Personally I think the practical solution is companies like frame.work & valve making open hardware and creating software shims like proton because it's part of their value prop and business model to make open hardware.
If valve doesn't make Linux a viable gaming platform, they are going to be chess maneuvered into a checkmate by MSFT and Apple. Epic recognizes a similar issue too which is why even if they are competitors, they recognize the greater threat and are working together somewhat with Epic porting EAC to Linux & proton.
> I think the practical solution is companies like frame.work & valve making open hardware and creating software shims like proton
Right. I admire them certainly, and I'm thinking about getting a framework laptop myself, but we shouldn't really call their products free/open hardware because they use backdoored CPUs from Intel/AMD
They are not currently, because they are forced by current reality to use things like that. But they create the market demand to make open CPUs in the first place. If you become a big enough customer, Intel and AMD start becoming interested in making open versions of their firmware or CPUs, like they do with game consoles today, making custom models just for them. Framework is already interested in making an ARM laptop for example too, and I could foresee them getting AMD to make an open firmware version their CPUs just for the high assurance / open hardware segment that is starting to get created by valve and framework.
Create market demand, and companies start providing market solutions.
If valve doesn't make Linux a viable gaming platform, they are going to be chess maneuvered into a checkmate by MSFT and Apple. Epic recognizes a similar issue too which is why even if they are competitors, they recognize the greater threat and are working together somewhat with Epic porting EAC to Linux & proton.