These trends take years, maybe decades to set in. For now all it takes is a reasonable and comparable alternative to Windows and all of its bullshit will be exposed, next time Microsoft tries to shit up the OS in the name of controlling even more of your stuff and trying to relegate the hardware and software you bought into their perpetual pay-pig and taking away your ownership of your own system...people will have an outlet to go to. Doesn't matter if proton is just windows/dx emulation, it limits what MS can get away with in the short term, and serves as a conduit to transition from the awfulness of Windows (I mean the direction that MS is taking windows with 11 is just...gutwrenching). In 8 years when they try to launch Windows 12, and gamers are like "well sure I can go to windows 12 where Microsoft wants you to pay $9.99 a month just to use your OS, or I can move to SteamOS where all the games run as well as or better and is free.99...gonna just use SteamOS"And port games exclusively to SteamOS. As long as you depend on Proton to game on Linux, it's because developers are still shackled to Windows and DirectX.