Not professionals, let's say, people who play at least 20 titles per year. People who play all major new games. Or people who play at least 5 hours a week. People who care what the mouse model is. People who really care about screen refresh rate. People who are into gaming.
You've just described me, a happy Linux user & gamer.
My 1440p 120hz ultrawide works perfectly with my 1080ti (which will be upgraded to a 3080 once there is some stock). Xorg and libinput both support disabling mouse acceleration so no issues there.
Thanks to Proton Glorious Eggroll I've been playing Doom Eternal, RdR2, H:ZD and many other non native titles for a lot more than 5 hours a week. I've also got my seperate VR box running on Linux with my Index which has provided hours of fun in HL: Alyx, Boneworks, and other admittedly more casual games like Beat Saber, Superhot, and Pistol Whip.
I do eshew all RGB though, maybe that makes me a filthy casual by some arbitrary standard, maybe you could add that to your gatekeeping list?
> I do eshew all RGB though, maybe that makes me a filthy casual by some arbitrary standard
I’d say what makes you a “casual” is that you didn’t list a multiplayer game. If you’re not sweating against other players, then you probably prefer to keep it casual. That’s fine!
But if I can’t play Overwatch, the latest Call of Duty, Escape from Tarkov, etc on Linux, then I wouldn’t bother. I think it’s more about multiplayer when talking about casual vs more serious.
Of course your mileage may vary depending on the type of GPU. (My RX 5700 XT worked well, though you have to wait a few minutes after opening the game for the shader compilations to finish.)
Multiplayer is pretty much the only area Linux falls down due to anticheat.
With that said Titanfall 2 works and I can get pretty sweaty in that, csgo also works natively though I've not played for years. I used to play R6: Seige a lot before ditching my dual boot which I miss but dualbooting gets old when you have to shut down everything just to switch OS.
There is work to get anticheat working in Linux but it's kinda a pipedream as Linux is still seen as a haven for cheaters by anticheat developers so it feels like a never ending arms race rather than something that seems likely to happen any time soon.
I've not checked anything to do with Stadia - or any other game streaming service - as they don't really appeal to me. Who needs lag single player games? :D
With that said there are anticheats which work on linux like Battleye but only with linux native versions of games which negates all the proton work unfortunately. IIRC Valve are working with AC developers to get it working via wine/proton but I'm not holding my breath.
Not professionals, let's say, people who play at least 20 titles per year. People who play all major new games. Or people who play at least 5 hours a week. People who care what the mouse model is. People who really care about screen refresh rate. People who are into gaming.