If you're playing games through Steam and haven't checked out Proton in a while, give it another try! The only game I haven't been able to get work on Ubuntu 16/18/20 is Fallout 3.
If you continue to have trouble, drop me an email and I'll give you my configuration.
I very much second your sentiment about proton being "good enough". It's amazing! I have a less than stellar GPU -- a Radeon 570 -- and haven't found a single game that I can't play on 'ultra' settings at 1080p, including the in-development BG3.
After Apple's CSAM awfulness, my next laptop will be linux, ideally with a Zen processor, quite possibly running Manjaro and either KDE or i3.
I'm also in the market (to replace my MacBook-esque XPS 13 Developer Edition), so if someone wants to suggest me a (other than ThinkPads) 13-14 inch laptop that will play well with Linux [not necessarily preloaded], let me know.
Plus, x86 and mainstream aarch64 hardware feels like it will always be ahead since it isn't a reverse engineered effort.
But it's just too much hassle. I'd rather just boot up my big Windows gaming rig. I view it as a modular Xbox that I build myself.
So no matter how far we come in Linux, most people will still have a "Wintendo" PC console for gaming.