I found that Elden Ring ran better on Proton on Linux than on native Windows on the same device. Loaded faster and ran more smoothly. I do not know why.
There was a while around release for Elden Ring where Valve was able to rapidly deploy fixes that resulted in the Steam Deck running without stuttering issues that were effecting powerful Windows builds. https://www.techradar.com/news/steam-deck-plays-elden-ring-b...
I'd hope that those issues eventually got resolved on Windows too...
In the case of Elden Ring, not really, it was due to DXVK (whose developer is sponsored by Valve) having custom patches to workaround the weird DirectX streaming logic of the game that caused constant frame hiccups.
So, on day 3 or something of release, Linux was the best platform to play the newest AAA game.
The year of Linux gaming has been here for a while.
It usually has to do with a translation layer, converting DirectX to Vulkan (there are a few different ones, depending on the version of DirectX).
And yes, gaming on Linux has been infinitely smoother and gets leaps of improvements every year. We're at a point where unreleased games already play on Linux, and typically with better performance than naively on Windows.
Controllers, audio, etc, all play out of the box, perfectly, since years now
I'd hope that those issues eventually got resolved on Windows too...