Comment by ftk_

There are now third party launchers for proton, such as: https://github.com/Open-Wine-Components/umu-launcher

As well as "game libraries": Lutris, Bottles, Heroic

Personally I use this alias to launch an exe via proton:

  alias proton='SteamGameId="${SteamGameId-1000}" PROTON_USE_WINESYNC=1 STEAM_COMPAT_CLIENT_INSTALL_PATH="$PWD" STEAM_COMPAT_DATA_PATH=$HOME/proton /usr/share/steam/compatibilitytools.d/proton-cachyos/proton waitforexitandrun'
  # cd /gamepath
  # proton Game.exe