Has it really been that long? Apparently so. Valve originally announced their rebranding of Steam Play with Proton back on August 21st, 2018. Seems like a good time for a quick reflection being halfway to a decade old now with the tech that gave rise to the Steam Deck.
I used to use wine to play Starcraft/Broodwar with my friends. I remember feeling like that was magic, and I couldn’t help bragging that I was running it on linux while we were playing. (I was a young teenager! Probably running Mandrake linux.)
Nevertheless, I did have a windows partition for playing games. These days you can go pretty far without one.
What is my point? I dunno, I’m kinda drunk and now I’m reminiscing like an old man.
I think if your point is that Valve only got to where they are with Proton by standing on the shoulders of giants (wine) I agree.