Found the C-Suite.

Ah I see. I’ve not used bottles so have no suggestions there, but you may be able to use Proton to run the installer. I’ve done that for other types of Windows apps like the Battlenet launcher or Origin/EA App. You add the installer itself as a non-Steam game, run it, go through the install process. Then you add the installed exe as a non-Steam game.

I think the installed files would be in the same location as the installer itself but they may also get their own app ID in your Steam folder. I can’t recall exactly.

No Proton is a compatibility layer for running Windows games on Linux. I’m not at my computer ATM but in the Steam settings somewhere you just flip the toggle on that says something like Enable Steam Play for all games. I think it’s in Compatibility or something like that.

Then any games you own on Steam you can just install and play and Steam will automatically choose the best Proton version for you. You can override it too if you need. ProtonDB is a good resource for looking up how well a game runs on Linux via Proton. Keep in mind it’s limited to games that have Steam releases though.

If you’re talking about playing PS5 games you’ve dumped from a disc with an emulator, which it sounds like maybe you are, Proton and Steam won’t do much for you here. If you’re talking about PC versions of these games that you’ve “acquired” then Steam may help there. You could add the game to your library as a “non-Steam” game and then just run it with Proton that way. HGL may work here too but I’ve only used HGL for games I own on GOG or Epic.

Yeah I agree with all of this. It sounds like maybe you’re trying to learn too many different things at once. I’d pick one thing and stick with it until you’re comfortable.

What games are you trying to play? 99% of the time I’m able to just install a game in Steam and use Proton and be done with it. For any non-Steam games I just use Heroic Games Launcher.

Bazzite is a pretty good distro for gaming since it comes with some of these things pre installed or as an option to install them.

Yeah this I don’t understand. I do use immutable distros and quite like them(Bazzite/Aurora/Kinoite) but I would never recommend them to a new user to Linux. They just work too differently than most other distros so like 90% of the documentation you might find for other programs is pretty much useless. Like if you look up some piece of software and it says use your package manager to install, then what? It’s usually easy enough to solve if you read the distro’s docs and use their recommended approach(flatpak, brew, AppImage etc) but that’s already probably way too advanced for someone new too Linux.

Just wait. It’s only a matter of time before the post gets deleted and the account gets banned. If you think reddit isn’t censoring posts you’re just not paying attention.

Except it’s not. If you actually take a second to look at the specs of the hardware here it’s not quite as simple as it might seem at first glance.

I’m comparing the OLED model here since it’s most comparable to the Switch 2.

• HDR - tie both support this
• VRR - Deck only supports this with an external display - win Switch 2
• Resolution - 800p vs 1080p max, not even close Switch 2 is a big upgrade here - win Switch 2, not to mention 4K while docked. Good luck getting anywhere near that in even a somewhat recent game on Deck
• Max framerate - 90 FPS max vs 120 FPS max - win Switch 2
• Specs - hard to say but seems like overall Switch 2 is more powerful
• Storage - hard to say exactly but while it seems like on paper Switch 2 should be better here, the actual capacity is way bigger, and Valve has some done some amazing work here to make even games running off an SD card very fast
• Battery - basically the same - tie
• Price - Switch 2 is cheaper at least here in Canada. The 512 OLED model is $689. Switch 2 is $630.

I think it’s entirely likely that Switch 2 will perform much better with ports of modern games, where the Steam Deck is starting to show its age and really struggling here.

I love my Steam Deck and it’s fantastic for playing smaller budget indie games, older games, emulated games, and tackling my backlog. But any AAA game that’s come out say in the last year or two? Forget it. It’s just not a good experience. Even BG3 which is Verified was just fine. I played it a lot on my Deck but would it perform better on Switch 2? Probably yes.

It’ll definitely be interesting to see how performance of third party titles shakes out between the two.

Ukraine might think otherwise. Palestine might think otherwise. Like it or not the US is a major world power and what happens there at the federal level does have an impact globally.