I used linux in the past, both privately and work-related, but the last time was over 10 years ago, so I’m a bit out of touch. I am in need of a new PC, but it’ll be a good year before I have the funds, so for now I am making due with an i5 7500 and a gtx 1660. I do have 32 GB so there’s that. I finally feel confident enough to make the permanent switch to linux from windows as all of the programs I use are either available on linux or have a good/better equivalent. The only thing I fear will hold me back is games. I know Steam has Proton now which will run most games, but how does it compare? The games I play most are Skyrim (heavily modded) , RDR2, Witcher 3, Transport fever, Civilization, Crusader kings 3 and Cities Skylines (uninstalled atm waiting for 2). I’m on the fence to either wait until I can afford a new PC and dual boot or make the switch now and deal with a few gaming problems. Thing is, what kind of problems may I expect? Anyone able and knowledgeable to give me some advice?
EDIT: Wow, those are a lot of replies; thank you everyone! You really helped me. I will make the switch sooner rather than later.
For me it reached a point where I now expect a new game I’m trying to just work. This was a monumental shift when I first realized that a few months ago.
Your best bet is Steam/Proton, since Valve stands behind it and development on all the Proton components (Wine, DXVK, VKD3D, Gamescope, …) is very active.
If you get games outside of Steam (I often prefer GoG if that’s an option, plus I have some itch.io bundles purchased a while ago), some tinkering may be necessary. For those, I like to go “vanilla” with Wine(-GE-custom usually), plus DXVK or VKD3D on top. There’s also Lutris to help with these scenarios. Works great too.
Another topic is native Linux games. There are some gems which work beautifully. I recently finished native Celeste from itch.io and it was flawless. Another great Linux port is Bastion. But some older titles may have compatibility issues - missing or incompatible libraries, broken gamepad support or stuff like that. For those, the Windows version via Proton may actually work better than the native version. Luckily, we can now pick either one.