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Like, why Valve? I was so close to clearing out all the games I was partway through, now I need to add some demos to my backlog (not many, this Next Fest is kinda weak).
Probably could've made it but I haven't picked a distro. I'm planning on turning my desktop into a dedicated gaming computer and not daily driver, because of the malware risk. I wanted something not finicky, something devs would test on as a known quantity, and preferably something Arch-based like SteamOS.
- Garuda (Arch-based)
- Bazzite (Known quantity, immutable, Fedora-based, I don't trust it for some reason)
- Nobara (Proton-adjacent distro, Fedora-based)
- CachyOS (Super fast, Arch-based, presumably finicky?)
- Windows 7 (Based, unsupported by steam, insecure)
Just stick with Fedora for your desktop if you want a traditional desktop workflow without having to jump through hoops. Any of the immutable distros have hoops you don't want to mess with as a beginner, and the decades of forum and docs history generally won't have information specific to your immutable distro and how to manage, so stick with the basics and Fedora.
All distros perform the same in general as far as gaming goes. There is negligible if any difference even tuned straight to the kernel, hands down.
The only thing you'll need to figure out is what Desktop Environment you fit better with to start: KDE or Gnome.
Gnome is more like MacOS, and KDE is more like Windows. Both can be used at the same if you really wish, and there is nothing stopping you from altering whatever you install to behave like some other distro trivially.
Fedora is a good starter to figure out what you do and don't like about which bits, and then make more informed decisions after using it for awhile.