X11 has multi pointer but I have no idea how usable it is https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Multi-pointer_X
Csgo and 2 have a “trust” system to keep track of player behavior and put you in games with others of similar trust value. So if you get reported often or have a history of bad behavior, you’re more likely to be put in games with other bad actors, and vice versa. Idk how effective it is though.
Honestly there isn’t a great solution, which is kind of why I avoid competitive multiplayer games. Even kernel level anticheats can be circumvented.
The nice thing about vac is that theres pretty much no false positives. And valve will occasionally update it, catching a ton of cheaters off guard and getting them banned.
I’ve considered it, although it’d be a situation where it would probably just be the game code without assets (sounds, textures, etc.), since those are under different licenses. Also, it’s not really a “living” game like most FOSS games - once it’s released it will pretty much be in its final form. So if I make the code public it’ll mostly just be for reference.
Yeah that’s big area that’s shaky with proton. Fortunately a few games have been adding support (halo MCC recently did). And for me, I typically only play singleplayer games - the most modern multiplayer game I play is titanfall 2 which works great on Linux.
But for someone who does play those games, I can see how the lack of them can be a huge obstacle.
I switched last year and kind of was in a similar spot to you - I had tried to switch in the past but something didn’t work so I went back to windows. But that last attempt has stuck. So I’d just do it. Proton is in an amazing state, old games and even most new singleplayer games will work - some modern multiplayer games with anticheat even work. I’d just check your library on protondb (you can sign in to see your library), see what doesn’t work, if you care about it, or if there are workarounds.
What I also did is make a list of stuff that doesn’t work and then find alternatives or workarounds. If some games don’t work, you can hold off on switching, check protondb occasionally and see if something changes. But if it’s all good, I’d just make the jump.
The steam deck uses arch, not Manjaro (although Manjaro is based off arch). But ultimately it doesn’t matter too much what distro you use for gaming.
Arch is a weird recommendation for beginners, even with the better install process. The aur is nice but isn’t necessary imo. Fedora works fine, or I’d recommend mint for something a bit more “stable.” I’ve been using both for a while with minimal issues.
I guess it depends on where your games are. I have a few games on epic and gog, and for that Heroic works great. So personally, I just use that and steam. The nice thing about heroic is that it lets me select steam’s installed proton versions, so I don’t have to install proton multiple times.
At the end of the day though, if you can launch the games you want to play, stick with what you got.
People are right about flatpak - it will generally keep stuff out of your actual root/home directory. But like you implied, the steam flatpak is unofficial so you may run into issues. With that said, I’ve used it and know many people who use it without any problems.
And depending on the game, you might be able to run it directly with steam offline, or even straight from the executable without steam open at all.
Of course this isn’t airtight, but there are ways to check the permissions granted to flatpak applications. And IMO it works well enough for games. Ofc this depends on how paranoid you are and your reasons for wanting this (fear of a game being a virus, not wanting clutter in home, wanting protection from a bug that would delete data, etc.).