i feel you, mate. the windows 11 ride just gets worse every time you plug in fresh hardware.

linux gaming these days? pretty close to plug-and-play. proton in steam munches through 90%+ of your library without drama (even anti-cheat heavy titles like apex just started behaving). few stragglers stay banned—mostly certain kernel-level rootkits like vanguard—but for co-op or single-player titles it's basically “search->install->play”.

little roadmap if you’re curious:

- pop-os or nobara come pre-baked with nvidia blobs and game-ready tweaks.

- steam → settings → steam play → tick “enable proton for everything” → profit.

- need epic/windows store exclusives? heroic launcher bottles them up fine.

no online jail, no captcha circus. plus you dual-boot a 30 gb “windows side chick partition” for the one stubborn launcher if you really must.

Vector straight-up ships snaps for all distros if you ever wanna banter afterward—Dms via nip-17, fully e2e.