Plenty of older games only seem to work with certain versions of Proton/Wine, DXVK etc. There are projects like Bottles which let you manage multiple Proton distributions https://usebottles.com/. - Source: Hacker News / 21 days ago

If it need installation (or has some kind of wizard), probably look into UseBottles and once installed, link the .exe to Steam. Source: 6 months ago

Bottles is very convenient to manage wine https://usebottles.com/. Source: 6 months ago

For "normal" games you could look yourself using ProtonDB regarding every game released on Steam and AreWeAntiCheatYet for most multiplayer games. If a game isn't available on Steam you have three possibilities. First if it's available on GOG, Epic Games or Amazon Gaming, you could use the Heroic Games Launcher. Second you could try to run the launchers through Steam itself using once again Proton. Third you... Source: 6 months ago

Bottles is great for old classic non-steam games. I haven't tried 🏴‍☠️ with it but I can't see why it wouldn't work. Source: 6 months ago

Back when I was an edgy teenager I tried every Windows desktop shell replacement available. My favorites were LiteStep and Emerge Desktop. I was there when Cairo Shell first emerged but has never tried a working version since I moved to other OSes before any usable version was out. I am now using Windows for work and I think it’s time to revisit these options. Source: over 1 year ago

Hyper-V Server 2019 gets my vote, with the Cairo Desktop it's a near unbeatable setup. Add the FoD pack, browser of your choice, Windows Admin Center for local management of the entire system including virtualized guests. It's a very robust enterprise grade server that requires NO LICENSE and ends up having a very nice GUI for a core server. Source: over 2 years ago