Gaming on Ubuntu with older hardware, and some general questions

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
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Hi everyone, I’m not exactly new to L1, as i’ve been a long time subscriber of the youtube channel. Finally decided to use these forums.

I’ve been used to using Windows 7 for most of my productivity, gaming and general computing stuff. I have always been interested in trying out Linux. Lately I’ve gotten interested in Gaming on Linux, even more so after watching Wendell’s recent videos. I plan to use Linux when I’ve built my next rig, which will be an AMD Ryzen Threadripper based platform.
In the mean time, I’m still trying to get used to Ubuntu with my current build. (my rig details are in my profile)
I won’t appear to nitpick, Does Linux use GPU acceleration like Windows 7 does ie: via GPGPU/OpenCL to offload from the CPU? That doesn’t sound silly does it?
Any advice for configuring an EQ within Linux?
I’ve had trouble trying to install Steam, is there a specific version i need to install from the repository? I wanted to run my Windows Steam games from within Linux, but i wasn’t sure if there was a version of Steam with Wine integrated into it.
Any help would be appreciated, thank you.

I had more questions, I can’t remember what…I’ll add them later…

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Yes, linux does have OpenCL, and if you have an Nvidia GPU you can install Cuda.

What applications support gpu acceleration, there might be some that do on windows but not on linux or vice versa.

As for steam, just install the normal version, there should be only one in the ubuntu repos. Then any up to date version of steam has proton built in. And you can also install wine separately.

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I’ve had trouble trying to install Steam, is there a specific version i need to install from the repository?

For Linux gaming, I’d suggest using the official package supplied by Steam. Additionally, once logged in, go into Account Settings and enabled “Beta Participation”.

This will update to the latest version by Valve, which includes Steam Play and Proton integration. This opens up a bunch of your Windows-only games to your Linux install on Steam.