I think the distro is less important these days personally, as general Linux quality and compatibility improves over time.
And I would argue that if you do run into an issue on a particular distro, its likely fixable with a little tinkering. For example swap out a component or change a library that is incompatible or whatever.
Majaro is working well for me.
For what itās worth, Iāve been running Pop_OS for about 18 months, and itās been a wonderful experience. I donāt miss Windows at all. All the games I want to play are typically a click-install, click-play experience. Tweaking isnāt required, but an option if you want that.
Hardware Specs:
Software:
Problems:
Eventually Iāll re-install my OS and hopefully thatāll fix whatever gremlin is in the pop shopā¦ Not that it matters much.
My next OS switch is likely going to be to Arch or Fedora with KDE Plasma 6 since that looks pretty awesome.
My greatest peeve is, that the Pop_shop does not list the progress at all while installing / uninstalling. But you can always install Synaptic if you want a GUI front end. 
Now I only need a guide how to enable Wayland with an nvidia egpu. The GPU is detected but all GPU intensive applications / games are using the iGPU in wayland. Works fine in X11 though.
I stan Fedora at this point. Install, enable third party repos, Steam RPM, enable Steam Play for all titles, off to the races.
If you want the Windowslike DE experience, Iād suggest waiting for 40 though. KDE 5 seems to cause me some headaches with certain games that Gnome doesnāt, nor did 6 while I had it functioning for about 5 days.
I am using Pop!OS, but Iām not really a gamer. I remember reading it is suitable for gaming when I installed it. I am using it as my daily driver and for work.
Iāve had luck with Arch on my old i7-2600K machine. Most Steam games work well with some flavor of Proton (ProtonDB does a great job of showing compatibility across various flavors of Linux as well as user-reported feedback) or Lutris for most Blizzard games.
Iāve been finding that any deb or system install just seems to work better than the flat pack version of any app that you want to install.
Just my observation!
Just happened on to this thread from google search, so apologies for reviving what looks like a dead thread. I recently switched to Universal Blueās Project Bluefin. Mainly I wanted to try a cloud-native focused OS that has a lot of development tools built-in. Itās been great for me so far. Itās also been a good gaming experience, even with Flatpak Steam. Thereās been some weirdness, especially with Vulkan and Flatpak Steam on XOrg, but overall a great experience in my book. Probably wouldnāt recommend for a newbie, but anyone who has played around and likes to distro hop, itās worth a look!
Iāve been using Nobara on my gaming machine for a couple of years now. Nobara is essentially Fedora, but with several gaming related tweaks and enhancements. Itās pretty much a dead simple turn key way to get started in Linux gaming and it works well with Steam/Proton and Proton-GE.
This machine dual boots W10 and some of my Steam/Widows games are more stable and have better performance on Nobara than on Windows.
If you are Linux curious, you could do a lot worse than Nobara.
Fedora, easy. Silverblue or Bazzite for the cool kids.
Fedora hits the sweet spot for up-to-date packages but no janitoring like a rolling release distro, its very stable.
Fedora never failed me, easy setup and no problems. No broken games so far.
Just a tip: Use a bigger distro, not a smaller derivate, you will thank yourself in the long run.
5800x3d
128GB RAM
7900 XTX
Fedora 39 Swaywm spin.
This thread is very timely for me; Iām glad I somehow randomly googled into it. 
Iād like to set up a VM powered by an NVIDIA Tesla P4 (GRID drivers) for gaming. As I just had to set up a Windows 11 VM and felt the life draining from my body as I tried to find all the toggles to stop the Edge browser from spying on me, Iād love to try gaming in Linux.
Whatās the most turnkey solution for NVIDIA (non-RTX) and Sunshine in Linux, where itās most likely to just work out of the box and keep working when I do an update to get security patches? Iād like to be able to install and use Windows games, including those from Steam, with a minimum of fuss. (I assume Iād need to install Sunshine.)
Iām running on an AMD Ryzen 3700X with at least 16 GB of RAM. Maybe more if I need it.
Iād like to learn to use Fedora (Iāve been a Debian/Ubuntu user for a while now, but got started in Manjaro on ARM years ago) was going to try Nobara, unless thereās something else I should be looking at.
ETA: If base Fedora is the way to go, is there a guide I can study to get it into shape for the type of gaming use Iāve described?
Bazzite has been gaining ground there.
Iāve been gaming on Fedora for over a decade so itās a no brainer for me.
Main difference between Debian/Ubuntu, Manjaro, and Fedora is going to be package management.
Hereās the lowdown on Fedora -
Well I just switched back to arch and now I have zero issues with gaming.
Slackware.
But seriously, pretty much any of the popular ones will do just fine. If I had to pick one for a total noob migrating away from Windows - which I assume is what this question is really about - Iād choose Nobara. Why? The whole reason behind that distroās existence is because its creator (Glorious Eggroll) wanted to tailor an OS for his computer illiterate dad to use. The motivation behind Nobara makes it very easy to use without any prior Linux experience, and all the apps a typical gamer would use default to be installed (Discord, Steam, Nvidia drivers, etc). Iāll give PopOS an honorary mention.
Not exactly. Iām primarily a Mac user, but use Windows 11 for work, and run Proxmox with a variety of Linux VMs and LXCs for home server stuff.
What I havenāt ever actually done is try to do modern gaming (with a GPU and Proton) in Linux. Iād rather go that route than using a Windows 11 VM so I can game in peace without wanting to smash my hardware with a hammer, but Iād also like the most plug and play/set-it-and-forget-it setup possible so I can just do casual gaming with a minimum of fuss.
From this thread, sounds like Nobara is the way to go.
Thanks, everyone.
Neat saw Digital Foundry cover this.
Iāve been running fedora on my desktop and laptop for a while. Iāve also been gaming on my steam deck whenever I travel. Might have bazzite on a separate drive to try it out until steam is gets a public release
I got games to run on manjaro with a nvidia graphics card and proton. When I had a AMD grapgics card I got games to launch much easier. On mint,popos and ubunthu steam games launch from the linux version and proton.
This looked interesting
Used NixOS and published his config
Uses Jovian