If it were a “first-class citizen” there would be native Linux games

This was my thought exactly. Proton's emulation of a windows game doesn't count as "first class experience". It's second class at best, but still better than literally nothing at all.

There are native Linux games, but mostly from AA and indie publishers. So by that mark, it has been a first-class citizen since mid-2010s, after Steam started officially supporting Linux.

That said, I think that goalpost is a bit too far away. I consider it "first-class support" if major AAA devs offering official technical support to Linux users is more common than not, regardless of whether it's packaged w/ Proton or directly as a Linux native binary. How they distribute it is up to them, as long as they actually support Linux users. We're not there yet, but we're a lot closer than we were even just 5 years ago.

It feels like the trend is changing in that direction, but most games weren't released in the past year or so, and even those were designed and built not thinking Linux would be where it is now. We'll have to see how it evolves.

I agree that a lot of large publishers seem to be actively harming the experience to ensure Linux users can't use their service, for whatever reason. That needs to change. They need to be punished for this, ideally by helping people switch to Linux and making them realize they don't need those games if they don't care about them as a user.

Yeah, on top of not having to deal with applications checking for updates when they're launched, and then manually installing them, not having to deal with drivers is amazing. Windows users talk about how easy the experience is with Windows, but they're just used to how shitty it is and haven't seen the alternative. I just occasionally update everything in my system when I think about it and it's good to go. No being forced to update and restart. No hassle. Just simple and quick and everything is up-to-date.

The awesome people who volunteer their time to bring you the free operating system that you're whining about would love to support your card, and in fact do so despite the best efforts of the vendor to be a complete ass and ignore their Linux customers.

GamePass on the cloud works, but MS has made a choice to not let it work on Linux. This is not an issue with Linux. It's an issue with MS and Windows. They choose to distribute the games using a proprietary encryption method, which harms the user's experience and makes it only work on Windows. You can't mod your games (unless the explicitly allow it and let you decrypt it) because "fuck you, this is ours." Fuck them. If they want my money they can make a better product that works where I want to be. You should hold yourself to that level too, not lick their boot and thank them for the privilege.

Yes to everything up to Xbox Game Pass (and whatever Gaming Cloud is), just pick a mainstream distro and you should be good, as long as your daughter isn't set on playing specific games w/ anti-cheat.

Watch the video, smart alex.