Try Fedora it was my first real distro. I still use it on my laptop. Everything is easy about it.

So... do it?

Now to the question which distro, honestly it does not matter YET!

You probably don't even know what a distro is (no offense) but what you did highlight clearly are the needs, namely :

• playing games
• popular
• not Mint because somehow it breaks (would be VERY important to understand why though)

... so that actually narrows things down quite a bit.

The most popular distribution are the easiet to find (I'm on Debian and SteamOS so I use Arch BTW) and that's a safe choice indeed. Playing games does not narrow things down much as most distro, if not all, do not prevent against playing game and IMHO the optimization specific to gaming are pretty much pointless in most cases.

Your edit point that you are trying a distribution already so yes, please, do go for it. I do suggest though that WHEN things go wrong, like it did with Mint, you take the time to understand WHY. This in itself will help you to either switch to another distribution and arguably more importantly what even is a distribution and finally which one of the remaining ones (if you do actually switch rather than fix) are more appropriate for you.

Finally my last recommendation is to back up your data. That's what IMHO make the difference between having fun distro hopping versus pulling hair out stressing that your last game save, or work notebooks, will not be deleted.

Have fun learning!

Bazzite is great because is rpm-ostree based. But you need to understand a little bit the concept of atomic distro. For gaming, I think it comes packed with most of the required things so imo, try Bazzite. Also, linux mint it's very easy to use, fi you do something simple and you need to reinstall the distro, maybe something was done wrong from the beginning.

Linux Distro made to accommodate Windows Users by being as similar as is reasonable in UI and organization: AnduinOS.

If you try it, use 1.3, as you are not an enterprise use case.

I used Ubuntu for a long time. It is convenient because it is very popular and there is a lot of software available for installation without any extra steps. However, I think it has become quite overloaded. I have been using Fedora with KDE for a relatively long time and I am very satisfied. I use it as my main home and work operating system. It has proven to be very stable. I am engaged in software development, so I use it very actively, and I am happy with it. it meets all my needs. I think You could consider Fedora.

Honestly I suggest learning in avm first so you can do save states. I recommend doing stunting like nix or a declarative/ composable distro. Learn the new way so that your getting the tools and things that are actually being used.

Don't get me wrong it's not an easy learning curve but I think it's the better method of learning.

@Mojtaba you can try Manjaro, is a nice distro

PopOS did it for me

I've learned so much Linux on Nobara and i feel like it's not mentioned much, not it's got an active discord and gets regular updates

Should be popular distro so if i have a problem i can ask about it

I mean, Arch has the Arch Wiki which is very good. (I use Arch, btw.) 😸

I'm surprised Mint is giving you trouble. Where you doing something... risky? Or maybe the hardware you're running isn't very compatible?

Otherwise, a distro like VanillaOS (or any immutable distro) might be able to keep your system more stable.