I’m asking this to know if I had misread a proton log saying that a game opened with proton-experimental instead of proton-cachyos despite the latter being the one set as the default in “Settings > Compatibility”.
It’s not necessary. Forcing the use of a specific compatibility tool is for when you wish to run native Linux games as Windows games with Proton instead. Which is, unfortunately, a valid use case since there are many games that run better that way due to being unoptimized to run as Linux native.
Also, if for whatever reason the Proton version that you’ve chosen as default for all doesn’t work that great for a specific game, you would be able to force the use of another on a per game basis, instead of having to switch it for everything.
Otherwise, Windows “only” games will use the compatibility tool that you declare in “Settings > Compatibility” without any need to force.
There are older games which will not run with modern Proton, but only with older versions. I had quite a few of them… World in Conflict, if I recall correctly, was like that.
I don’t know what the difference is between the cachyos-proton and the GE. I usually use the newest GE-version.
To be honest I’ve seen it be inconstant, either that or mangohud gets what proton is loaded. Like I will have global and it chooses something else. So I always force.