In practice, though... well, let's just say that it's a beta. Quite literally, actually. And, after a week of struggling with Linux as my daily driver OS, and trying to game through Steam Play, I'm retreating back to Windows 7 for the time being.
I'll let Jason Evangelho from Forbes explain why:
While the technical possibility of playing the thousands upon thousands of Windows-only Steam games on Linux is a revolutionary leap forward, it's far from perfect. When it works it's amazing. When it doesn't it's an exercise in frustration.
I've spent the past two weeks downloading dozens of games to test, and many of the ones Valve has whitelisted do indeed perform well without any hiccups. But some, like 2016's DOOM, simply won't launch. The game works for the majority of people who've submitted their experience to the Steam Play Compatibility Reports website, but for many others, it does not.
Valve can't whitelist a game and take Steam Play out of beta (it's now available to everyone using the Steam for Linux client) until every title they've put their seal of approval on works for everyone who launches it -- provided they meet the software and hardware requirements. I think the worst possible outcome is to see reports of gamers who've wiped out their Windows partition and parked themselves gleefully in the Linux camp, only to be frustrated that the experience they expected isn't happening.Emphasis added, because that last sentence describes me perfectly.