Yep, you can emulate, it does work, but there is a better option. Clone Hero works better, has lower performance requirements, supports all of the songs from all of the games, has great peripheral support, and has a whole community of people making modern songs available.

I would also recommend looking into a RetroCult controller mod if you really get into it. Quite a fun electronics project and suitable for someone with limited experience as it has been made very easy and only includes a little bit of soldering and cutting away a little bit of the case.

Spangle banging

Yes, as the other responder said, tell steam through the properties dialogue to use Proton for compatibility.

It would also be a good idea to tell the devs that they have this issue. They can take down the Linux release and let it default to Proton, but they have to do it on their end.