Windows? That's a joke. It's a fine platform for gaming and probably still the most performant platform for web browsing (I personally value that highly), but not really built for development (except for development of games, I guess).
Desktop Linux/Gnome: Excellent for actual development work, but not great elsewhere.
Virtualization and containers are still very very finicky on wsl.
But it's 95% of the way there. And I don't mind using it.
On the flip side, all these electron apps make it so lots of stuff just works on Linux as well.
Desktop Linux is pretty serviceable for any tasks that aren't gaming. It may require learning different tools if you are used to Microsoft/adobe products, but the alternatives do exist. If you're doing command line work, it's better on Linux than osx anyway.
Statistically speaking, the games the average person would most likely want to play likely still do not run, or do not run without problems or tinkering required.
0: https://www.pcgamesn.com/steam-deck/top-100-games-proton-com...
You could go by the old the medal system, which looks promising at first glance, but "gold" basically means "playable". Platinum is the real metric there, and can be understood to mean "plays as well as it does on its native platform". There are game issues in gold rated titles that would lead to mass complaints and refunds if they existed on the native platform. That is kind of my point. "Playable" is way too low of a bar.
But like you said, you think "Platinum" is the metric that matters. A good chunk of my library wouldn't be considered platinum on Windows 11. ;)
If they spend most of their time in esports titles not made by Valve (anything by Riot, Fortnite, etc.) they would be sorely disappointed.
However, if they are big into emulation or indie games, the picture is a lot rosier. (And not just because that is an easier workload, but because it implies more knowledge on the part of the user)
I think that is the tipping point for Proton and the Steam Deck, when they can be recommended without qualification to the average gamer. We are not there yet and I do not want to see people burned by having their first exposure to Linux gaming being so close yet so far away for their use case.
Myself, I'm using mine to power through all the puzzle and adventure games that languished on my PC while my attention was elsewhere.
Gaming is not great but pretty good. Certainly better than what's possible on a Mac. Updates do break my StarCraft 2 once or twice an year but pretty much everything else I care about works.
If anyone @ Valve is reading this: get back to fixing VR on Linux. My Index is almost useless these days. Fix your vrcomposer
With WSL, I actually find Windows a better backend development platform than Mac.