You’ll find a lot of differing opinions, so I will give you mine.
I’m currently running openSUSE Tumbleweed for over a year now, and I can say I am somewhat happier than on Windows. There were (and on my install still are) issues that I have to sort out sometimes. These issues can vary, but the most important thing to me (and I assume you) is gaming.
Gaming was excellent at the start of my journey. Games ran just as well, if not better, on my Linux machine than on Windows. I was amazed, truly! Then, I finally upgraded my 10xx series NVIDIA GPU to a 50xx series GPU, and it was quite a bad experience.
Drivers for NVIDIA GPUs on Linux can be iffy and problematic at times. I’d be fully prepared to read up on or risk asking the community (I’ve never had a good experience talking with the Linux crowd, personally) about any suggestions. The problem with those suggestions is you will get plenty of “Works great on my distro!” (Distro here means the Linux “flavor” you choose to go with i.e. openSUSE for me, Mint for others, and Bazzite for others).
Recently, I did an upgrade for my distro, and it made my RustDesk stop booting on computer start, and I can’t use GE-Proton versions that I downloaded through ProtonUp-Qt and that is pretty problematic for someone like me who is trying to get as much oomph as possible from their machines for gaming. Steam’s Proton works just fine though, so sometimes you might need to fiddle with the Steam Compatibility settings and try different Proton versions.
I won’t try to drown you in any longer of a text wall, but here is what I will end off on.
Linux feels like home, while Windows feels like someone else’s home. As for a distro recommendation for someone wanting to dip their toes into Linux and have a much better time than I did, I’d recommend either SteamOS (Valve’s distro they use on the Steam Deck, which is what got me interested in Linux gaming capabilities in the first place!) or Bazzite (a community distro I believe is based on SteamOS?) for gaming, and Fedora for a more general purpose computer usage. Just make sure you really gear yourself up for what may turn out to be an adventure you weren’t expecting to go down!
You’ll find a lot of differing opinions, so I will give you mine.
I’m currently running openSUSE Tumbleweed for over a year now, and I can say I am somewhat happier than on Windows. There were (and on my install still are) issues that I have to sort out sometimes. These issues can vary, but the most important thing to me (and I assume you) is gaming.
Gaming was excellent at the start of my journey. Games ran just as well, if not better, on my Linux machine than on Windows. I was amazed, truly! Then, I finally upgraded my 10xx series NVIDIA GPU to a 50xx series GPU, and it was quite a bad experience.
Drivers for NVIDIA GPUs on Linux can be iffy and problematic at times. I’d be fully prepared to read up on or risk asking the community (I’ve never had a good experience talking with the Linux crowd, personally) about any suggestions. The problem with those suggestions is you will get plenty of “Works great on my distro!” (Distro here means the Linux “flavor” you choose to go with i.e. openSUSE for me, Mint for others, and Bazzite for others).
Recently, I did an upgrade for my distro, and it made my RustDesk stop booting on computer start, and I can’t use GE-Proton versions that I downloaded through ProtonUp-Qt and that is pretty problematic for someone like me who is trying to get as much oomph as possible from their machines for gaming. Steam’s Proton works just fine though, so sometimes you might need to fiddle with the Steam Compatibility settings and try different Proton versions.
I won’t try to drown you in any longer of a text wall, but here is what I will end off on.
Linux feels like home, while Windows feels like someone else’s home. As for a distro recommendation for someone wanting to dip their toes into Linux and have a much better time than I did, I’d recommend either SteamOS (Valve’s distro they use on the Steam Deck, which is what got me interested in Linux gaming capabilities in the first place!) or Bazzite (a community distro I believe is based on SteamOS?) for gaming, and Fedora for a more general purpose computer usage. Just make sure you really gear yourself up for what may turn out to be an adventure you weren’t expecting to go down!