Wine is major part of Proton, so if it works on proton it's usually possible to get it working on wine. (Changes to Proton branch of wine are regularly incorporated back into Wine).
What proton is - its a tested distribution of wine and its libraries AND nice wrapper around wine, that helps setting everything up so it just works.
If you want to get games working on linux, proton is the easiest and best way to go. But if you want to get some of the programs running, that are not supported under proton, wine might work.
Ok. So when I'm having issues with a game, probably I'm missing whatever version of a lib I need, or running Wine on M1 Mac is bringing its own challenges.
What proton is - its a tested distribution of wine and its libraries AND nice wrapper around wine, that helps setting everything up so it just works.
If you want to get games working on linux, proton is the easiest and best way to go. But if you want to get some of the programs running, that are not supported under proton, wine might work.