Switched to Mint recently and had 0 problems, took no effort to make the switch at all. I still have Windows if I need it, but why would I ever need it, Mint isn't all that different from Windows, but better

I switched from win 10 to bazzite the hardest part of the process was remembering my steam password and finding the setting in bios to boot to the usb. Ill never buy another windows pc again.
Luckily im forces to use win 11 at work./s

Currently running cachyOS and have almost no problem running games besides having nvidia 1060 3GB so just old hardware not for modern games. But I can probably run anything and what's not for Linux just use wine, that works much better now than I remember. Also I'm very much a noob that just can use a search engine.

I gamed on it when Proton magically made it so games I bought on Steam worked. Otherwise I just gamed on an Xbox before that. I only recently switched to popos, (still gaming on it). I started on Slackware 3.4 and switched to Ubuntu in 2006-2007. I think as long as you aren't on the LTS version, you should be good. In any case, it's not a permanent decision and seems like every distro is crazy fast at installing these days. Worth a go whatever you try or where ever you land.

There's no reason to choose Ubuntu over Debian these days, and plenty of reasons to use Debian over Ubuntu.
For context, Ubuntu is based on Debian, so most of the stuff under the hood is the same, but Ubuntu keeps forcing background decisions about things that are not always in the user's best interests.
As for user interface, if you're used to Ubuntu with Gnome, try Debian with Gnome. If Ubuntu with KDE, try Debian with KDE. That way you get a familiar desktop environment and a sensible base OS.

I’m on Kubuntu and loving it. The most I’ve had to go for a game on steam is change a compatibility tool (literally right click and click a checkbox and dropdown). Final Fantasy XIV (MMO) was mostly straightforward, but I had very specific mods and 3rd party tools I wanted, but they all work still after going down a mostly straightforward rabbit hole. Not a lot of weirdness there, just learning how to mod on Linux.

i thought it was to operate the computer

I'm doing a small racing game inspired by Aerogauge(N64)

ATM its a proof-of-concept esque... demo... ish... thing, for the DreamDisc '25 jam But after the jam, do want to continue developing it and make it a full game

They should laugh. When I switched from FreeBSD to Linux felt it like such a downgrade.

Keep it simple, stupid!

Gentoo is many things.

KISS is none of them.

Debian is my daily driver and for regular people I help. Comes with a service card saying "it will work and you will like it".

I help for free. If someone does not like it, they can pay to have what they want done. But they don't get to ask for help again.

lol ... i still cant believe LTT did that.

It had an installer back in ~2009 as well.

It was removed for a few years because no one wanted to maintain it

Yes, you are mostly correct. In some sense, it is more a cultural thing. If your Arch breaks, the expectations for your ability to deal with it yourself are a bit higher. There are good instructions and people willing to help, but the latter (both inside and outside of Arch community, I think) may tell you that you shouldn't be using Arch if you don't meet their expectations.

Anyway, another aspect of it is the fact that with my system, I am a bit of a tinkerer.

And if you're extra desperate, there's always manjaro. But I love it. My hardware somehow works out of the box with them. Having the AUR is definitely a godsend for some things. One day I'll likely contribute something to it as a tiny tribute back.

Does anyone who installed arch using archinstall actually use the 'i use arch, btw' meme?