Instead of having 2**32 distros and compatibility shims

But that's the thing, pretty much all distros are the same when it comes to games. Steam manages dependencies and Proton versions for you, so your base OS really doesn't matter too much as long as some games launch (outside of weird exceptions like using some random tiling WM).

Unfortunately the chatter here really backfired for me.

Yeah, people love to over-promise for some reason. People really should be pointing to options for users to check things before switching, such as:

• Steam Deck compatibility - verified or playable
• ProtonDB - gold or platinum

In general, if it has anti-cheat, it probably won't work. If it doesn't, then you can try adjusting:

• Proton version (and Proton GE)
• command-line parameters - e.g. force older DirectX or something

None of that is related to your distro though, so if people on ProtonDB say it should work with given Proton version and CLI parameters, it should work on whatever distro you choose.

I rarely play anti-cheat games, so most of my games work w/o any tweaks. If you mostly play anti-cheat games, most of your games probably won't work.