I imagine rumble/vibration doesn't work through this method, does it?

Game will run on Linux / steam deck, just gotta make sure it loads the wrapper dlls for dinput and ddraw which can be done via winecfg under libraries section,

Intro video is just a white screen which may be a codec problem, not solved that yet but the game plays just fine :)

Not sure what the gog dev guys do with the videos for these releases but there's always something weird going on with them.

Game works fine on the Steamdeck, intro movie plays without a hitch too. I installed it manually with the offline installer through steam (I never use Lutris or Heroic). I am using Proton-GE 9-23 if that helps (haven't updated to the latest version yet). Haven't figured out how to get the d-pad to work, but I'm sure I can just mess with Steam controller layout to get it working.

Yeah that's too much work

Takes all of 30 seconds. Not tried Proton-GE yet but guy above says it works with the intro video which is cool :D

Point still stands, most Steam Deck users won't even want to mess around and just want games to work in Proton

The system I use is the GMKtec K11 with Bazzite and the only way to run the game is using Lutris with dgvoodoo2 enabled, which is disabled by default. With WineGE the start movie isn't working but with ProtonGE the movie works fine.

So this game is *mostly* working for me on the Deck, and all I had to do was:
1. Install the game through the Heroic Games Launcher
2. Use ProtonGE-9-27
3. Use winecfg to set library overrides for dinput & ddraw

The only problem I have is it seems to ignore the "Aspect ratio correction" option in GOG's DirectX config wrapper. I know the wrapper is working to some degree because if I set the "Texture filtering" to "Point sampled", that works as expected; but if I set the resolution to 1280x800, the image is stretched to fit 16:10 regardless of what "Aspect ratio correction" is set to. If I set it to 1024x768, the AR is right, but obviously the aliasing is terrible. Anybody else having the same issue?

I don't think that's true at all for "most" steam deck users, or general linux gamers, or PC gamers in general, Maybe for modern console converts.

I as a steam deck user want to hit 2 buttons to play this game.
Install
Play

Everything more is a hassle. The steam deck uses Linux, yes. Do I care as a gamer? No. Am I a Linux user, because it is installed on my steam deck? No. The Steam deck is a PC acting like a console and that is it how I use it. A console. It's a Nintendo Switch that is able to play PC games.

I understand that you just want everything to magically work with a minimal amount of effort, but:
1) You could have installed the Heroic Games Launcher and used that to install and run the game in the time it took you to make this comment.
2) GOG handled the publishing of this game, and they are never going to publish it on Steam no matter how much you wish they would.

That's all well and good but it's not the reality of PC gaming or Steam deck gaming(especially outside of steam client).

And errr yeah Using the SteamOS does make you a Linux user as you're literally using Linux be it steam's big picuture front end or via desktop as you say it's a PC acting like a console when it's in big picture / steam deck mode.

Anyways Heroic is your buddy and your pal and your friend when you're installing non steam games many of which will be just click install and play, This one just happens to use custom dll wrappers to get it all working noicely with modern systems which are designed to work on windows, so some basic tweaking is needed to load them on an OS that works differently.

Some cool tools to look into:

ProtonUPqt
ProtonPlus
Heroic
Lutris

Heroic will give you a one click option to add the game to steam so you can just one click launch it from steam once you've got it set up.

Welcome to PC gaming, Linux and Retro PC Gaming :D