These are all Debian based. Debian is notorious for using old kernels and spotty hardware support. I had similar issues trying to install Ubuntu on a new-ish PC recently. Fedora worked like a charm though.

I was tempted to try Nobara since it was a gaming pc but I was discouraged by opinions from the community telling me it was not exactly the best idea.

Next time I might go for Bluefin though. It’s based on Fedora Silverblue (immutable OS) and I’ve heard great things about it. Apparently also has GPU drivers for NVIDIA baked-in, which I need.

That's really weird. What kind of hardware have you got?

If it helps, I've been running OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on my main 3D/gamedev production rig for a while. Yes, using NVIDIA too!

It's a "rolling release", so it's cutting edge with supported hardware and all the software updates. It's surprisingly stable because of the automated testing they run through.

I've had bad updates before, BUT, if you install your system using the BTRFS file system (default), you get something called Snapper that works similar to "Windows System Restore". You can just roll back to a previous snapshot and either re-update or wait until things are more stable.

Nvidia has proprietary drivers for OpenSUSE as well, and since I've used those, I haven't had very many problems.

The biggest issue I have is that my machine has trouble waking from suspend. It's a tricky one to nail down, from what I understand.

Multiple monitors with different refresh rates is iffy, but I disabled "Kscreen" and have had no problems. (Don't worry about this but wanted to mention it just in case)

KDE is pretty neat and I felt at home coming from Win10. Now I only dual boot into Win10 for occasional games. I'm not touching Win11 at all, so I'll migrate my games over once 10 is no longer viable to hang on to.

Lastly, the community is really helpful and kind. They've helped me out a lot and I've learned a ton. Maybe I'm a nerd but I found "computing" to be a lot more fun on Linux. The biggest hazard being getting distracted cozying up your computer instead of whatever you signed on to do.

Sorry for the long post, but hope you might find it useful. :)

I think the problem here is that a majority of the power to change lies in Microsoft's hands. It's their OS, and there's not a whole ton we can do to halt their constant, greedy arrogance.

So, switching to Linux isn't the easiest "solve all your problems" solution, but in the long run it simply removes a lot of stress of constantly wondering what stupidity Microsoft is going to force on you next because they "know better" and figuring out how to counter it with some hacky fix. (But also knowing no matter how hard you try, the thing is built to profit off of you.)

If somehow we could make Windows feel like it was OURS instead of THEIRS again, I'm sure people would be all for it.