Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies and Stardew Valley have native Linux Support. For Stardew, even the third modding API works flawlessly for me.

For the other ones, they are reported to run well on protondb.com, which is a good place to check Linux support (not only for Steam games). The reports there usually also list, which proton version works well.

Manual firmware updates

As someone who’s work laptop no longer has Wi-Fi since the automatic firmware update, I like my updates to be manual.

I don’t use GNOME, but from what I’ve read (and from experience with other software that has extensions) they often break when GNOME updates.

but had the genes

I’d say that falls under “birth lottery” as much as wealth inheritance.