Yes, I've searched and found nothing like Playnite.
I am still hoping for the cross platform feature that may be for the roadmap after the next big release
Yes 100% this is the problem. You can even add a redirect to Grub / systemd-boot to load the Windows bootloader from the other drive example for systemd-boot.
Does not work with bitlocker though without diving into very advanced settings to control which events are considered insecure so the tpm releases the keys.
It should work according to my research, though I do recommend trying Linux native alternatives as well. I personally went with Strawberry for now and it is similar enough for me.
I also dual boot on a laptop and a lot of games work well, especially via steam. I do have more problems with my GoG library and I had massive troubles to get Anno installed via Uplay. I've also noticed there are a lot of native native Linux ports coming out for some older games as well.
Just one piece of warning for dual booting, if the EFI portion for Linux and Windows is on the same drive Windows could decide to nuke the Linux bootloader with any update...
It's not too difficult to create a redirect to the windows bootloader in Grub or similar, which is the solution I went with in the end.
This reminds me of the stupid Gigabyte RGB software...
Not sure if this is till the case, but for a long time the kernel driver had a known unpatched security vulnerability. And uninstalling the software did not remove the kernel files, so now your system is vulnerable until you reinstall Windows...
And I fully expect some kernel level Anti-Cheat to be no better in this regard.
I have one group I play in where there are 7-10 Players. It's pure chaos, though since we play very infrequently and a lot of the players don't take the game too seriously it somehow works out.
Still would not recommend unless you like roleplaying with your fellow players until you get to your turn of GM attention.
I have a lot of experience with Windows and some with Linux.
The driver problems with Laptops are not only on Linux, though it is a lot more common, depending on the manufacturer Windows also has a ton of problems if you don't want to use the 8 year old pre-installed driver that was never updated.
And Linux is held back by (proprietary) software availability as well. Most of the time it would be Microsoft Office (a lot of people I know complain about alternatives like Google Docs or Libre Office not being up to par by a long shot). Another big thing is Games. Sure, most of them work quite well out of the box, but if they do not it would be beyond most of my friend groups skills to fix it. Not to mention the massive library of competitive games that some people play exclusively that just don't work at all.
I've been experimenting recently and while most games run fine and VRR & HDR & Multimonitor somewhat work after some experimenting & tweaks I still have problems with a few games.
Some recent examples would be Noita stuttering and running in slow motion. Getting anything from Ubisoft running (when it does run it runs great though). And modding is very hit & miss.
If Dual Boot with windows (especially if running Bitlocker) wasn't such a PITA I would likely use Linux as my main OS.
I wish I could do that, but CGNAT makes ipv6 the much preferred option for a lot of things.
But it's good to know that this might be the cause...