You could give Bazzite a try! https://bazzite.gg/
I'm greatly enjoying their other flavors as well for my laptop and desktop rig.
I'll second Bazzite. I tried Pop!OS and had a handful of problems with it, but they all evaporated when I switched to Bazzite.
Bazzite is my favorite for gaming as well. I liked it better than nobara
I had a couple hiccups, but it's been working well for me with a Nvidia card on my laptop.
I would suggest Linux Mint over Ubuntu. It's beginner friendly, very stable and overall a very good choice for any purpose. It's based on Ubuntu so most of the stuff you find online applies to it as well. The APT package repository contains most if not all the software you might need.
Down the line almost every distro will be suitable for gaming.
That GPU probably is going to cause issues a few years down the line. We now have earily development foss Nvidia stuff but it only supports cards that are 2000 series or new I believe.
With that being said, I would install Linux Mint.
This is what I run in both my main gaming rig (I9/4080) and my retro rig (old i5 and Radeon 580) works great for both. Steam and Proton do 95% of the work with no issues.
It’s a 9 year old system that I upgraded the video card on a few years ago. But it still handles newer games like Bauldars Gate ok. Not sure if I should expect a performance decrease going to Linux or not.
I don't own a Nvidia card so I don't really know. I'm just sharing what I've read.
Based on replies I think I will try mint and then bazzit. I have read a lot of recommendations for mint and wanted to try it anyway. Since it will be a fresh install I can experiment. SteamOS does not get recommended much for some reason.
SteamOS 3 is only available for Steam Deck at the moment (or other handhelds in the near future). There is no desktop version for it yet. SteamOS 1 is over a decade old and not usable anymore.
Good luck with Mint or Bazzite! Either should serve you well.
I haven't seen it mentioned here, so just an FIY: Linux Mint is a "regular" distro, while Bazzite is an immutable distro, meaning the root filesystem is read-only.
That means a lot of the "normal" ways of doing stuff you find online will need to be done differently. For example installing system level packages requires a reboot, to boot in to the new "system image". If something gets booked you can reboot in to an old system image to recover. Regular desktop (Flatpak) apps can be installed without rebooting.
Bazzite is based on Fedora, and very similar to Fedora SilverBlue (immutable version). So if you can't find answers when looking online "how to do X in Bazzite" try instead "how to do X in SilverBlue".
And FYI Linux Mint comes with an easy to use app Timeshift for system level backup and restore (by default it does not backup your documents etc in your HOME folder). Very handy to recover from a borked update or installing something you shouldn't have.
+1 for Bazzite but be aware that they have a different install image for "older / legacy" (🤷♀️) GPUs that you need to select when downloading (before 16xx, I didn't realize this when installing at one sysyem of mine).
I would recommend Bazzite, Nobara or PopOS. Arch and its derivatives are also great, but they can be a bit technical. You do get access to the AUR though. I use Nobara, though.
Ubuntu snap store is full of trouble, mint has a good reputation for beginners.
I used debian a long time as my main gaming machine but it wasn't handling the transition to nvidia with wayland very well from what I could tell. I ended up switching to nobara (fedora based) because of its gaming set-up and that was awesome until fedora dropped X11. Wayland is still a big drama with nvidia so I have now switched to arch.
My arch installation is great, I'm loving it and since I last installed it on my other machine about 6 years ago the archinstall script has gone a long way and it's pretty easy to install now.
Anyway, whichever one you choose be sure to install X11 instead of wayland for now until nvidia comes to the wayland party.
When I was moving to linux first distro I've tried was Ubuntu because of the same reasons. But in my case I didn't have a good time with it sadly, I have encountered way too many problems that noob as myself could handle. Then I got recommended Bazzite and it worked flawlessly! I was very happy with it, it worked out of the box and was rock solid and stable. I'm saying that in past tense, because now I moved to Arch, but simply because I was curious and wanted to learn linux more and not because I wasn't happy with Bazzite.
Sparkylinux is a distro based on Debian Testing, which is good on older configs. I used it wuite a lot ten years ago, without issues.
They provide a "game over" edition, which has Steam and a lot of other games related applications preconfigured, so you should have a look.
I game fine on fedora but it's a bit too cutting edge so I would reccomend you try mint or bazzite. Ultimately it doesn't really matter that much. Just the mistakes I made and had issues with are mostly twofold; Firstly I reccomend you turn off secureboot to save you from enrolling keys (which is not too bad but pointless on linux imo).
Secondly make sure your steam library drive is formatted to linux filesystem cause steam don't play nice.
Also another one that did my head in: Flatpack is basically just a gated playground for programs. You can give them more toys or responsibilities using flatseal or similiar if programs are not working like they should.
CachyOS!
Distro does not really has affect on gaming these days. I would suggest to pick Ubuntu or Ubuntu based distro like Pop_OS!, Mint if you are beginner. Reason: popularity and documentation.
All distros are the same -- none packs a exclusive feature that makes gaming "better". Other than having predefined changes/packages that are more suitable for gaming.
There are distros with highly customised kernels that are objectively better for gaming (higher and more consistent framerates).
...which these "customized kernels" can (also) be applied to any other distro.
Mate, that technical detail is hardly useful to someone asking which distro might be good for gaming. The whole thing of distros is they are a collection of opinions around a Linux kernel. Are you really suggesting those differences are meaningless, especially to a beginner?
"Oh, but it's a technical detail!" does not make what I said a false argument -- you are extrapolating for the sake of "being right".
Technically correct, famously the best kind of correct. Context be damned.