My wife (who current away from for a few months) enjoys playing SIMS 3. The only condition she has for installing Linux on her machine is if she can continue playing it there.
Now I know that Steam + Proton allows almost all games to run, but I am currently not in a situation where I can try it out on a laptop. I thought before proceeding, I’d ask the community’s experience / opinion.
My only concern would be the specs of the machine; Laptops can vary so much in terms of performance and level of support for the components within it. It would probably work easily using Steam+Proton. I play The Sims 3 using Steam+Proton on my Ubuntu Linux Desktop, the performance is pretty good! It only made my processor a warm 63C to 65C, I played on high specs with shadows turned down (shadows are always resource hog). I had a few packs enabled, but not enough to truly test my system.
The worst hurdle is always the initial Vulkan Driver processing. Depending on the quality and heat management of the laptop/PC that will be used, it might overheat during this process. Afterward, she should have a perfectly normal launch experience. One thing I noticed is that attempting to sign in will cause a fatal error and the game will need to be restarted; cloud saves are not enabled for The Sims 3. You’ll naturally have to back up her saves and transfer them to wherever they’ll be going post Mint installation.