I’ve asked before but the answer keeps changing before I get around to implementing it:
My kid wants to upgrade their PC from Windows 11 to Linux. They have a recent-ish Nvidia card. I’m very technical: I don’t mind doing whatever arcane thing needs done. They are not, yet.
I haven’t run Linux on my desktop in a decade and I’m completely out of date here. What should I steer my kid toward to run recent games?
Recommend making a live drive with Ventoy. Copy over latest .iso’s of Mint, Fedora, Bazzite? for gaming.
Give them all a test drive, see what you like before committing. After install try new things in VMs.
if theyre not that technical i would say just stick with something simple like zorinOS, which is ubuntu based so there is a bigger community behind it if they run into issues. zorin has an option to install nvidia drivers during the initial setup. popOS would be another option along the same lines
Depends on the games. If your kid wants to play anything with kernel level anticheat, it will not work on Linux, period - these anticheats don't support Linux, and either prevent the game from running altogether or disable certain online modes.
Otherwise, CachyOS is extremely popular these days, and I suppose a valid choice.