Protondb will be your best friend here. If I were you I’d look up the games you want to play on there and check peoples comments on how they got them running. Almost everything out of box using steams proton tools but often it needs tweaking. Depending on how much you want to play a game it might not be worth the trouble to setup. For instance I stay away from every live service game now. You should also check out the os people are using on protondb to make sure it works for you I use arch (btw) so I won’t take instructions from a Debian setup if I can find one with a similar os.

Worth pursuing and you sound experienced enough to get it set up. Idk about modding though that can be painful to get setup BC of how wine/proton work.

I’ve only seen this on a system I hadn’t changed the wallpaper on. But agreed the stock ones suck

Mostly BC its low effort. The most intimidating thing about arch for me was the troubleshooting when things go wrong. I’m cool with that in general operation but not during the installation process. Endeavor makes it painless while still being a minimalistic install

EndeavorOS if you want to have an easy time. Also be comfortable reading documentation.