You can buy them used if you can find them. I bought 2 directly from Valve before they were discontinued then a 3rd on Ebay.

I read Tim Sweeney’s name for the first time in this thread and don’t care enough to look him up, so I can’t comment on him. I don’t play a lot of multiplayer either, so Proton has been pretty great for me.

Pretty much the only remaining hurdle to Linux gaming is kernel-level anti-cheat which may be going away in the near future.

Well to each their own, but the only thing closer than the trackpad to a mouse would be a mouse.

Aiming with a controller is just going to be terrible.

In general I’d agree, but on the deck why would you not use the trackpad as a mouse for anything first-person?

I usually stick with mouse and keyboard if I have it docked, but if I play something where a controller is preferable I have a couple steam controllers I can connect. Those are my go-to, but I also have a stadia controller and joy-cons if there are more than 2 of us playing.