>>1552184This was the exact state of gaming on linux in the 00s. You had open source games, and the rare DOS or windows game supported through a translation layer. It wasn't until the early 10s, when steam released on linux, and humble bundle *forced* their games to have a linux port for a while, which caused native, closed-source games to become a reality on linux. Most of it were indie games at the time.
There's nothing technical to this. Steam chose linux because it was the most popular platform at the time that wasn't at the mercy of some other company, and has been pushing it forward for a decade and a half. If it wasn't for them, and the contributions of other players like humble bundle, commercial game support would still be spotty.
WINE/proton support is very similar on linux as it is on freebsd, and freebsd has been able to run linux binaries for decades. I'm sure there's people gaming on freebsd, but its popularity has been waning, and that's now bolstered by open source devs frequently choosing to rely on linux-only APIs (container tech, systemd, ...), in lieu of portability to other unices.
