I think PopOS is the best option if u have Nvidia graphics card
I moved from Kubuntu to Endeavor (Arch-based) and was also afraid of bleeding edge stuff breaking all the time. I gotta say I was pleasantly surprised by how stable it is. The only couple issues I had was 1 bad kernel version and vmware update. I learned how to roll back and avoid upgrading these 2 packages for a couple weeks until the new versions of both fixed everything. I was also reluctant to learn a new package manager since I already know apt, but yay is arguably easier to use than apt. My gaming has been great, no issues.
I second Nobara, but IMO get the KDE edition of it if you're used to Windows. You'll feel much more at home.
You could've at least read his post first?
What about it? OP is asking for a distro recommendation.
if you’re used to Windows.
While OP writes, in his first sentence:
I’ve been using Ubuntu as my daily driver for a good few years now.
There is no such thing as a "gaming distro" -- all GNU/Linux distros are equally good for gaming and any other task.
Go with nobara.
I use tumbleweed, but I had a strange issue with the flatpak version of heroic launcher. I ran a benchmark of cyberpunk 2077 with the flatpak heroic, and was averaging 100 fps. I had nixos installed on a separate hard drive and that benchmark was 160 fps. I thought there was an issue with opensuse, but I installed the flatpak version of heroic on nixos and also got 100 fps. So I installed the regular version on tumbleweed and have 160 fps. I would keep that in mind when looking at programs to launch games, whether it's wine, bottles, heroic, lutris, etc
I have EndeavourOS, but with the nature of Bleeding Edge packages, things can break, so setup automatic snapshots with btrfs (you want this for your data anyways).
Bleeding Edge packages have the advantage of you getting the latest features, patches and improvements, which is required for some gaming cases.
Garuda is amazing
Debian with KDE Plasma desktop, it's unbeatable.
Anyone that has video drivers and flatpak should work in your case. If you dislike Ubuntu and don't like the direction, usually poops and mint are the ones recommended.
Fedora. Cutting edge but works out of box. Very little change in use compared to Ubuntu.
Debian is good but very stable so no guarantee for some package updates which is useful for gaming and maybe proton.
On a related note, this is pretty useful: https://davidotek.github.io/protonup-qt/
That valve uses Arch is irrelevant in all honesty. Proton is not a Valve product, Valve is merely one of its users and contributors, and it is not wedded to one distro..Similarly Valves own Steam packages are not distro specifi, and there are other gaming platforms to consider which also benefit from Proton (for example you can get Gog windows games working in Linux too quite easily), as well as all the Retro gaming options.
Pick a distro you personally like. I use Mint as I like the cinnamon desktop interface and the distro is pretty much good to go from fresh install. I use Mint both as a dual install with Windows on my PC and also within VMs in Windows. I still spend a lot of time using Windows because of specific games compatibility and work related apps.
EndeavourOS seems a good choice if you do want to go the Arch route but it's only something I've played with in a VM.
If you want something gaming specific then Draugar seems like a good choice - it apparently uses Ubuntu LTS but with the mainline Kernel updates optimised for gaming. But I have no personal experience with the distro.
I also see a lot of people seem to like Pop!_OS, but again no personal experience.
I've had no issues with Mint on my setup.
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