Has it really been that long? Apparently so. Valve originally announced their rebranding of Steam Play with Proton back on August 21st, 2018. Seems like a good time for a quick reflection being halfway to a decade old now with the tech that gave rise to the Steam Deck.
This is a really good writeup, thanks for sharing.
I’ve been gaming on Ubuntu in some capacity since 2007ish and it’s so easy to do now without having to manage wine versions and prefixes and mono versions, etc.