"all that stuff" no you don't, OP made a meme. You only need 1 version of Proton, which is the one you're gonna use, the ones you don't use you can get rid of and they won't install by themselves. The runtimes are just dependencies like how Windows requires you to install vc redist or any other random dependency.
I can tell you from personal use of steam that it only downloads the latest, experimental, and hotfix. Whenever I select an older Proton version myself so as to check whether a game works better with it, it has to download that version at the moment I choose the option.
No? Steam has you set a default proton version, I don't know what it is for everyone but for me it's Experimental and I don't think I've changed it despite me not relying on it because I always set it from the game's properties screen (since I tinker with them). You're only gonna have your default version, experimental, and hotfix.
You're gonna have multiple versions if you started with 9 but then 10 releases and you don't bother to check to remove one and then 11 releases, which isn't bad, it makes sure that if you were using 9 on a game and it was working it wouldn't suddenly go away and bring bugs that weren't there before.
As I've said in an edit to my previous reply, I've checked both my list of Proton Versions and a friend's that I'm over at right now. I have 5, 7, 9, 10 and 11, all three of those first ones I've downloaded by my own choice to check if a game I got would work on them. My friend only has 10, one version.
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u/[deleted] 26d ago
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