Has it really been that long? Apparently so. Valve originally announced their rebranding of Steam Play with Proton back on August 21st, 2018. Seems like a good time for a quick reflection being halfway to a decade old now with the tech that gave rise to the Steam Deck.
I feel like attributing this to Valve is really disrespectful to the folks who developed wine for decades (and more recently also Vulkan). The real game changer is Vulkan, which made Linux graphics to be competitive with DirectX. (OpenGL interfaces to DirectX was simply not competitive)
You’re right. So many people to thank here. One thing you cannot deny is that Valve is one of few companies that loves gaming on Linux and it deserves a huge credit.
Valve does not love gaming, they refuse to listen to TF2 fans, they never build games, they brought out studios, criminal cases, Antitrust lawsuit and branding loyal fanbase that keeps defending Valve awful actions in gaming. This is not love, this is toxic community and a toxic company aiming to be profitable at all cost.