Thing is, it is neither of these things. Have you even used it recently? Even for games that already have a native Linux version, Proton can be the better option, simply because the Windows version is actually maintained/supported.
Also, D9VK/DXVK, the translation layers whose complexity you lament, are even used on Windows 10 now, because they work better than using Direct3D natively in some cases.

Of course I'd prefer a native version. OTOH, I'd much rather use Proton than a native version that required Snappy or Flatpack.

I do keep Windows 7 for legacy things that do not work on Linux with reasonable performance/at all but it seems it will not work on Win7 (see other thread).

While we are minority I would like to state that I am not going to buy it for the full price unless it works on Linux natively and maybe I will buy it once it's $10 if it at least works on Win7 with reasonable performance.

Win10/consoles only = no buy for any price.

I'd not read too much into the OS requirement here regarding the APIs they use. Microsoft discontinued support for older Windows versions than Windows 10, so most developers will only target still supported platforms for their software. As this is only Windows 10 even now, that's why the shop only lists this version.

Given they will also release the game for non-Microsoft consoles, using a 3D API that's portable would be a wise choice, so Vulkan really wins in this regard. It's already used by many other gamedevs (id Software as an early adopter, Unreal Engine 4 also now has a Vulkan renderer, TESO uses Vulkan, just to give a few examples). DirectX 12 is hardly used these days - it requires the same amount of work rewriting any existing engine than Vulkan, but only works on Windows 10 (not even on the Xbox One AFAIK, that only supports DirectX 11) - for other platforms you'd need to write a second, e.g. Vulkan-based, renderer.

That said, if they use Vulkan or DirectX 11, the game should run fine with Wine and DXVK.

Creating a native Linux version is a little more complicated. Not because supporting "unstable" Linux distros is a big issue as it's been ranted in this thread, but rather because developers use many licensed, closed source third party libraries in their games so they don't need to implement every little bit of code themselves. Sadly, most of these libraries are only available for Windows, and since they're not open source, also not easily portable. If you use only one of these libraries as a central building block in your game, you're locked to the platforms the library is available on. To make the game more portable, you'd need to replace the library with a portable one or rewrite it on your own, which might not be an easy task and not worth the effort, as it's always coming down to a ROI/business value decision: if making the game portable costs $500K (which, for a game project like this, is a rather low estimate), will the additionally sold copies cash in more than that cost? Probably not.

Being a Linux-only user for almost 20 years now, it's always sad to see efforts to support Linux come and go, but also being a software developer working on commercial (cross-platform) software, I really know the hardships associated with that, so personally I can fully understand CDPR if they decide not to release a native Linux version.

If CDP still aim to make CP2077 run on Stadia, it needs to support Vulkan. Wish we could get to know more concrete technical details soon.

Then again, the fact that they don't talk about that could mean that some things are still undecided.

The PC Version is already finished. The Delay is because of the **** consoles :(

is that your deduction? there hasn't been much news about anything, but i may just have missed it

No, I only give you what we were told by the official side. but if it is true, the matter with the API thing has been decided long ago. Google Stadia won't change that, because this version of the game is only ported for Stadia, which will be released months after September 17th, at least that's what I understood.

ah, i see. i'll admit i'm not following gaming news that closely - it's hard staying hyped for so long ;)

I really hope it will run on Linux. I have an OMEN PC and 2 Weeks ago Windows 10 stopped working overnight, without doing anything by myself. I woke up and saw a bluescreen KMODE EXEPTION HANDLE....because of Windows Defender. The OS is pure garbage and i will never ever install this on my PC again. Ubuntu Linux 20.04 is so nice and well done.

It is, but if you can't maintain an OS, Linux won't save you either.

yeah, pretty much this.

i don't have much respect for microsoft, but i'll give them one thing:
- if they remove old/insecure/broken stuff, older software may stop working, and a lot of people will be quite angry
- if they stick to backwards compatibility, the os gets messier, harder to maintain and potentially insecure

so far, they have mostly wanted to preserve backwards compatibility. for an example of when they didn't, look at UAC. originally, windows was never intended to be a multi-user system, so there wasn't much in the way of security. a lot of old software still won't run properly if you don't give it admin privileges.

No big deal under Linux, because there is one iron rule, every kernel dev has to follow:
DONT BREAK USERSPACE. That means software written 20 years ago, still works fine :)

That's true, but Linux is easier to maintain than Windows.If something goes really wrong, you still have the option to boot into text mode without the need for a graphical user interface, you still have a fully functional system and can edit files.

since we are talking about reliability and stuff:

if there is one thing i would wish for in modern linux distros it's that they cared about documentation as much as the BSD's do. when was the last time you solved a problem by reading the man pages instead of just looking it up on the web? just look at the pages for the util-linux package or most gnu software, and then compare them to the pages of openssh.

The Arch wiki and the Gentoo handbook would like to have a word with you.

yeah, the arch wiki is really good.

also, thanks for the tip about the gentoo handbook. gonna have a look at that :)