PC Gaming

Most things work great out of the box these days. If you do your gaming through Steam already then it's the easiest it could be. Otherwise you can download some other platform like Lutris to manage your compatibility for you

There are definite exceptions though. There's this great website ProtonDB that tells you how compatible games are if you want to look before you leap.

Kernel-level anticheat can make some games unplayable on Linux. Basically, it's intended to detect cheaters, but it gives false positives on Linux. On the flip side, the software is super invasive, like once you're aware of how it works it will make you wonder why anybody would allow that shit on their computer. Probably because they don't know any better, but still. This is more of a problem with high budget PvP games like Call of Duty, so depending on your taste you may never encounter it

Hardware for the most part seems to just work through plug and play. However, if your stuff is highly customizable through software - like Razer Synapse/Chroma/whatever they call it these days - you may not have access to all the features.

Most Linux installers give you the option to just try out the OS in a non-permanent environment. So you could find a distro that appeals to you and then give it a test run without comitting to a full installation. It'd be a good way to see if there's any hardware or compatibility issues.

If you have an Intel/Nvidia rig and are thinking about gaming, I recommend pop_os! I've been using it for a few years now and I have no complaints.

nVidia can still be a bit flakey. But overall gaming on linux has come leaps and bounds from a decade ago.

I started up an Arch box a few months ago. I have an Nvidia GPU and Intel CPU. I’ve had no issues with drivers since that install, and I’m updating proprietary drivers when available.

I recently switched from windows to fedora for my main pc, only had one issue with nvidia drivers (most likely due to user error, it was my first Linux experience), but since fixing its been almost flawless with gaming. I've only had 1 instance of mouse bindings not working properly, but a quick restart of the software that controls it fixed the issue

do yourself a favor and search your laptop model with Linux install and you'll get a good idea of what to expect. There are some vendors who don't play nice with Linux.

Same, early 2000's was the last time I tried to run Linux for gaming and just recently moved to Bazzite and pretty much everything worked out of the box for me outside of some minor nits like suspend not working quite right but outside of that and of course my keyboard not having access to macros anymore but outside of those minor things have been more than solid for gaming and most everything else.

It depends on the games you like to play. I'm mostly single player or co op, so my biggest issue was actaully because nVidia put out broken drivers earlier this year. Luckily it was pretty easy to roll back to a version before that and wait for a fix. You may need to learn a few terminal commands for that sort of thing but I just searched the internet to learn how, wasnt too hard.

If you play things like battlefield, CoD, etc., their anti cheat stuff does not play nice with linux. I have not tested these waters. I am currently playing Clair Obscure and Hollow Knight (OG) without issue. Also went through plague tale requiem, split fiction, the alters, everspace, lies of P, outer wilds, tempest rising, steam world build, valheim, path of exile 2 this past year. Lies of P and Tempest Rising are where I ran into issues on nvidia drivers but rollback fixed it. Path of Exile 2 had some other weird issue on boot, I think I had to find a config file to force it to dx12 instead of vulkan to boot. Really these are similar sorts of random issues I have always associated with PC gaming when I was on windows, sometimes shit doesnt work on my hardware and I gotta fiddle with it. Protondb.com can be helpful for troubleshooting when that happens.

I am using Bazzite which mimics the steam deck OS. I think the hardest part for me was choosing a distro. Bazzite works well for me since 95% of my PC use is gaming, but there are many others to consider if you want to do other things. Some light internet browsing and word processing are about all I do otherwise. You can load a distro onto a USB stick, boot from USB to try it out, and switch around that way to check out some other options. Then install to hard drive for a more permanent decision.