While we're reporting our experience, I'll say that my experience with Proton has been highly mixed. By which I mean I have seen several games work pretty much flawlessly, and several that were pretty much totally busted, and many in between. I think there are also quite a lot of games that benefit from customising the Proton setup instead of just using the default configuration (there are often guides online for particular games, advising what version with what tweaks will make things work), but tbh I rarely have the motivation to go down that route. I usually check protondb before buying things.

For what it's worth, I no longer have a Windows install. If a game doesn't have a Linux version and doesn't work on Wine/Proton, I just live without that game.

I will say that I give Valve major kudos for their work on Proton even with its limitations. It's one of the primary reasons that I continue to use Steam and haven't done much with GOG or other sources (despite GOG's admirable stance on DRM)

I play old and new games. It's nearly flawless. The only things that don't work, don't work because they're locked into special DRM.

The achievement here is nothing short of astounding.

> make Proton viable for the majority of titles

Protondb[1], which collects user reports, says:

    18,811 games reported
    15,261 games work

which is about 81% - a bit more than a simple majority.

1: https://www.protondb.com/

Since they are targeting a single hardware platform with little difference in configuration, I feel proton will run much more smoothly on the Steam Deck. They will be able to tie the software with the hardware more closely for better compatibility.

IIRC most problems with proton arise due to various hardware issues or incompatibilities.

Yeah this will be an interesting test. They're eliminating all of the variables but one (which game is running). No more "works on my machine" protondb reports! It either works on Steam Deck or it doesn't. Excited to see what they can do with that power.