Linux

Be careful with Nobara. I've also used it for a bit (fedora 38 base) and had an easier time setting it up than fedora 39. It disables most security features to get better performance. Besides that, it's only developed by one dude and primarily for personal use, so when it went from 38 to 39 he just completely dropped his gnome config, broke the upgrade in so many ways, and switched to kde. Also it didn't have an upgrade notification and I had to accidentally learn that a new major version came out.

Dropped it after that because it doesn't inspire confidence, no matter how important GE is for gaming on Linux. I'd rather spend at most an hour setting up MX (Debian) for gaming.

Bazzite.gg

Nice job! If you can get the nvidia driver installed properly, any distro should work in theory.

On Ubuntu: https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/nvidia-drivers-installation

On Fedora: https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/ht511074-enabling-nvidia-proprietary-drivers-on-fedora-linux

On Pop!_OS it should be already installed by default

I've been hearing good things about Nobara, Ill have to try it out!

Arch tends to be close, because it is a bleeding edge type of rolling update model, so any fixes would come to Arch faster than more LTS options.

Some distros like Nobara liek you mention have it built in, Pop OS is another. Different distros will prioritize different aspects and that how itll fundamentally be.

Linux is a game of knowing which distro fits your usecase, the less offending hardware you use, the easier the choices are. take for example those who use bleeding edge hardware might not like the out of the box experience on LTS based distros that take awhile to push something to kernel.

I've had very good luck with Linux Mint and a GTX-1080. It does require opening the Driver Manager and clicking the button with "Recommended" next to it.

PopOS is, in my opinion, the easiest distro to use to get Nvidia cards working without a sweat (as long as you install the Nvidia ISO). I don't use PopOS anymore, been on Fedora now for almost 2 years, and have had 0 issues with my 3050 after installing the drivers, but it does take a bit of configuring to get there.

Mint handled my 1060 really well and it's really good on arch too with the newer driver. Still just running Xorg with cinnamon, though. I guess mileage still varies with this stuff.

.,

From my experience, it might be better to try gaming on a stable distro rather than a gaming distro to get a better feel for Linux first. Seems you already have some experience of that already, so here are the gaming distros I've tried and some thoughts about them. Keep in mind I've been using AMD stuff for my latest computers, but I do have an Nvidia laptop that I don't game much on but often run the same distro on.

Solous was the first gaming distro I've tried, might be close to ten years ago, so memory is kinda fuzzy. But it had support for most of the things you needed for gaming out of the box back then, which was rare. Development on it kinda went into a standstill or something, which made me go distro jumping.

Manjaro was where I ended up. Most everything worked out of the box. I ran it for a long time, but there are some problems in how it's being managed. The Arch but not Arch approach made it feel unstable sometimes. So when I made a new computer, I distro jumped again.

Nobara which build on Fedora was much more stable than Manjaro had been for me. I had no real problems with it. Lots of patches and tweaks to make gaming a smoother experience build in. But I've stated eyeing the atomic OS that had been pooping up. The benefit of not having to run a custom-made updater every time you wanted to update made me do the latest jump.

Bazzite is built on an atomic Fedora, so some settings and tweaks are a bit harder to do. But the benefit is that updates are automatic, and it comes with a lot of good tools and guides on how to work with an atomic OS. As a power user, you will have to familiarize yourself with containers to get full use of it. I'm not gonna lie, the out-of-the-box experience was a bit smother on Nobara, but I don't really see me going back.

Pop!_OS I've never really given it a good chance. I did try it for shorter periods, a couple of years apart. One time I just did not like its default windows manager and another it did not have support for my GPU.

uBlue Bazzite is pretty cool, Fedora/Nobara, Pop!_OS, Mint, etc. mostly just work, Gauda is arch-based, is optimized for gaming and performance and is pretty user friendly.

How dare you not use the same distro as me. Just kidding. Glad you found one that works for you. :)

MX Linux was nearly effortless

6 for gaming? There are only a few real serious Distros: Fedora, Opensuse, Debian, Ubuntu and MX/Mint/Arch(all in the same category). From what Ive seen there is only 1 serious distro: Nobara. That comes with Kernel Patches.

1060 3gb here, worked fine on all distros i tried when i switched and hopped a little. Used mint, mx, debian, manjaro, artix, void and arch.

I agree with you. Every time I would encounter a distro that "works out of the box" only for it to crash and make me lose all the files in my hard drive.

Until I installed manjaro KDE. I haven't had any crashes so far, I've been using it for months!

I know people say that Manjaro sucks and etc, but it's the only one I've used that doesn't crash, how am I gonna use something the community says is better if I don't know if it will crash 2 months down the line?

Honestly I never expect any system to work out-of-the-box, not even Windows.

Most of the time if I see something JustWorks(TM) I suspect it is using some general ass drivers that may work, but with functions lost.

Probably this isn't the case anymore, but it still gives me a lot of work to verify everything is REALLY fine and dandy.

Seconding nobara. Garuda also worked out of the box for me and also mint. (Except that I had to force update the kernel for mint because some stuff wasn't working with the recommended one)