No, because that is untrue.

Have you done much gaming, or video intense stuff on linux?

On all my various devices, linux gpu performance was worse, than with stock windows. But I never shopped for specific linux supported devices, which is the only known way to me, to get comparable results.

Benchmarks going back a couple years show near parity on both.[1] Even recent NVidia cards show comparable results.[2] It's perhaps a 5-10% hit for running via Wine, sometimes less, and rarely it's faster on Linux. There's certainly very few actual compatibility issues with most games, and generally those I've encountered affect both Windows and Linux equally (see: GTA:V shadows on AMD cards).

As someone who only has Linux systems and games often, my big barriers are not performance related; they're Anti-Cheat related.

So to suggest that this is the source of Microsoft's decision making is laughable.

[1]: https://youtu.be/aE5WyObAFtk

[2]: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=rtx3090-...

Yes, I have. My gaming desktop is running Manjaro Linux with a 1660 super and game performance is great. I haven't yet run into a game that this PC struggled with. My home media center is running LibreElec on a Raspberry Pi 4 and video playback is perfect. It can play 4k h265 video with no problems.

And have you compared the same device with windows?

I'd imagine Windows would run like absolute shit on a Raspberry Pi.