Until the release of Windows 11, the upgrade proposition for Windows operating systems was rather straightforward: you considered whether the current version of Windows on your system still fulfill…
If it’s not “any game of a list of 200 and it must run without effort”, then most games can be made to work either with a certain version of Wine and winetricks settings, or with a certain version of Proton, and there are many things to consider trying.
I once couldn’t play X-Wing Alliance under FreeBSD because of joystick not being visible, so I went as far as patching Wine’s winmm (I think) to make it work, and carrying that patch around when upgrading Wine or installing someplace new. Glad to report that now one doesn’t need it.
That’s more than most things require, and some can’t be made work with just one simple patch, but the point is - a lot of games work.
And once you’ve made it work, no additional effort is needed. Just having, maybe, a script setting the right environment variables and launching the game.
If it’s not “any game of a list of 200 and it must run without effort”, then most games can be made to work either with a certain version of Wine and winetricks settings, or with a certain version of Proton, and there are many things to consider trying.
I once couldn’t play X-Wing Alliance under FreeBSD because of joystick not being visible, so I went as far as patching Wine’s winmm (I think) to make it work, and carrying that patch around when upgrading Wine or installing someplace new. Glad to report that now one doesn’t need it.
That’s more than most things require, and some can’t be made work with just one simple patch, but the point is - a lot of games work.
And once you’ve made it work, no additional effort is needed. Just having, maybe, a script setting the right environment variables and launching the game.
A lot of games will just run.