When I started out, I used red hat, Suse linux, and then finally I jumped to Ubuntu, when they killed gnome and rolled out their new GUI later, I switched to Ubuntu Mate, with xfce alternatively installed. And then later came MINT. Which is based on ubuntu anyway. Source: 6 months ago

Prepare a blank USB stick with a copy of Ubuntu (write the ISO to the USB stick with Rufus). Source: 6 months ago

Ubuntu MATE (simple, well maintained, has the Ubuntu ecosystem support and should work well). Source: 12 months ago

Linux Mint has its advantages, but your title doesn't make sense when there's Ubuntu MATE. Source: about 1 year ago

(btw: since the PC is older I would reccommend Ubuntu Mate or Xubuntu as those come with a lighter Desktop). Source: about 1 year ago

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 / about 1 month 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