CS 1.6 ran just fine for me just now on NixOS. Literally just clicked install in Steam and ran it. Aren't Macs incapable of running most games? Get a $150-200 n150 mini PC and install Linux and it should run most things before like 2010 (and probably later) at 4k 60 fps while sipping like 10 W and running completely silently.
Thing is I don’t buy devices more than I absolutely need so that’s just a phone and a laptop. I will try this with NixOS because I have never tried NixOS in the first place. Brew has been enough so never tried anything else and also a lot of FOSS tools I use on my mac pro treat Brew as some kind of standard so that’s there.
FYI NixOS is more of a power user distribution (the draw is it's driven by declarative configuration management). Something like Bazzite is more targeted for e.g. gamers and may be more appropriate if you want a more off the shelf experience (I don't have experience with it but see it discussed a lot). If you only have a mac you might not have much luck though.
The n150 mini PC suggestion is because they really punch above their weight for being so cheap if you otherwise don't have usable hardware and want to play older/less demanding games anyway. They also make for extremely snappy workstations (on Linux. They come with Windows 11 which is super laggy). And they're like 2 inches * 2 inches * 1 inch, so tiny. If you're doing anything other than AI or something like video editing, they're a fantastic value.
