We have a 30 day return policy, so if you don’t like the Linux experience, you can return it for a refund. Customers have access to free customer support that can help with any issues you encounter. This is also an official community, so I may answer questions asked about Pop!_OS here.

I really Pop and think it’s a great distro for beginners. If you’re getting the laptop from System76 you know the hardware is compatible and you won’t have to mess with the installation which is also a plus.

Gaming on Linux have made great progress in recent years and quite a lot of games run great on Wine/Proton. I have a duel-boot setup but hardly ever boot Windows because I don’t need it much anymore. However if you’re playing online games with anti-cheat, that’s a different experience as they are less supported.

One thing you should note is that Pop works best with Cosmic DE, now running over Gnome but at some point as an independent DE, and it’s not a good choice if you prefer some other DE (technically possible to install something else but missing the point IMO). So try it first on a VM or something to see if you enjoy the Cosmic workflow.

I also tend to use Windows for gaming just because I’m too lazy to worry about potential compatibility issues, but depending on your machine you might find it useful to get some extra performance out of your games. Back when I played competitive TF2 on a junky old desktop I got way more consistent framerates with Ubuntu. (Wouldn’t recommend stock Ubuntu these days, it’s very bloated)

And supposedly, gaming on Linux is getting better all the time, especially since Valve released Proton and SteamOS. Like I said, too lazy to try it myself, but I’ve only heard good things. Maybe once they finally discontinue Win10.

I found Pop! quite good for gaming, since it has a fairly recent kernel and the drivers built in. (Not as good as Arch, which I’m using now - it has cutting-edge everything and great documentation, but is not for newbies - some of its derivatives sand off the rough installation edges.) I do find the Gnome3 interface infuriating, but speaking as a Linux dev at a Linux company, there’s loads of my colleagues that have no problems with it, so YMMV.

Before shelling out on a laptop, I’d get yourself a Virtual Machine setup on Windows (VirtualBox works for me) and try out a few Linux instances. Dead easy to set them up, test various distros, and throw them away again, and if you foul it up, then no harm is done. Installation and setup will teach you a lot. Completely free, as well.

Documentation - the Debian adminstrator’s handbook is available free online, and the Arch documentation is extremely comprehensive and up-to-date.

And good luck!

Yes, I started off with Pop! As my first distro back when I started to use Linux. TBH you can’t really go wrong with Pop! Or Mint as your first choice.