Even though I’ve always run Linux in some capacity, I always kept a Windows gaming PC.

Fully made the jump to Linux gaming about 1.5 years ago, and haven’t looked back. Thanks to the awesome progress on Proton, I can play just about everything I care about. The primary problems come from games with specific anti-cheat engines, but I find those are the kinds of games I don’t really play.

Also finally switched from X11 to Wayland/Niri, and Wayland is finally stable enough. Better gaming performance than X11 as well.

I have an Intel NUC from 2018. It has tpm 2.0, 16gb of ram but a cpu deemed too old. It’s faster than my sisters surface 2 laptop that I just upgraded for her that was released in the same year. I guess some cpus are more equal than others. The amount of e-waste from this blockage is going to be incredible.

You should give Proton a try. It is not perfect by any means, but it's surprising how many games work flawlessly out of the box. You can look up games on the site 'protondb' to get an idea or some possible fixes.

Linux is only a temporary panacea at best.

Given Valve’s failures with AAA multiplayer games rejecting Linux due to the ease of undetectable cheating that unsecured Linux presents, once Steam Linux gains enough market foothold they’ll be able to ship attested secure boot for Linux; at which point games will start opting in to require you to be booting Valve’s anti-cheat Linux that requires TPM 2.0 to deny you kernel modding, debugging other processes, and so on. This is why Windows 11, specific enterprise versions of Windows 10, and any Apple operating system released since the T2 chip all require a TPM: preventing users with admin rights from patching kernel space stops cheating and malware, and is a ten-year lead held by Apple and Xbox over PCs and Steam Deck.

It would be deeply ironic if they licensed Microsoft’s Xbox Proton TPM, which AMD ships Windows 11 drivers for, to a new Steam Deck that support dual secure-booting attested Windows 11 and attested Linux :)