Does this game still have a healthy playerbase? I bought it at release as I was a huge GW1 stan but my PC wouldn't play it in linux fast enough for a decent experience so I never really played it.
If you boot in don't delete your characters, mine had 10 years worth of gifts.
It works great on Linux no issues you can run the steam version through Arena.nets launcher pop "-provider Portal" in the launch options
I got back into it about a month ago, picking up from where I left off in 2019. I'm playing the stories and maps in chronological order, and because there's loads of incentives to go do stuff or collect things in older maps, there's been people around the entire time. People have been super-duper helpful to me anytime I mention that I'm a returning player. Lovely game, lovely community.
I started playing a year ago (also on Linux), I never felt a lack of players to do anything, be it recent or older content. As for performance, from what I can compare with my friends, its runs at about 90% of windows. It's free to play the base content, give it a try!