I mean literally yes, but, it could not exist in any meaningful way without Proton.

Thats why I say its really built around Proton, they started with Proton and then said ‘how do we make an OS that will work with/around this’ and landed on Arch.

The whole point of it is: Be a functional, efficient, fast, Linux OS that primarily plays video games.

Thats impossible without Proton.