Having read through some of the comments I just wanted to add one thing. If you find that one distro doesn't quite do what you need, don't be afraid to wipe it again and install a different distro. I migrated from windows 10 to Linux mint, I found it frustrating for gaming, and then from mint I switched to cachyOS, which is built from the same OS that the steam deck uses. I haven't had any similar issues since. Find what works for you, and don't be afraid to try something else

I'm currently on Linux Mint, works pretty well out of the box. Steam games and indie games and even old windows game work (with lutris and/or bottles).

However I should warn, I also have a Steam Link. It does stream, but depending on the game the framerate can get very laggy. I'm running on a RTX 2070 tho. Not sure I can recommend steam link on Linux yet.

Everything else works great.

Fedora KDE.

upvoting the bazzite. if you want to play steam games its the obvious go to. I went to it from zorin and enjoying it.

I'd recommend a glibc edition of Void. Dev tools and libraries aregenerally up to date; there are exceptions like some zig related stuff but you can generally work around such issues with anyzig. Also has a framework for custom builds via xbps-src in the package repo. Packagw management is very easy via xbps, and purging obsolete packages is trivial.

Pick one, that is the one

I heard CachyOS is quite popular these days. Other dedicated gaming distros are Bazzite, Nobara, Garuda Linux ...

On other comments and what you've said in your other comment, I think you'd be just interested in Nobara or CachyOS. At least, if you want an out of box working experience but still have the ability to tinker and develop relatively easy.

You might prefer Nobara because it's Fedora based rather than Arch, and your hardware specs aren't bleeding edge anyway. If you want a bit more stability than that though, and don't mind doing the set up yourself, plan vanilla Fedora could also work and you just add what you want / need.

I'd avoid any recommendations for immutable distros like Bazzite because they're best for beginners that aren't too tech savvy, or people very familiar with Linux and have no issues mucking about with OS-tree or running a distrobox. Really no in-between.

I also have 8 bitdo controllers and I do recommend updating them on Windows before you get rid of it, depending which you have - some can be updated via a Chrome based browser but others only through Windows really.

Bazzite. Fedora based, "atomic", has nvidia drivers and windows compatibility utilities preinstalled. Atomic means easy rollback after update in case if something breaks, and it probably doesn't expect you to use command line much. It is expecting users to install apps with flatpak so make sure flathub has the software you need (I think it does).

I have never personally used Bazzite, but atomic distros and namely Bazzite are known to be very user friendly and breakproof.

Steam Link is available for Linux. I suppose that most Steam-things are.

Linux Mint!

It's based on Ubuntu, which means broad support for basically everything, including niche things like the Mullvad VPN client.

Mint has been around for a long time and they have had plenty of time to prove their place as a stable and reliable alternative.

Their software center includes well integrated support for Flatpaks, which is a a must have for things like Steam.

Mint is polished both visually and technically speaking. It's a great general purpose option for both beginners and experienced users.

However. I might not be as 'cool' as some other new shiny players, which seems to be important for some, but I don't feel comfortable recommending something that most likely last for a few years.

Mint is not something that I use myself, but it's what I generally recommend to most users. I hope that excludes me me as some Mint fanboy.

I love how there are already 38 replies. Linux distro questions are like Lemmy catnip, heh.

Fort what its worth:

• I have very similar hardware: 7800, 3090, 1440p ultrawide, NVMe+SATA

• Similar needs (GoG, game modding, python, Plex, photo backup)

• Problems with linux before.

CachyOS has been my "end boss" distro.

Ive had the same stable partition for like ~3 years now, which Ive never had on linux so long. Its just perfect in so many ways, like development libs being optimized, and every gaming/optimization package you could ever want being packaged by the distro. It saved me from getting hacked or screwing up my own system in a few ways.

THAT BEING SAID,

I still dual boot to (heavily neutered) Windows. Some games, like Cyberpunk, just seem to perform slightly (but measurably) better on Windows when I A/B benchmark them, even when I try to make linux the best case scenario.

And some things I do (like HDR content wheb hooked up to a TV, or rendering HEIF files) still have some quirks on linux.

You dont have to choose. You can keep a tiny Windows partition, and/or a shared NTFS partition that both linux and Windows can access.

My go-to advise for people new to linux or just wanting something that works is Linux Mint (Or Ubuntu if you don't mind the commercial aftertaste). End of discussion.

It is based on Ubuntu packages which are well maintained (things just work), it has been around and popular for a very long time, has a big and active community, and it prioritises ease of use.

The only downsides are support for brand new hardware (<6-12 months) which takes a while to be supported. But that doesn't seem to apply to you.

If you want bleeding edge, extensive customizations, or a cool unconventional desktop you can check out any kind of desktop.

I like discussing distros as much as the next person. But in my long distrohopping career I realised that with new or novice linux users it's best to stick to the easiest, most out of the box experience. I would argue this is linux mint.

I've seen too many times that people send new linux users to the most wild distro's and then be suprised that the user gives up on linux completely after a week.

If you want to get some terminal/technical experience or like to make your hands dirty feel free to experiment.
But make your feet wet in the shallow well known puddles.

Love Linux Mint for the easy transition away from Windows.

Fun story about why I'm such a curmudgeon about this:

Long before Proton even existed, I once researched how to run a Windows VM for gaming on a Linux host machine, with GPU passthrough. At the time I had an Intel iGPU and an Nvidia discrete GPU, so I figured the iGPU could run the host, while the discrete GPU could run the guest.

I asked around reddit and some of my tech savvy friends on what the best distro would be to accomplish this. A few people steered me toward Debian, because I expressed concern that the system wouldn't be stable or would be difficult to work with.

Well, turns out Debian was a fucking terrible choice. First I had graphics driver problems, naturally. Secondly, I couldn't even install qemu if I wanted to because it wasn't in the apt repositories that shipped with Debian. So I had to learn to add those. Then I had to learn how to stop Debian from recognizing the nvidia GPU during boot, so that the PCI device could be reserved for the passthrough. That was a monumental headache to figure out. And finally, once everything was set up, I learned that nvidia had more or less disabled their consumer-grade cards from being used in a virtual machine. I spent over a month trying to get that working, and eventually just said fuck it and stayed on Windows. And I caught a ton of flak for that, because obviously I should have known that nvidia was a bad choice of GPU, and I should have just purchased an AMD GPU instead... in the middle of GPU mining bubble, when cards were going for $500 a pop.

I'm really hoping to not have a repeat of that experience.