It's not, but it really has come a far way and I'm extremely impressed. I'm kind of the other way around, I've never been more than a very casual gamer and I'm simply not interested in keeping a separate Windows pc or dual boot install for games. If I can't get it working on Linux I'm not bothering with it. Right now I can play any game I want to play with very minimal tinkering (that probably says more about me than the state of Wine/Proton, but still).
Linux has absolutely come very far, don't get me wrong!
I'm also mostly a casual gamer, and only have my "dedicated gaming PC" because it's 7 year old hardware I've replaced with a dedicated "workstation" I bought after getting a job and saving some money.
On all my other hardware, I just run Linux, and I pretty much do the same as you -- most of my games work fine on Linux, a surprising number natively!
Linus brought this up in his video as well, that if you don't really care which games you play, you'll be fine. The problem is there are a few games I like playing or like to play with my local friend circle that just don't work well on Linux.
The problems are really stupid, too, and often not the fault of Linux per se. Garbage like Elder Scrolls Online still relying on a TLS cert signed by a CA that's been almost universally revoked, so the launcher will silently hang on linux. Bypassing this relies on either adding the (revoked for security reasons) CAs to your system's trust chain, or man-in-the-middleing the game process to force the updates regardless of the cert problems.
It's not like I really care that much about this specific game, but it's nice to play every now and again with friends. Maybe my long rambly point is, if you primarily use Linux for other reasons and occasionally play games with it, it's awesome. But if you're the average "PC gamer" whose computer is primarily for gaming, Linux will probably disappoint you.
Where does this sentiment come from that Linux has come very far when it comes to gaming? When Doom 3 released in 2004 I had to use a hex editor to hand patch the executable to get sound working. Luckily someone did what OP did and posted the instructions on a forum. I've used Linux/Unix for 20+ years but I wouldn't recommend it for gaming unless you enjoy debugging Linux software and want to do more of it. Frankly, you can learn a ton by doing so, it's not a waste of time, but priorities and frustration tolerances change as people get older. Then the demographic that no longer wants to debug their games tends to also be the cohort that has more money and is more willing to spend for a better experience, which means more money is being allocated to the platforms they are on as opposed to Linux.
>Where does this sentiment come from that Linux has come very far when it comes to gaming?
Look at what you could run in Wine in 2004 and what you had to do to get it working and what you can do now in Proton. It might technically not be "native Linux" but I couldn't care less as long as it works.
>I've used Linux/Unix for 20+ years but I wouldn't recommend it for gaming unless you enjoy debugging Linux software and want to do more of it.
I game a little bit on Linux and have never touched a hex editor to do it. Right now I only have one game where I have to manually download a dll, all the rest I want to play works flawlessly. I only have to enable Proton in Steam and that's it. Yes, they're mostly older games and I still certainly wouldn't recommend Linux for gaming, but there is definitely progress.
