Question: Moving from Win10 to Linux - what happens to my bought games?

[johndai]

I am considering removing Win10 and installing Linux and I want to know what can I do about my previously bought Steam games?

Will I be able to re-download the games if they port to Linux?

I did try a search but found nothing about what I wanted to do.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.

[Teotwawki]

Steam has a built-in customized version of WINE (windows compatibility layer) called Proton. This is defaulted to a whitelist of "proven games" but can be toggled to attempt to run all windows games that are in your account.

You can check https://www.protondb.com/ for various user reports of performance for an individual title.

Overall, it is quite impressive, with a few game specific troubles here and there, I am still trying to get a HOTAS flightstick fully working in Rise of Flight for example, but otherwise things are mostly very very smooth for me.

[Eldin]

Yes, you can download all games you bought if they have Linux version.
If they don't have Linux version, you can install them with Steam Proton.
But not all games run well via Proton.
Some games will have performance and stability issues and some games won't run at all.

I recommend you to dual boot Windows and Linux so you can play some games on Windows if they don't run well on Linux.

[Spawn of Totoro]

https://www.google.com/search?q=dual+boot+windows+10+with+linux&client=firefox-b-1-d&gbv=1&sei=CSEzXb6EK9LT-gT_0pDQAw

Try this as you can then have both Windows and Linux installed.

... a little cheat though, if you have two drives, is to unplug the windows drive and install Linux on the other drive, then plug the Windows drive back in. Then when you want to use one or the other, you can do so through the boot manager on you MOBO instead of installing a separate boot manager.

[johndai]

All very good points, thank you so much all.

Dual boot sounds great idea too.

Thank you, question solved