Highly recommend Pop OS! It’s been very reliable. I haven’t had anything this steady since Mac OS when I was just doing programming. I tried to go from Mac to Alienware for personal computing and it was terrible, windows blue screened almost once a week if not once every four days.
Switched to Pop OS, enabled Proton in steams preferences for gaming, and it was completely steady. Only thing that doesn’t work is the hibernate. Which isn’t a super big deal to me.
I’d actually say everything has been a better experience than windows. Lutris and pop store have a large variety of games and apps. For example lutris supports GOG and probably epic games. It feels like it’s everything I’d want without the shitty user interfaces and lack of crashes.
There hasn’t been a single game I’ve struggled to run in the last few months on proton. I haven’t had a windows PC in like a year ish or more?
I play games heavily too.
Try it out sometime if your setup isn’t extremely niche and maybe you’ll find it to be accommodating.
The weirdest things I’ve had to do are click a box in steam to enable proton usage and reinstall something in Lutris for Battle.net on world of warcraft.
Not sure if you are joking but Linux gaming is great now. I’ve been gaming for at least the last two years on only Linux. Check out https://www.protondb.com/explore
I know it’s not the best, but Proton has come a long, long way. I can play D4, Monster Hunter, factorio, lots of stuff.
I know it’s not the best
Didn’t pay thousands for top of the line ryzen and nvidia gear for “not the best” gaming situation.
Linux falls short on two major fronts, less idiot proof, less gamer friendly, and that’s Windows’ largest market shares, idiots and gamers.