native Linux version when I can, just to do my miniscule part to encourage devs to support native Linux, though on one or two games I have noticed bugs in the native Linux version that were fixed in the Windows/Proton version. That said, I am still quite thankful and impressed with how well Proton works for anything I use it with.
As someone new to Linux the fact that I could just check a box on steam and suddenly I could install and run the witcher 3 blew my mind. I had no idea. Last I checked on Linux gaming the solution was install windows 😂