It's not as good as the evangelists make out, it's not as hopeless as the detractors make out.

The "news" is that in the last 5 years it has gone from "absolutely not viable for gaming" to "good enough for a lot of people".

Hardly, when the solution is to emulate the ABI of another OS.

OS/2 was also a great platform for games by that measure, thanks Win-OS/2.

I'm not really sure what you mean. You can play games on it. That's good enough for a lot of people. I don't really see why it being due to a compatibility layer or being native has much to do with my claim.

The Windows compatibility layer for OS/2 was one of the reasons why at the end of the day no one cared to create OS/2 applications, providing zero benefits to acquire it versus the real deal.

Same applies to GNU/Linux, hence Windows continues to thrive, while the 1% of the desktop folks get to taste Windows games with an ABI emulation layer.

I think in contrast Linux has plenty going for it, especially in the context of Windows being increasingly buggy, bloated, advertising-ridden, telemetry sending behemoth which has frustrated users universally with mandated update policies.

Linux is mostly not being used because people don't have all the software they need and translation layers solve that.

We're entering a different space in desktop OS usage. Windows is changing the desktop metaphor to be more similar to macOS and mobile computing is being used by an increasing number of people as a daily driver.

In short, I don't think ABI emulation layers are the reason Linux is only at 1%. Indeed it was at 1% before Proton was released.