Getting started with gaming on Linux and gaming on instantOS

This article is meant to get you started with gaming on Linux as a new user. There are four main ways to play games on Linux

1. Using the official repositories. There are some games that are completely free and open source. These are available in the default repositories (aka App store). But because most games are commercial products, this leaves you with a very small library of titles that are often just tech demos for game engines that have not aged well…
2. Steam native: Steam is a digital games store that has excellent support for Linux. It has hundreds of thousands of high quality games, many of which run on Linux.
3. Steam Play: Linux has the ability to run windows games using a tool called proton. It is developed by valve and is itself a fork of wine. Many of the features of proton have also been integrated into wine. The steam client has a feature called steam play that allows downloading windows games from steam and playing them using proton. By default, steam play is only enabled for titles that are guaranteed to work, but you can enable it for all games in the settings. Many games are only unofficially supported but run just fine using proton. Protondb is a website that lists games and how well they run using proton.
4. Lutris: Lutris is a game launcher with a corresponding website which contains thousands of community made installers. It allows playing native games, can be used as a launcher for steam games and games running in an emulator and most interestingly, comes with its own wine versions.