Thankfully valve have been trying to break microsoft's monopoly on gaming and put a lot of effort into linux support, including SteamOS and Steam Deck. As a result lots of steam games seem to work in linux. If a game doesn't have native linux support you can right click on it from your library, select "properties" then "compatibility." Check the box that says "Force the use of a specific steam play compatibility tool" and select proton experimental (or whatever other version of proton you want to use). That will enable the download button. You can then download and install the game.
AMD gpus are typically going to perform better than NVidia gpus on linux because NVidia refuse to cooperate with open source community. If you use Nvidia you will have to install the nvidia proprietary drivers, thankfully it is not that hard these days. I have a second hand 5000 series amd gpu that works well with the games I want to play.
Lastly bleeding edge hardware support might not be in point release distros. If you want to use the latest hardware you might need to run a rolling release distro like arch to get the newest drivers as they are developed and improved. I would not recommend Arch unless you were reasonably experienced with linux already, but if you did want to try it, I suggest using an install script and reading some guides online. Also make sure if you troubleshoot you include "arch" in your search term, because otherwise you might end up with instructions on how to do something in ubuntu, which uses a different package manager.
edit: Feel free to message me to ask any questions, happy to help.
If you use steam, 90+% will just work out of the box with little to no tinkering required. Valve basically singlehandedly made Linux gaming capable with Proton. Often the proton version works better than the native ports, which is kind of sad honestly.
For everything else, it's iffy. GOG installers work relatively often, but piracy is more difficult, because there is always some dependency missing, wine doesn't quite work right, native ports rely on old libraries etc etc.
Support from developers of eSport games (mostly because anti-cheat systems are are all malware nowadays)
Hardware vendors will usually ship minimal drivers, which may be a plus since most driver suites are obnoxious nowadays. If you want shit like Shadowplay you'll have to set it up with OBS instead, YMMV
VR is apparently still terrible but I haven't played with that myself
If you're into crazy/obscure modding of games, you might find that half the tooling just doesn't work
I only care about the 4th thing personally and I find it's still 100% worth not having to deal with Windows universally sucking and being made deliberately worse every year by its vendor
Oh and, the Linux experience gets vastly better if you make sure to buy hardware that works with it
How is Linux for digital treat goblins aka :freeze-gamer:s these days?
Thankfully valve have been trying to break microsoft's monopoly on gaming and put a lot of effort into linux support, including SteamOS and Steam Deck. As a result lots of steam games seem to work in linux. If a game doesn't have native linux support you can right click on it from your library, select "properties" then "compatibility." Check the box that says "Force the use of a specific steam play compatibility tool" and select proton experimental (or whatever other version of proton you want to use). That will enable the download button. You can then download and install the game.
AMD gpus are typically going to perform better than NVidia gpus on linux because NVidia refuse to cooperate with open source community. If you use Nvidia you will have to install the nvidia proprietary drivers, thankfully it is not that hard these days. I have a second hand 5000 series amd gpu that works well with the games I want to play.
Lastly bleeding edge hardware support might not be in point release distros. If you want to use the latest hardware you might need to run a rolling release distro like arch to get the newest drivers as they are developed and improved. I would not recommend Arch unless you were reasonably experienced with linux already, but if you did want to try it, I suggest using an install script and reading some guides online. Also make sure if you troubleshoot you include "arch" in your search term, because otherwise you might end up with instructions on how to do something in ubuntu, which uses a different package manager.
edit: Feel free to message me to ask any questions, happy to help.
:order-of-lenin:
I did it! I'm even using Arch.
I use PopOS/Mint (essentially Ubuntu).
If you use steam, 90+% will just work out of the box with little to no tinkering required. Valve basically singlehandedly made Linux gaming capable with Proton. Often the proton version works better than the native ports, which is kind of sad honestly.
For everything else, it's iffy. GOG installers work relatively often, but piracy is more difficult, because there is always some dependency missing, wine doesn't quite work right, native ports rely on old libraries etc etc.
to add to President_
BoylikerObama's comment, there is also Lutris+1, I use lutris for my pirated games. The rest I run on Steam with proton
P good. If it doesn't have anticheat, it doesn't require any tinkering. Check https://www.protondb.com/ for specific games
Anticheat rootkits and a handful of cracks and piracy tools patch/substitute obscure Windows DLLs don't function properly.
proton + wine has gotten extremely good as valve put in a ton of work so the steam deck would be simple but run arch.
I find it's still lacking in these areas :
I only care about the 4th thing personally and I find it's still 100% worth not having to deal with Windows universally sucking and being made deliberately worse every year by its vendor
Oh and, the Linux experience gets vastly better if you make sure to buy hardware that works with it
Bad if you play online, good for everything else
there are a bunch of online games that work fine
all the big mmos, the valve esport games, party games, etc.