If you’re referring to the USB thing, I also tried booting Memtest86, GParted and Ubuntu to test, and all of them booted from a live USB without me having to unplug everything. That was totally unique to Pop_OS.
As for the proton, I’ll try that fork. I did try a couple forks, though the latest Wine-GE is the only one I can think of the name of.
Edit: I’m using Lutris, and Wine-GE is the non-steam equivalent of Proton-GE, so… whomp whomp I guess