Nobara is based on Fedora and maintained by GloriousEggroll. It has a lot of kernel-level tweaks and pre-installed software that aims to make it easier to start gaming right out of the gate

Nobara is a great suggestion by @el_gringo_loco@lemmy.one, but I’d also throw out a suggestion for Bazzite if you want the “SteamOS”/Steam Deck experience.

It does have the KDE desktop environment underneath to do all the non-gaming stuff as well, but if gaming is your number one focus, it’s a pretty cool setup.

IMO, the best distro is going to be whatever you’re most comfortable with (given it’s still getting updates blah blah blah). Some might be easier in the get go but if they do wonky things (compared to what you’re used to) an update might really screw you up and leave you in a situation where you’re doing a lot of research.

For the most part, you can make any distro do whatever you want, but if you understand one much better than the rest, use that.

One that is relatively up to date with their graphics drivers. Then just install steam/lutris flatpaks and go crazy. Performance difference is pretty much negligible once it’s set up.

Unpopular opinion but ubuntu.

You will eventually run into an error you have never seen before and and someone using ubuntu has already solved it and posted it online somewhere.

As others have stated, as long as you are using a distribution with reasonably modern (and maybe frequent) updates of the kernel and mesa stack, it doesn’t matter much. The updates of these two packages are what will provide updated hardware support and performance improvements.

Steer clear of Nvidia. It can work on linux, but is a pain due to Nvidia not providing proper open-source driver support. I also highly recommend ensuring you have an intel chip if you need wifi, as realtek and broadcom can be a bit variable in terms of support and stability for wifi.

Wayland is also preferable in my view, due to its significant benefits over X11 - it is more secure, makes your computer much smoother, and supports modern niceties like better multi-monitor support, gestures, lack of tearing, HDR (in the future), etc.

This segues into my next point. It makes more difference what DE you use when gaming - GNOME currently doesn’t support VRR on Wayland (appears to be coming in next release at least experimentally), while KDE does. So that is something to think about. I would stick to either of these two DEs as these are the only two that are both user friendly for beginners, and have excellent wayland support. Cinnamon, MATE and XFCE all do not yet support Wayland.

I would steer clear of distributions that are not established, and/or only have very small or single person teams (as this has potential security, stability and support implications) and would recommend Fedora. Fedora has a bleeding edge mesa and kernel (that roll between releases), but stability elsewhere with a solid community behind it and a dedicated security team, built on cutting edge technologies throughout. If you need VRR I would use the Fedora KDE spin. OpenSUSE tumbleweed is also a great choice.

Many users will recommend Arch Linux systems, as this is the hotness, particularly as this is what SteamOS is based on. I wouldn’t recommend this even as a very happy Gentoo user, however, as relatively “pure” Arch Linux distributions (and Gentoo), will require you to follow notices on the website, and will require your knowledge and intervention at some point based on this notice; without your intervention, it will likely break your system. So as a beginner I would avoid Arch Linux and Endeavour OS.

Manjaro has had many too issues with the security and stability of their distribution to allow me to comfortably recommend it, and the Nobara and Garuda Linux teams are both too small for me to be comfortable recommending them. Zorin OS, Pop_OS and Linux Mint are all excellent workstation distributions, but their outdated kernels and software (they are based on a long-term support base) mean you may be either giving up some performance or hardware compatibility.

Having tried many, I found that the desktop environments matter more than the actual OS, especially on older machines.

Going for something really light, like openbox, lxde, or xfce, caused less frame rate drop and stuttering. At least on my lower powered mini pc.

Buy a steam deck

There is no* such thing as “best” – all distros are Linux/GNU at heart.

It’s Garuda Linux shilling time. Seriously tho the distro does not matter when it comes to gaming (at least not much)

Pop!_OS has been great for me.

Whatever you know best. My personal choice of distro is Gentoo, my gaming pc and my carry laptop both run it. My games run great in gentoo, and because I understand it best, I deal with few issues. For a long time it was Arch, and before that Ubuntu. I used Ubuntu for only maybe 2 months before moving onto Arch then Gentoo. My games always worked, but once I really understood Linux, they ran great.

I wondered the same thing a couple months back and settled on EndeavourOS. No complains so far :)

Personally if it were me and gaming was my primary focus, I’d go to the place that’s doing the most with gaming and Linux, SteamOS.

There are lots of sites that go through the process of building a Linux gaming machine using SteamOS.

Here’s just one random video I found (not affiliated with this at all) about using an old optiplex from eBay, some ram upgrades, and a RX580 GPU. Apparently they did this for $150 but take that with a grain of salt. Hope this helps.

https://youtu.be/jFIgQ9zgXOk?si=ZR9VzF1YtFewcWIM

Any distro that ships relatively recent libraries and kernels.

With the exception of Debian, RHEL, SLES and the like, pretty much everything.