Pop_OS is great, but avoid the new COSMIC beta release, which is very buggy. If you opt for it, go with the GNOME-based 22 release.

Linux Mint is also one of the most friendly and approachable linux distros. It’s default desktop, Cinnamon, is very much inspired by older Windows versions. I loathe Cinnamon, but masses of people love it. I will admit that it is one of the easiest places to get started with Linux.

If you want something more sophisticated than Mint, look at distros that include KDE Plasma desktop. It feels very familiar for Windows users, but still offers a lot of customization. Fedora KDE, OpenSUSE, and CachyOS are excellent choices. Fedora is my pick but OpenSUSE is a great alternative if you want something without corporate ties, and Cachy is more optimized for gaming, but slightly more complicated to use since it’s based on Arch.

If your machine is going to be used almost exclusively for gaming, there is no reason to look at anything other than Bazzite. It’s simple, “just works”, is preconfigured for gaming, familiar, and very difficult to break.

And as always, stay far away from anything Ubuntu/Canonical.

If you want to try Pop OS, go ahead. The most important thing is back up data you want to keep - it’s not a bad idea to have a dedicated partition for your home folder and another for the OS to help with fixing problems or moving to another distro, but backups off your laptop are critically important. Then if you don’t like a particular distro, or you fuck up, you can install another and restore your data from backup.

Personally I use OpenSuSE Tumbleweed, I’ve tried quite a few distros and I think generally for gaming they’re much the same. OpenSuSE has a good user interface in YaST for tweaking and keeping the system how I want it. I like being on a distro with a big install base and linked into an enterprise distro as there is an incentive to test rigorously and also fix things when they break. But Tumbleweed is a rolling release so there will still occasionally be problems.

If you want stability and no headaches then I’d go for a decent point release distro with a big install base overall. I’d suggest OpenSuSE Leap or Fedora KDE over smaller niche/community distros. Go for Gnome equivalents if that’s your thing. I have gone off Mint in recent months as I think too much support out on the Web is out of date and provides bad solutions to problems (such as adding random ubuntu repos to install software). Mint itself.Is a decent distro.

I’d avoid Ubuntu due to Snap, I’d avoid Debian due to its slow upgrade cycle (very stable distro but may not be the best for high end gaming and tweaking), and I’d avoid Arch due to the complexity of set up (unless you want your system exactly right and are prepared to problem solve your way to what you want; it can be a very powerful and efficient set up of you’re willing to out he work in). I’d also personally avoid atomic distros as it can be a headache to tweak and run custom software although there are ways if you enjoy leaning new things.

EndeavourOS is really good. Arch-based but easy to maintain. You’ll never have to do a major release upgrade. The only issue is to keep it updated, make sure to do little updates weekly. They have a great community and it’s a wonderful OS.

My recommendation is Nobara Linux or bazzite Linux. Both are fedora based. But bazzite would make use of that rtx.

So pop os is fun but they need to iron out kinks (mainly the pop shop and the cosmic de)

Go Mint.

If u are newbie then linux mint I am using cachyos (arch linux based distro with performance optimizations)

Fedora.

So pop os is fun but they need to iron out kinks (mainly the pop shop and the cosmic de)

Go Mint.

ZorinOS, better than standard Ubuntu and more modern looking than Mint.

If u want to go Arch > Garuda or Cachy. Endeavour if u are one of the “its bloat” whishy washy purists.