Even if your audio or WiFi card doesn't work automatically in the live environment, that doesn't necessarily mean that you are out of luck either. My WiFi card manufacturer doesn't support Linux (Last thing I buy from them), but I was able to find a driver that was built by the community for a very similar product that works flawlessly.

This may be more complex than some people are willing/able to solve, just wanted to put that out there for people who can so they aren't discouraged by a bad experience with a live distro.

if you are shrinking or modifying an existing partition to make room, it will take quite a while

if your using to watch tv try kodi or osmc or another media OS i have a ras pi running osmc and i never had a issue and im sure you could get a ps4 controller to work an if its for games i dont know any maybe bazzite

The average retail store where I live is still selling computers with 6+ years old CPUs as "gamer edition".

Which then makes it run like a new computer. So Linux basically gives you a free new computer.

Most problems with newer cards have been fixed with version 550. Gaming related, the only thing that will cause you pain is VR or Kernel Level AC

Xpadneo is baked into Ubuntu 25 now? I noticed it was in Fedora 42.

Bazzite is generally the go-to for gaming.

My journey was: Kubuntu -> Tuxedo OS -> Garuda Linux.

Kubuntu was painful, lots of issues. Maybe just got unlucky, but cannot recommend it.

Tuxedo OS was phenomenal until I bought a GPU. Then stuff broke left and right. I wasn't able to get Steam to launch anymore so I switched.

Garuda Linux is the one I still use. I had it for 53 days and had no severe issues to date. There's still a bunch of stuff that needs ironing out, but that's the case with all Linux distros, it's never "fire and forget" like Windows, in my experience.

I chose Garuda because it's advertised as "the Linux for gamers". It's packed with extra goodies that make life easier - you can pick and choose popular apps to be installed right away (things like Lutris, Steam, Heroic Launcher, Proton, Vivaldi browser), and you get an application that helps with maintenance.

The only major issue I had was due to my ignorance (but I kind of blame it on the OS because it was supposed to be "noob friendly" and this bit was very much not so) - just after installation and updates you'll get the system maintenance app ask you to "merge pacdiff files". This shows up a comparison window of two files, and if you've never used Linux you have no clue what's going on. When you get that, just don't overwrite the one on the right with the one on the left - you'll break the entirety of your package manager. :D

Other than that: I'm having a great time. The OS looks pretty, games run great. 9/10

I'd say anything mainstream and not esoteric should do the trick. I'm talking Ubuntu, PopOS and so on.

I installed mint on a new laptop recently and it was completely painless. To be fair I've used Linux before but it's been over a decade and I didn't have any major hiccups. I installed steam and was playing games within 15 minutes of finishing the install. The UI is very familiar and comfortable for windows users and the entire ux seems to be designed around not making you use the terminal unless you have to. I highly recommend trying it out.

For gaming you can just use steam. You can see which game works and the corresponding distributions/configurations on ProtonDB; Helldivers 2 get's a GOLD status (https://www.protondb.com/app/553850).