Worth mentioning that if you’re on AMD, you’re pretty much open for choice. If you have nVidia, make sure the OS you go with calls out nVidia support as a feature. Even then, your specific config may require that you try out a couple before finding the right fit.

I personally tried Bazzite and had a rough experience with performance and haven’t had issues on EndeavorOS, but have read reports from other nVidia users that had the opposite experience. All to say, your mileage may vary, and don’t give up right away if the first one doesn’t feel right.

I switched to Bazzite on my gaming rig a month ago and felt great. I managed to install and mod Skyrim effortlessly and yesterday I installed Tarkov and SPT with no problem whatsoever. Highly recommend.

But check if your favorite games are compatible, mainly the multiplayer ones: Tarkov can only be single player PvE, GTA is story mode only and forget about Destiny 2. Not a problem for me, plenty of alternatives, but you should check for yourself.

I recommend Mint for a beginner friendly stepping stone. Works right out of the box and is really easy to jump to from windows.

I was in the same situation a few months ago. I wanted to try Linux but had no real experience with it. To experiment safely, I built a computer from old parts and installed Linux Mint. I then swapped it with my Windows machine and committed to using Mint exclusively for a month. That hands-on approach helped far more than reading guides. I now use Mint on my primary system.

Here is what I learned along the way. Mint has excellent documentation because it is one of the most popular Linux distributions. When I ran into problems, I could generally find reliable answers through the official forums, community wikis, or by asking ChatGPT for step-by-step instructions. So far, there has not been a single issue I could not eventually fix with some experimentation.

If you are coming from Windows and want to game, there are several points worth knowing upfront:

1. Steam on Linux is straightforward

Steam has a native Linux client. Most Windows games work through Proton, which Steam handles automatically. For many titles, you simply install the game and press play. Performance can be very close to Windows.

2. Expect some trial and error

Although many games work out of the box, some require you to switch Proton versions or install small compatibility tools. It is usually not difficult, but it is different enough from Windows that patience helps.

3. Modding takes more effort

My most recent challenge involved getting game mods working. Tools like Proton, Wine, and mod installers sometimes interact in unexpected ways. It took me a few hours of reading and experimenting, but I eventually got everything running. Once you understand where games store their files and how Proton prefixes work, modding becomes much more manageable.

4. Linux teaches you how your system works

If you are willing to tinker, Linux rewards you. You learn how your files are organized, how applications install dependencies, and how to fix problems yourself. That knowledge makes troubleshooting less intimidating over time.

5. You can always dual-boot

If you are nervous about switching completely, you can dual-boot Windows and Mint. That way you can learn Linux without losing access to anything critical.

If you are starting from zero, the biggest advantage is the size and friendliness of the Linux Mint community. You do not have to figure everything out alone. With a bit of persistence, you can build a fully functional gaming setup that performs well and is easier to maintain than you might expect.

Look at zorinOS or Mint. Those are good starting points

My experience is that Linux Mint is the closest we have to a "it just works"-distro that is also decently up to date. Try that first.

I don't think you can install Linux on a cat. Please do not the cat

I play a lot of games over steam

If my main concern is playing game with Steam, most mainstream Linux OSes should be fine. If I have to pick one... Linux Mint is very beginner-friendly, and I've heard great things about Bazzite too. SteamOS works flawlessly with Steam out of the box (owns Steam Deck, can verify), but I don't know how easy it is to set up by yourself

If you happen to also like non-Steam games: a lot of them can be added as a custom application/game via your Steam Library, which does most of the heavy-lifting: you only have to specify which compatibility layer to use & sometimes do keymapping. Setting up wine on its own is not for the faint-hearted

I personally use Arch because AUR (a user-uploaded repository, a lot of popular Linux OSes have their own versions) makes it easy to play a lot of FOSS games... but I can't recommend Arch Linux for beginners

After distro hopping for decades, I've ended up just running Mint for almost all desktop use cases. This includes gaming via steam.

Bazzite, Linux Mint, CachyOS

Try each of them out, see what you mesh best with, join their respective discord/matrix for further help and details 👍

I'm just glad that someone FINALLY asked this question!

For sure choose some Debian-based distro. As a beginner maybe stay away from Arch or Fedora derivatives - most tutorials are for Debian-based distros and it will be easier that way. Pick something like Ubuntu, Mint, Zorin or sth like that. Don't be owerwhelmed. The distro doesn't really matter as long it's not Arch. Learn that the look of the desktop is independent of the distro you choose. The look is called "desktop environment". Look it up. You can install any desktop environment on any distro so you don't have to pick distro based on looks. Good luck and have fun.

Pick something with a good window manager, typing into a terminal without fingers and thumbs is going to be tricky.

I watched a video recently of a german Youtuber that created a Linux chooser with questions about usage, experience etc.

The language is only in german, but you could try the translation feature in your browser.

https://themorpheus407.github.io/LinuxChooser/

I'm going to go out on a limb here... If you have no Linux experience, download virtualbox and a handful of distros to try out in your current machine.

CachyOS is great for gaming, I'd suggest the KDE desktop PopOS is also a great choice, their native cosmic desktop is nice. Mint with cinnamon is also a good choice for gaming and daily use Bazzite is also a popular gaming distro that also uses KDE Xubuntu is also a great choice, Ubuntu base with XFCE desktop, great for gaming and a big supportive community

Try these and maybe a handful others to play with until you find a desktop that you find intuitive and easy to find what you need. Once you play with a few of these pick one and try to stick with it as you learn Linux in a full native install.

Fedora KDE Plasma is what I use. It's solid.

Fedora KDE is what I use and recommend.

Its easy, to setup, no frills, reliable and very easy to use with a just gui if you're not into the terminal.

If, and only if, this is not your primary computer. Eg, it's only for gaming, I'd recommend Bazzite.

Bazzite is great and I use it on our couch pc for a true console experience. I call it "our better Xbox".

I'd probably say mint, reasonably newbie friendly. I've not tried Bazzite but I hear good things about it.

I currently run Arch btw, it's not what I'd recommend as a first distro.

Anyway don't over think it. Get something easy up and running and after a while get curious or annoyed and try something else.

Hope you have an AMD gpu. Been a while since I had a Nvidia but they were twice as annoying to deal with some 7 years ago.

From what I hear, gaming = bazzite.

Also you can check compatibility of your games with ProtonDB.

Mint is beginner friendly. The Cinnamon desktop is very Windows-like. But if you want HDR support I don’t recommend Mint because its desktops are mostly on X11. It updates the kernel less frequently, so it’s more stable, less cutting edge.

Pop!_OS is also beginner friendly, gaming oriented, makes installing NVIDIA drivers easy, and since its desktops are on Wayland, you can get HDR support. Its kernel updates more frequently, so newer hardware gets support sooner.

I recommend Mint if it's your first time. It's really easy to set up and use and there are thousands of guides online for fixing any issues you encounter with it. I do not recommend Bazzite like others are recommending because you literally can't change anything with it. That is fine if everything works out of the box and you're basically just using it for gaming, but if literally anything is wrong with your install or you have a device where the drivers that come with Bazzite don't work, you literally can't fix it. Not as in "it's really difficult" I mean it literally won't let you do it. Updating drivers on Linux is notoriously frustrating, but it's very often required especially if you have older USB peripherals you want to use.

You will feel at home with anything kde

Fedora KDE.

Looks similar-esque to Windows, Steam and most/all your games will run great on it.

Packages and kernel are kept current and it’s stable.

It has an App Store called Discover for finding most anything you will need out of the gate.

https://fedoraproject.org/kde/

Pop_OS

I recently made the switch to Kubuntu. I wanted KDE and Wayland all setup for me after arch issues a couple years ago.

Another big reason is that I can install the discord .deb files easily without thinking much, cause discord has an update like every other day.

I might switch one day but it should be easy cause my OS drive doesn't have any games on it

Try this: https://distrochooser.de/en

I would say SteamOS if you can run it. Otherwise, CachyOS.

What kind of GPU do you use ?

Your new phone and GameNative. If you insist on a PC- Bazzite have a cool idea where they use Fedora atomic, the downside is that it's Fedora. If you feel like you can get alone with Arch try CachyOS. I use Nobara but I'm not quite happy with in because I've had so many issues with updates, and stuff not working properly and in the past was very confusing what you should've to install programs. I'm not sure if there's a reason to use Nobara now when they use the kernel patches from CachyOS and removed all patches for specific vendors (like Asus and Lenovo) except for Surface laptops. The initial setup is great. If you have legacy or in the short future legacy Nvidia GPU don't go with Nobara. If you want to set it up yourself like you want check out openSUSE. I didn't mentioned Debian and Debian-based because Steam is recommended to be installed as system app and Debian have very old packages. Debian unstable or maybe better PikaOS can work for that.

CachyOS with kde. Nvidia + wayland + wifi + proton and lutris with umu all work out of the box

I have been using Nobara OS for a few years, it is based on Fedora, comes with Nvidia and other proprietary drivers if you want. Plus, it also has an HTPC (home theatre PC) mode, where you boot directly into steam's big picture mode, like steam deck.

Ubuntu is the starter distro. Start there. Figure out how this shit works and learn what you love and what you hate about it. Then you’ll be in a better position to find what you actually want.

Do not start with arch. That is not what it is for.

You don’t want kali. It solves a specific problem you do not have.

Avoid all immutable distros at first. They are great but add a layer of complexity that will fuck you if you don’t have the basics down first.

For me, my recommendation is:

• slightly older hardware, go with Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu, so will have slower updates than something based on Fedora so will not support the latest hardware)
• if you have newer hardware, I would go for something based on Fedora.

Fedora Workstation (GNOME) and KDE are both great well-rounded options.

If you want a gaming-centric distro, Bazzite is a nice option (if you have nvidia GPU, pick the option that has those drivers!). Bazzite is atomic, meaning it's slightly harder to break the OS and it's easy to roll back (there are a few limitations though, like most apps will be installed via flatpak rather than with dnf). If you have a living room PC, Bazzite also offers a console-like experience with Steam Big Picture Mode.

If you like tinkering and want to squeeze out performance, CachyOS is a great option, it's essentially Arch Linux that is easier to install and has a bunch of performance tweaks.

TLDR: Mint for older hardware, Fedora/Bazzite for newer hardware, CachyOS if you know what you're doing

I'm running CachyOS and love it. Great performance and easy to use IMO

Kubuntu is the best. It's Ubuntu with KDE tools and programs. You have Plasma as a desktop environment, which is very close to Window but that you can customize to your need.

Ubuntu is very popular so you get pretty much everything available and with tutorial, ressources and everything. KDE really push it to the most user friendly, GUI for everything kind of state.

Steam is easy to install, take charge of Proton or anything needed for your games to run.

I was very frustrated by Gnome (the default desktop environment for Ubuntu), failing miserably to make it more like Window. I guess Gnome is more for Mac users.

The only thing I recommend is deactivating Snap and installing Flatpack. It's easy to find tuto on how to do that. Both Snap and Flatpack are doing the same idea, to bundle a program and it's dependencies in a format that allows easier distribution to many distro. But Snap is not as good as Flatpack. You are free to leave it or to use both.

Either way, you can also install program made for Ubuntu or Debian. And with KDE come Discover that is like an App Store and updater.

Linux Mint is also good but I really think Plasma is the best desktop environment. Good thing to know you can always install more desktop environment then the one already installed, so don't hesitate to try other.

If you are already engaged in a very pro open source stance, you might look at Fedora.

Anyway you choose, there are community of people passionate with Linux that can help you every step of the way. LLM can also help you get the basic. Good luck and welcome 🤗

Want easy starting point..... Linux Mint.

Later down the line move to more complicated ones.

https://youtu.be/e2wB9r1SYrY

Since you posted a kitty, I will help. I adopted Mint with Cinnamon, and it works. It's not perfect, but it's good enough for me not to spend ages playing with distros.

mint

Should be fine for the most part on any distribution. Just install lutris, heroic, steam. Wine and wine tricks and proton as your emulator.(glorious egg roll or latest is pretty stable)

The only games I’ve had issues with so far have been an old game from bungee and maybe a few old ones from Ubisoft

I started on Bazzite when I switched, and it was ok but never felt quite right. After that I switched to Garuda, which is also designed to be a ready right out of the box experience that is gaming and performance focused.

It is based on Arch, so it is currently being kept up to date and has been extremely reliable. Pretty much every issue has been solved with an update and reboot.

As an aside, everyone always pushes KDE, but I personally love xfce, it's worth a look.

Okay, but that's not what you found. What you have there is a cat, which is also very good! In fact, the excellent news is that you can keep the cat and continue searching for a Linux distro.

Fedora’s solid for me. I left Ubuntu distros because they’re always out of date with the latest desktop environment updates.

CachyOS for performance, Bazzite for stability. None of key features I've mentioned about these two OSes are overwhelmingly better on each side. Barely makes any difference imo.

My perspective: I fly Bazzite on my main rig (HX99g) and it's been epic. Gaming mode unfortunately doesn't detect 165Hz but desktop mode does. Upsides: seems to run games slightly better than windows, and does most daily computer tasks with ease. Downsides: doesn't run windows native apps. Can be ran though winboat, but say Whatsapp wont have mic unless you add device in settings, but then you'd lose sound of Bazzite.

Other than that, it has been an epic ride. In fact, so good that I have nuked internal SSD windows and clonezilla'd my external Bazzite ssd to internal SSD. Windows hasn't been installed yet. It is in the plans.

They're all pretty much the same except for a couple, like nix, Gentoo, slackware, etc. maybe stay away from those. fuck around and find out is the best way.

I use nobara as a gamer and it works well for me

CachyOS

A lot of these new distros people mention and threads like this look really sleek and fancy. I'm still using Arch Linux with i3 instead of a desktop environment, and can play whatever games. It's all the same shit under the hood once you've installed what you need.

This question is useless, especially here where you're going to get a million different answers from some of the most opinionated experts on the Internet.

They are all effectively the same with very minor (and shrinking) differences. The actual biggest difference is the type of release cycle (atomic, rolling, etc) and you can find multiple of those in the same distro. Again.... It's all effectively the same.

I'm gonna recommend what works for me, but it might not work for you. I like these because (again, in my specific use case) they "just worked" with little to no problems: Fedora for a desktop/laptop and bazzite for a handheld. Again.... YMMV.

Go check distrowatch and try a few different distros until you find one you like. The more popular, the more likely you can find a community to support your questions.

gentoo!!

no but actually, linux mint is very good for newcomers, especially as its desktop has resemblance to windows. Pop!_os is also really good and better for gaming maybe? I would avoid ubuntu (slower and a lot more bloated) and especially manjaro (breaks a LOT without you even doing anything).

I might also cautiously suggest arch? It's kind of a meme in the community because of its own community being seen as a bit toxic, but once you've got past the install and customization process (which does admittedly take a lot of time and reading), you have a system that is entirely your own in almost every way. For example, in the case of desktop environments, you can use cinammon from mint or gnome from pop!_os or even a more lightweight one like xfce. You also tend to have a more stable system, as you won't have unknowingly have some unstable packages hidden in the bowels of your system that get relied on by 73 other packages and could break at any moment.

I also game a lot and made the switch a little over a year ago. I use a 3090 so i chose Pop!_OS and it has been treating me super well! Highly recommended, especially their new Cosmic version.

Honestly, if you're mostly using Steam for gaming, pretty much any major distro will work. Linux Mint is my personal choice for newbies but if something else strikes your fancy, go for it. I second the recommendation for checking on ProtonDB to see if your games are supported. I would also recommend ProtonUp-Qt as a program once you've installed Linux; it's really good for managing different Proton installs on Steam quickly and easily. Also also, I have personally had better luck with the Flatpak version of Steam, rather than the native distro versions, because it has less weird dependency issues, but YMMV. Good luck!

I recommend Debian for new users and Arch fir experienced users, but use what feels right to you.

Ooh, okay! I have some recommendations for distributions built for gaming:

• CachyOS is probably the best OS for this. It is Arch-based.
• Bazzite is a Debian-based gaming distro.

One thing to note is that Linux can read your Windows partitions. If you have data on drives you'll still need, you can leave them and Linux can access them fine. (Windows can't read most file systems though, so the other direction of this mostly doesn't work. Windows can't read most Linux partitions).

If you're reasonably technologically competent, I'd recommend CachyOS or Garuda. These are Arch based, so the Arch wiki and Arch User Repository are available, and great resources. They come with everything you need for gaming though, unlike base Arch. You don't need to fiddle with things or set things up. They just work out-of-the-box.

If you're not really technologically competent, but want to learn, the Mint recommendations are fine. It's one of the most used distros, so there's still plenty of help available. Alternatively, and I think better, there's Fedora. For either of these, choose KDE versions, not Gnome or anything else. KDE is more customizable and closer to Windows too. (Though it can be customized to be more like anything else, or whatever you want too.)

If you really don't want to learn, Bazzite or maybe Zorin are there.

CachyOS or Bazzite if you play games

SteamOS if you ONLY play games...and replace your windows for general stuff with Linux Mint

I don't recommend anything Ubuntu related for newcommers, it's full of weird stuff that is hard to debug when it breaks. But other than that anything will do really. And even Ubuntu is passable to be honest

Zorin OS