Peasley

Plain old Fedora.

I know the hurdles, i know what to expect, and I've never been surprised by it.

Immutable sounds nice, AUR sounds nice, NixOS sounds nice, but i am utterly confident in my current choice's reliability and comfortable with its idiosyncracies. Everything i want to do works very well.

If i had less time/energy or had to switch, Kubuntu would be my second choice. Less frequent updates and fewer creature comforts, but also very reliable.

I dont have VR, but i assume you saw this?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2805545613

https://lemm.ee/post/46927948

This person was having trouble with Bazzite the other day. Do you have any idea what the issue could be? Works for me on Fedora

Japanese Sega Saturn is my all-time favorite design

Dreamcast and Japanese/PAL SNES are also up there.

Lineage gives you a decent app ecosystem (F-droid) with the option to set up Play Store for full Android compatibility

Ubuntu Touch has a very limited ecosystem compared to F-droid, but might be enough for someone willing to do most tasks in a browser.

Stuff like phone calls, pictures, sms, podcasts, music, and other simple tasks will work equally well on either OS assuming your device is supported

My bad it's a 3a

I wonder why test this on an 11 year old phone?

I have it running on a Pixel 3a and it's definitely smooth, but it still stutters once in a while. It feels slower than Android to me, but not much.

Battery life is indeed excellent, though mine doesnt seem to fast charge.

The camera app was the standout feature to me. The pictures i take look every bit as good as those from Android. I expected the app to be clunky or to have bad colors, but that is not the case at all.

Edit: Pixel 3a not 3

Good counterpoint

I just don't see the draw of immutable distros for non power users.

With traditional ubuntu/mint/fedora you have 15+ years of forum posts, tutorials, and community wisdom to help you out if you get stuck. You probably wont need to, but it's nice to be able to just google something and get a dozen good answers. If you want to use containerized apps you also have that option.

Also depending on your taste in gaming, you might need access to stuff outside of steam/lutris/heroic/flathub. In those cases getting your game working could be a bit of a hassle compared to a traditional distro.

I totally see how immutability can be a draw for tinkerers and developers, but for regular users it's solving a problem that doesn't really exist, or is pretty rare if it does.

I also think there is something to say for picking a distro that's been around a long while. Hopefully Bazzite is still around in 10 years. I feel very confident Ubuntu/Mint/Fedora/Pop! still will be.

That said, I'm glad to hear you and your friend are happy with Bazzite. It seems like a really good option if you only play games from steam/heroic/lutris/flathub. A best of both worlds between a PC and a gaming console.

make the most use of the hardware

All distros should do this equally well, and better than Windows

let me play the most games

All distros will be more or less the same. Games generally work or they dont. Check ProtonDB to see which games work and how well.

easiest to use

lowest maintenance possible

This is how distros actually differ.

Some common suggestions:

Ubuntu LTS:

• Upgrade your OS every 2 years
• Proprietary drivers are there if you need them (Nvidia is the only GPU that needs them)
• GNOME shell environment is very beautiful and fast, but very different from Windows

Kubuntu LTS:

• Upgrade your OS every 2 years
• Proprietary drivers are there if you need them (Nvidia is the only GPU that needs them)
• KDE Plasma Desktop is like all the best parts of windows 95/xp/7/10/11 + os9/OSX/macOS combined, improved, and made super customizeable

Ubuntu/Kubuntu current:

• Upgrade your OS every 6 months
• Newer software than LTS
• Otherwise same as LTS

Linux Mint:

• Upgrade your OS every 2 years
• Proprietary drivers are there if you need them (Nvidia is the only GPU that needs them)
• Cinnamon Desktop is a better looking and faster implementation of a Windows 7 style desktop

Fedora

• Upgrade your OS every 9 months (or else)
• Proprietary codecs need to be added after install to play some video and music streams in your browser. It's like 3 commands copy/pasted into the terminal
• Proprietary drivers are there if you need them (Nvidia is the only GPU that needs them)
• Choice of several desktop environments (Fedora spins)

Pop!_OS

• Fun to spell
• Upgrade your OS every 2 years
• Proprietary drivers are there if you need them (Nvidia is the only GPU that needs them)
• Pop_shell makes you feel like a hacker from the future, but is very unlike Windows

I do not reccomend ~~Bazzite~~, Kali, Arch, Manjaro, Garuda, Debian, or Slackware. They are all great distros for specific use-cases, but they are all significantly more work to configure and/or maintain than the suggestions i've outlined.

I haven't tried Nobara so i cant recommend it, but from the outside it looks fine for a gaming desktop.

Edit: I have mixed feelings on Bazzite, but it might also be a good option for someone feeling adventurous

Not the 12 afaik