I have been a Linux gamer for the past 10 years. I haven’t booted into Windows to play a video game in 8.

When I started out, it was very much a question of “Here is the list of games that work on Linux.” You had to look for that Steam logo next to the Windows or sometimes Apple logo on the Steam page, and there are some games I would have played years earlier had that logo been there. With Proton, it has switched to “Here is a list of the games that don’t work on Linux.” Because most just do, with the very notable exception of competitive shooters, because something something anticheat.

I often hear that games actually run better on Linux than they do on Windows, except the newer whiz-bang features don’t work. Give a recent example, apparently Cyberpunk 2077 runs at a significantly higher framerate on Linux than Windows, but DLSS, HDR and RTX aren’t available.

Let me tell you the tales of two gamers on Linux:

My tale: I was disgusted with Windows 8.1, I had been learning some Linux because I wanted to use a Raspberry Pi with my ham radio stuff, so I went…why don’t I try switching? This was circa 2014. There was exactly one game in my Steam library that just could not be persuaded to run and that was Sleeping Dogs.

There have been a few games I’ve wanted to try that refused to run in some way or another; Heave Ho! by Devolver Digital…the demo ran fine, had a good time with it. Bought the game, and the UI on the player select screen didn’t work. Grow Up or Grow Home (one is a sequel to the other, I forget which it was) launched, but the character didn’t respond to any controls. Oh and Fallout: New Vegas launched one of those Windows-style autorun screens then asked me to put in the DVD. I bought it from Steam. And refunded it.

I generally avoid AAA games, I don’t play many online multiplayer games, I do play multiplayer games with friends, stuff like Stardew Valley or Unrailed, but I don’t go play with random people online, those just are not fun to me. I tend to prefer more indie stuff, more nerdy stuff, like I’ve got hundreds of hours in Factorio and Satisfactory, both work fine. I think it just so happens that I’m into games that are likely to be well supported on Linux. Antichamber, Firewatch, Hollow Knight, Return of the Obra Dinn, every Zachtronics game I’ve tried, Undertale, Subnautica, these all run great.

My cousin: had an aging Dell upgraded from Windows 7 to 10 on an “optane boosted” hard disk drive, starting to run pretty sluggish. Swapping out the hard disk and optane module for an SSD and attempting to install Win10 on bare metal just wouldn’t work, it kept throwing cryptic errors, so to get the machine to work at all I put Linux Mint on it.

She has more mainstream tastes than I do, lots of Bethesda and EA games. Funnily enough, I found that the third-party launchers were the real problem. The Sims 4 ran pretty well on Linux…Origin barely does. Minecraft support on Linux is actually worsening with time as a result of Microsoft’s involvement, but at least the Java edition does currently run.

In brief, I have observed a very stark inverse relationship between Linux compatibility of games, and the size/corporateness/evilness of the developer.