The biggest problem I’ve noticed with every “best distro for gaming” article and social media post is that the author invariably assumes their own needs represent everyone else’s.

The second biggest problem is that they almost always overstate their favorite distro’s gaming performance compared to all the others (spoiler: the differences are negligible) or else present others as though they lack something that cannot be easily added.

The best distro advice I can offer to a newcomer is to consider your other computing needs, like preferred release/upgrade cadence, or availability of help from an experienced friend, or vendor support for non-game software that you need. Pick a distro based on those things, and you’ll almost certainly be able to game on it with good performance, perhaps with a couple extra steps when setting it up in the first place.