> there's not been a single Windows game I could not play on Linux at full settings

I also enjoy playing on Linux but this really depends on the type of games you play. If you play a lot of multiplayer games, you will be disappointed on Linux, Riot games won't work, Blizzard games won't work, Fortnite won't work

Even with Elden Ring that runs perfectly on my Linux machine, I cannot use any multiplayer features (summoning friends, reading messages etc.) because the EAC anticheat doesn't work on Linux

EAC anticheat does work on Linux, but it requires a little effort from the developer to enable it, for example I played New World on Linux which requires EAC anticheat.

As for Blizzard I have no idea about the other Blizzard games, but I play Diablo 4 using Lutris, other than one update that caused the Battle.net launcher problems it works fine, at least for D4 (and D3).

Yup. Most of the anti-cheats have been ported to Proton at this point. Usually when games don't enable it, its because the games haven't been well-engineered and are too easily exploitable.

Destiny 2 is another example, turning on BattlEye on Proton is literally flipping a switch in the SDK. And they had a Destiny build for Linux because it was running on Stadia. But Destiny has a horrible codebase, and even with BattlEye on Windows there is a decent chunk of hard cheating.

And its not that just the non-competitive games choose to allow Proton. Halo and Apex Legends are good examples that play on Proton.

You must be mistaken on the elden ring multiplayer bit, I was not too long ago summoned as a blue phantom when playing on my steam deck.

ER multiplayer works on Linux. It crashed for me when trying to invade but installing PulseAudio fixed the issue and been working flawlessly. Running Steam through the terminal can make debugging a bit easier

> Even with Elden Ring that runs perfectly on my Linux machine, I cannot use any multiplayer features (summoning friends, reading messages etc.) because the EAC anticheat doesn't work on Linux

I had to disable online features in Elden Ring in order to get rid of multitude of messages from other players. That was on Steam on Linux.

I haven't tried friend summoninig, but online features did work for sure.

I've played wow on my steam deck, in addition to Warcraft 3 remastered.

Blizz games are definitely doable now for the most part.

Hearthstone mostly works. Wow doesn't

Really? WoW used to work just fine back in the day (~2010). Is that no longer the case?

Most of the bots use headless linux VMs for WoW, which is why Blizzard stopped allowing WoW to run on linux.

WoW works and has worked perfectly fine on Linux for ages. Likely just unrelated user issues.

Playing wow on Linux for a while now. 4k/60fps, max detail. works just fine

All these comments are pretty funny, I’ve been considering building a new gaming desktop (the current one is reaching a decade of age) and was very much thinking of putting Linux on it rather than bothering with Microsoft’s ever worsening, it’s giving me fomo and making me consider switching the old machine in the first place.

How well are HDR and raytracing features supported on Linux?

Kind of a sore spot actually.

I think raytracing is fine, as Vulkan on Linux is phenomenally good & active, is seemingly the go-to spot for Vulkan as a whole. Proton turned on raytracing support by default 9 months ago, and it's probably not flawless, but runs many flashy games like Cyberpunk 2077.

Valve's Wayland compositor is called gamescope, and gamescope has kind of forged some kind of path to make HDR work. And that relies on kernel patches that dont seem intended for upstreaming. It's all packaged and works great on Steam Deck. I have tried and tried to get the same stack working locally with a rx580 but no dice, can't get gamescope embedded to run, to much chagrin & sadness.

Wayland and Linux both have been on a long sojourn to make good protocols & implement HDR. It's finally coming together; KDE is shipping something. I don't know if GNOME and Wlroots have actually started work but there are tickets. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/HDR_monitor_support

Valve had the resources to cut their own path, and it's kind of awesome & excellent. They've made a Cathedral atop Linux. I want to think that if Wayland wasn't so new in general, if there was more bandwidth & focus & not tons of other necessary big work in flight, HDR might have advanced at a much more respectable rate. But who knows. I think it's important to have appropriate expectations, and this slow walk does show a weakness of the Bazaar model of development that Wayland embodies. But I really want to hope it's for an excellent end result, that HDR has well considered development path by the time it's really in the wild.

HDR soon! After a lot of puzzling it out.

Only Steam games, right?

A number of games (and non-games) can be added to Steam via the "add non-Steam game" option and then used with Proton. There's also Lutris.