Not always. It's largely going to depend on the game. GE is a tweaked version fork. I've had some games run fine with either version. But I've also had a mix of some running better with GE, some without.

I forget the name, but there's a GUI tool now (check your package manger) that makes the setup really easy. Though the manual setup is about as complicated as creating a folder and pasting the GE file in it and restart steam.